Sly as a Fox {Book One}

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Hurt

noun

-physically injured

-offended; unfavorably affected

-suggesting that one has been affected or is suffering in mind

-damaged

Kyle ran to his truck with a speed I only ever saw when he was playing soccer. They both swung the doors open and I hopped up into the cab and sat in the middle seat like I usually did, though I now occupied much less space than usual. The Panteras quickly closed us all inside, Serena making sure to lock the doors even after I had heard Kyle click the button. The engine roared to life and Kyle backed out of the parking lot so fast, I was afraid he was going to run into someone's expensive foreign car and get us into even more trouble.

Kyle shot out into traffic, earning honks of protest, but once on the main street, we all took a sigh of relief. We rode in silence, but it wasn't a comfortable silence like it usually was; this time, it was a silence full of tension thick enough to choke your lungs from the inside out. Kyle was tapping his fingers nervously on the steering wheel as Serena bounced her leg up and down in a rhythm and I sat statuesque between the two, entranced by the day's events and trapped in my thoughts.

Legally, I should have had a seatbelt on, and they made seatbelt for when a shifter is in their particular animal forms, but I wasn't wearing the harness needed for it to attach. The last thing I wanted or needed was for Kyle to get pulled over because a cop saw that a Volpe wasn't wearing a seatbelt, so I crawled over into Serena's lap and put my head down on her knee so that I lay below the window and was out of sight. Her feminine hands tenderly reached out and wrapped around my body, holding me to her in a manner similar to the way I would hold my dog Bagle on long car rides.

Her hand stroked my fur and I closed my eyes at the feeling, my headache beginning to return with a greater fervor than before. She sighed deeply, feeling as exasperated from the day's events as I did, and said calmly, "I'm so sorry, Will. If there was anything I could do to make this better for you, you know I would. Kyle and I love you, and you deserve someone to love you just as much if not more than we do as your mate." I realized where she was headed with this and I wanted to shut her up so that I could explain what really happened, but because she didn't possess the same abilities of my mate, I stayed quiet and listened to her. " I really thought that you and Blithe had something.

"I mean how heartless can he be to dump you on stage in front of most everyone in school right after you said you told him how you accepted him for the first time?!" She growled as her eyes flashed to the yellow-green of her cougar form for just a single second before returning to their usual Caribbean ocean blue color. "I just feel so helpless right now. We just want to make you happy," Kyle's hand moved from the steering wheel to rest on my back, "we all do."

I nodded as I on her lap, my tail curled tightly around my paws for comfort, like a child with their security blanket. I more than honored to have them support me like this and I felt speechless at not only the beauty of her words, but also the truth behind them. I wanted more than anything to explain to her what had happened and finally tell someone about whatever was happening with Blithe and I, but even if I wouldn't have shifted back as a naked human in the middle of Kyle's truck, I didn't want to quite yet. I needed the comfort that my fox form offered me for just a little longer.