Page 27 of In the Mouth of the Wolf (Of Wolves and Kings #1)
27
MARLOWE
T hey say smell was the sense most strongly connected to memory, and my dad’s lingering scent of sage and vetiver hit me hard, dredging up long forgotten childhood scenes. I remembered what it felt like to sit on his lap while he read to me, the scratchiness of his whiskered chin when he kissed my scraped knees.
Trips to the park, sledding in the winter. Hugs after tantrums and secret cookies when my mom wasn’t looking.
The night he never came home. My mom crying in their bedroom.
I had hoped he’d left some clues to his disappearance. What had been so important he had to leave, so important he’d never see his family again?
But so far, we were coming up empty.
Elias had confirmed that while most of his friends and acquaintances knew he’d been married since he still wore a ring, not as many people had known about me and my brother, and he had apparently never talked about us.
But he had been such a valuable and successful member of the community with his business and outreach that no one had really questioned it.
We were almost finished going through all his paper files. Thankfully, my dad had been enough of a luddite to insist on hard copies of everything, because I wasn’t sure we’d ever be able to get into his computer.
The safe was also a mystery. I hoped he’d been forgetful enough that he’d written the code on a scrap of paper and shoved it in a desk drawer, but we unfortunately hadn’t had such luck.
A folder in one of his cabinets labeled “Oakmoss Fellowship” caught my eye, and my body went stiff.
Elias noticed my reaction, quickly coming to my side. “What is it?”
“The Oakmoss Fellowship… that’s the one I received. It paid for my undergrad and graduate tuition.”
My hands shook as I opened the file. My applications were the only papers inside. Tears sprang to my eyes as my fingers ran down the pages, reading my answer to the essay question about the biggest obstacle I’d overcome in my life.
I’d written about losing him.
“Did you know about this?” I whispered, my voice cracking.
He shook his head slowly, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “I remember helping him set this up, but that’s where my involvement ended. I never knew it was for you.”
I gulped, clutching the file as I closed my eyes. “I only knew about the fellowship because of a random email I received. I just applied on a whim. I even encouraged Ezra to apply, but he wanted to take a gap year and travel before going to college. He died before…”
Elias wrapped me up in his thick arms, bringing me to his chest. He didn’t say anything, just offered silent comfort while I processed my discovery.
“I really thought he’d just been a deadbeat, skipping out on child support.” I sniffed.
“Hmm,” Elias responded.
I backed up and looked at his face. He had the same expression from back at his office when we first met.
“Spill it,” I said. “You know something.”
He pursed his lips and looked to the side for a moment, his eyes softening when he finally looked back at me. “Do you know how your mom paid for everything?”
I swallowed, thinking back to my childhood. We had lived in a modest three-bedroom home, with enough money for essentials and a little extra. As a little kid, I hadn’t thought it was strange that my mom didn’t work because so many of my friends’ moms also stayed at home, until I had realized that was because they had dads.
When I had asked her about it, she said that we lived off a small inheritance she had received from her parents, long since dead.
Still, if he had been so wealthy, if his company had been so successful, why the disparate lifestyles? Why the secret fellowships?
None of it was adding up.
I looked back towards the safe, an idea popping in my head. I wiped my cheeks and crossed the room. “I wonder…” I whispered to myself.
I entered six numbers, and the door clicked open.
Elias came up behind me. “You figured it out? What was the code?”
“Mine and Ezra’s birthdate.”
He sighed. “Should have been our first guess.”
“No,” I replied, carefully swinging the door open. “Honestly, before this moment, it would have been my last.”
Inside was filled with photos of me and my twin brother – school pictures, birthdays, Halloweens, and Christmases. Vacations in Door County, trips to the zoo and Six Flags. All tucked into envelopes addressed to my dad in my mom’s handwriting, with no return address.
Further tucked in was a small bag. I yanked it out, unzipping it quickly and taking the contents out one at a time, handing them to Elias to hold. Three thick bundles of cash – one US dollars, one euros, and one pounds. Next came four passports. The first one was for my dad, but it said he was from Texas and listed his name as Murray Peterson. The following three were for me, my brother, and my mother – our faces photoshopped, our names all changed.
“What the hell is this?” I gasped.
I could feel Elias’s shock and confusion clearly through our newly created bond. “Honestly, I have no idea. I didn’t help him with any of this.”
He took the bag and all its contents and set them on a nearby side table, then held my hands in his. My mind raced with questions and emotions and memories, and a deep purr from Elias anchored me back. “Marlowe,” he said. “I didn’t know your father that well – mostly through Cam growing up, and then when I started my firm he became one of my first clients, keeping me on retainer to help with his personal affairs and the company every now and then. That was it.”
I looked around the room, trying to get a picture of the male my father was, but I was coming up blank.
“What was he like?” I asked quietly.
He raised a hand to my cheek. “Cam could answer that question better than me.”
“No,” I shook my head. “I want to hear your experiences, too.”
His eyes looked up as he gathered his thoughts. “He was quiet, but warm and kind. The kind of male who didn’t seem like a yeller. He just exuded strength and dominance. He was quick to help, quick to try to figure out solutions to any problem you came to him with. And he really wanted to uplift the shifters of this town. Even though he was alone, I think he really enjoyed being a part of the community. Having it around him.”
“But not his family,” I whispered.
Elias drew me in for another hug. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear this, but I don’t think he left you all from any lack of love. Fathers don’t create fake non-profits to fund their children’s college tuitions or fill secret safes with years’ worth of their pictures and an emergency go-bag to whisk them out of the country because they don’t care. They do it because they’re scared.”
I digested his words, finding them at odds with the image I’d built of my dad for the past twenty-two years of my life. The deadbeat who couldn’t even be bothered to come to his own son’s funeral.
But had his distance really been motivated by something else? “What does a shifter have to be scared of?” I asked, my voice shaking.
His forehead touched mine. “I can’t think of anything powerful enough to rip a male away from his pups. Protecting our families, our packs… it’s our prime motivator.”
“Could… could he tell I was an omega, maybe? Or that I could shift…”
Elias interrupted gently. “Possibly, but designations aren’t revealed until we reach puberty. At four, you’d have been just like all other female pups. Perhaps a little punier, though,” he added with a wink before continuing. “And a shifter’s first full transformation usually happens closer to maturity.”
That was one hypothesis I could rule out, then. “Does my dad have any other family? Close friends?”
“Family, not that I know of. Friends, maybe. Cam would know best, with your two families having owned a business together.”
It was all too much. I needed to talk to my pack, come up with a list of people my dad knew and any potential threats in the area. “We should probably head back. I think I’ve had enough life-shattering moments for today.”
I reached out through the tenuous connections I felt now that we were bonded, but they were fraught with simmering anger.
“They’re mad, aren’t they?”
Elias chuckled. “They’ll get over it.”