Lyra rushed out of the kitchen, carrying a plate of pancakes. She placed it down on the table and grabbed a box of cereal from the little boy sitting opposite her. He stared up at her, frowning in an expression that made Lyra chuckle.
“I was going to eat that!” Adam yelled.
“You have cereal every single morning,” Lyra shot back. “You have to eat something that’s actual food and not just sugar. Now eat up so you’re not late.”
“It’s the last day of school, there’s nothing to do,” Adam replied, taking a forkful of the pancakes.
Lyra smiled when she saw his expression change as he tasted the food, watching as Adam began to wolf it down, tearing through each pancake quickly. She rubbed the boy’s dark hair fondly, causing him to look up at her with a smile before turning back to his food.
“What do you think about summer school?” Lyra asked.
“I’m seven, Mom, I don’t really like going to school in the summer.”
Lyra chuckled. “And I don’t like having to deal with you around the house. If you want to hang out with me and Grandpa all day, then yeah, you can stay home.”
Adam finished eating and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He had large blue eyes that mirrored Lyra’s. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, now come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
Lyra quickly walked him out to her car, and Adam climbed into the back as she locked the door to their apartment. It was a small place, just enough for her and Adam to live comfortably. As she shut the door, Lyra glimpsed the heaping pile of bills in the corner of the room, most of them unopened and yet to be attended to.
Lyra got in her car and pulled off, joining the morning traffic as she took her son to school. She glanced in the rearview mirror to see Adam silently huffing a breath into the glass and drawing in it. Adam was the one thing she had gotten from the time she had spent with Levi all those years ago. Their relationship had been brief, and had lasted only several weeks before Levi had vanished.
At first, Lyra had wanted to believe that it was the pregnancy that had made him leave her. But he had left long before she even realized she was carrying his child. Levi had left without a single word. She had woken up one day, and he was gone. She understood that the fact that he was a dragon made their relationship complicated, but Levi had never even tried to make it work—he just left.
She couldn’t reach him by phone, and checked on him in all of the places she could think of, but Levi was just gone. He made no effort to contact her, leaving Lyra all alone with a child she had to raise on her own.
Lyra had been confident that her child would be a wolf, just like she was. The shifter part of her would manifest in the child, as always happened with all female shifters who had a child with normal human men. But somehow, Adam had been born without any of the features of a werewolf. She had no idea how dragons propagated, but there were no signs of Levi in Adam either, except for the dark hair and chubby cheeks. A large part of Lyra was relieved that her son would be able to lead a normal life, but it nagged at her, in the back of her mind. Lyra always wondered what made Adam different.
She pulled into the front drive of the school slowly, and Adam smiled at her. “Bye, Mom.”
“Bye, Adam. Be safe!”
Lyra watched as he quickly ran toward the building and was instantly stopped by another boy around his age. They spoke to each other for a moment, and something the boy said made Adam lose his mind. Lyra watched as her son tilted his head back to laugh heartily, bringing a tear to her eye. Someone blaring their horn behind her drew her out of her reverie, and she quickly drove off.
She had been heartbroken when Levi left her. He was the perfect man—a loving man who took charge. The sex had been great, he had been kind to her, and he made Lyra feel electric—alive. But all of that left with him. After he left, Lyra had quickly moved from Ridgeshire to the city.
It wasn’t too far away, so she could still stay close to the pack. But Lyra still felt the effects of being away from her pack, and the fact that she had hidden the pregnancy from everyone had made it hard for her. Save for her father, Orson, no one from the pack knew that Lyra had a child. Worse still, no one knew her son’s father was a dragon shifter.
Being away from the pack had its own psychological effects on her. As much as Lyra tried to build a steady life out here, it just couldn’t work the way she wanted. She was often late for work and got upset over little things, making her working relationships with her coworkers at the diner completely terrible.
Lyra felt like she was a day away from losing her job, but no matter how hard she tried she felt drawn back home. No matter how hard any shifter tried—as long as a wolf still belonged in the pack, everything would try to draw them back to their family. Lyra wanted to go back home, she wanted to return to Ridgeshire, but that would mean confronting the pack.
She would have to explain Adam, and that was not a conversation she was willing to have. She was the Beta of her pack, and making the mistake of sleeping with a dragon shifter went against what was basically one of the first lessons thought to werewolves. Lyra pulled her car to a stop at the diner and stared out the window.
Lyra still had a few minutes before she had to head in, so she pulled out her phone. She stared at her lock screen for a moment, a photo of Ridgeshire from the top of a hill. Levi had grabbed her phone one night and taken the photo. Lyra couldn’t bring herself to change it. She had moved on from Levi, but the picture held too much emotional history for her.
She called Orson, her father. The phone rang for moment, before the gruff voice of the older man reached her ears. It sounded like home, and Lyra realized just how much she missed him. She heard the sound of an engine turning off in the background before Orson began speaking.
“Hey Lyra, how are you?”
“Dad,” Lyra said, pausing for a moment to hold back the emotions. “I’m good, how are you doing? How’s Ridgeshire? How’s the pack?”
“Well, everything is as you left it, a little trouble here and there, nothing we can’t handle,” Orson replied, his voice showing the years on the man. Lyra could picture him as he spoke. His hair with streaks of grey on the sides, the crow’s feet on the edges of his piercing gaze. His grey and knowing eyes. Orson had taught Lyra everything she knew. “How’s Adam?”
“He’s fine, I just dropped him off at school, and I’m about to get to work right now.”
“Sounds good,” Orson replied. The sound of a metal tool hitting the floor caused Lyra to cringe a little as the sound hit her sensitive ears. “Sorry. Have you considered my offer yet?”