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Ember

I won’t bore you with every group home and crappy placement I ended up in after I left the Hounds. We drove 6 hours to a group home. It was never a short drive between places. I realized when I was older, he was keeping me away from certain people, and if my name was flagged on a system somewhere, I was quickly moved again.

I was at the group home a month, before an 18-hour drive to the Twin-Trees pack. Again, when they realized I was 'human,' I was dismissed, given a room in the servant quarters, and put to work. By April, I was back in another group home. I met a boy called Creed; he was the first person since Ren and Jenson I told the truth about my 'sight.'

He was another new I didn’t understand. One night, I found him sitting on the roof, watching a group of teenagers hanging out.

“Hey, mind if I sit? I can’t sleep.” I ask him, hoping he won’t care. He just shrugs, so I sit with my legs hanging over the edge like his are.

We sit in silence for a while before I speak again.

“I know everyone thinks I’m human, but I just think I’m a broken supe. I can see auras kinda, no, that’s not right.” I hum an unknown tune, trying to think how to explain it. The easiest way, in the end, was to show him. I get my notebook out and draw him how I see him.

Half his face was him in his human form and how most of the world see him; the other looks airbrushed with wolflike features, sharp canines, pointed furry ears, a more pointed angular face but smooth, almost seductive even at 7 years old. When I was finished I hand him the pad

“This is how I see the world, but I’ve never seen anyone like you before.” He stares at the drawing for so long that I start to worry, I made a mistake by asking him, showing him,

“Is this why you don’t make eye contact and don’t look at people's faces often?” he asked in a gentle voice.

“Yes, it makes me dizzy sometimes, especially hybrids when their dual natures are fighting for dominance,” I say as he gives me the pad back before sighing.

“I’m a wolf/incubus hybrid, but my wolf side just changed my features. I can’t actually shift.” he starts to tense, then carries on,

“I come up here to feed on the older kid’s emotions. I don’t really like being touched, so I feed from residual stuff.” I hum, not really knowing what to say.

Sometime later, as we head back inside, one of the orderlies tells Creed he will be moving to a pack tomorrow and his brother will meet him there. Then, with a smirk, he informs me that I will be heading to the Den, a facility that only a few people came back from.

I was in the Den from May 1st till December 25th. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, not good by any stretch of the imagination but not as bad, dry bread and a plastic cup of water twice a day and flavored water masquerading as soup in the evenings, weekly communal showers, as in we stand in a room with tepid water rained on us then given a clean scrub.