Escape is Only Temporary [boyxboy]

Chapter X

 ~Tuesday 31st May 2016~

Reece shouldn't have felt so happy. He knew that. Given the circumstances, he should have been sad. An innocent had been murdered in front of him, traumatizing his own pups and sending Shepherd into a spiraling grief. He should have been sorrowful, miserable even, yet Reece didn't feel that. He felt happy. His mind was clear, smiling came easily to him, his soul felt light. He had his family around him. A family that he never even knew the extent of, close by, within arms reach.

It wasn't perfect. Kai still regarded Reece with a wide berth, preferring to spend time with Juda or just sitting with Shepherd for the majority of the time. Snowden was warming to him, though. Reece could feel a real bond forming with his youngest pup. They spent time together, mostly when Reece was cooking. Snowden wanted to help. He just wanted to be around his father, sitting on the counter, asking him questions, replacing the low mood in the suite with his bubbling laughter.

"Do you eat animals when you're a wolf?" And that was where Snowden was that evening. He was perched on the kitchen counter, nibbling on a carrot stick that he had stolen from the chopping board whilst Reece prepared dinner. Shepherd was sleeping on the couch, with Kai laid in his arms on his phone. The suite was pretty quiet, save for the low music playing from the stereo and Reece's conversation with his pup.

"Mhmm, we hunt every full moon," Reece had made more than a few mistakes with Snowden. He had said things inappropriate for a nine-year-old, mostly to do with his wolf, and Shepherd had to clarify that Snowden's other side wasn't something to fear. Reece kicked himself for days after that. Of course he should have known that he had to sugarcoat some things. The pain of the first transition, the confusion, the fear. He couldn't just tell Snowden about that outright, the truth had to be bent when speaking to him. Reece's aim was to educate, not frighten the boy.

"Do I have to do that?" Hearing the change in Snowden's tone, Reece looked up. As expected, Snowden's eyes were wide, tears brimming them as his bottom lip quivered. Once again, Reece had put his foot in it. As a child, he had grown up around wolves himself, it was normal to see them return from their hunts carrying their kills, mouths laden with blood and adrenaline lingering in their eyes. For Snowden, that wasn't the case. He hadn't communed with his own wolf before, he had grown up essentially a pure warlock. Shepherd had always been honest with him, but Snowden still retained that youthful innocence, and Reece was doing a damn good job of fucking it up.

"No, no, monkey, you don't have to do that," Reece put down the knife he had been using to chop the vegetables, turning all attention to consoling his child before he made him cry again, "you don't have to hunt at all. You can be a vegetarian if you want, some wolves in my pack are like that. You don't have to eat any animals," Reece still felt awfully flustered when Snowden was emotional. He didn't know just quite what to do. The instinctual part of himself wanted to take the boy into his arms and cuddle his pup until Snowden had calmed down. Yet, he was afraid that the child might push him away. No matter whether Snowden was overly tactile with Shepherd, Reece knew he was still a stranger. He couldn't be sure if it would be too early to form that kind of bond with his pup.

"Mama says we shouldn't hurt animals, he said that it makes the spirits angry and that we can only use what's already dead," Reece could understand the confusion. Shepherd had brought Snowden and Kai up on warlock beliefs. Granted, they didn't differ all that much from a wolf's, however, there was one striking difference. Where wolves valued the kill, taking pleasure in the hunt of animals in their primal forms, warlocks were strictly against harming nature. They used only the resources of animals that were already deceased, never killing for their own gain.

Shepherd was old enough to understand that Reece was different. As it had been on the full moon they spent together, he didn't bat an eyelid at the hare that Reece had caught. He merely offered to help where he could and happily took anything that Reece didn't consume himself. Snowden was too young to have that kind of thought process. Instead, it was going to be difficult for him. He was half-wolf, half-warlock, there were going to be times when one teaching would oppose another, and Reece couldn't imagine the confusion was going to be anything less than frustrating.