Mate Mysteries

Chapter 58

Pip's heart stumbled on her words. Slowly, he leaned forwards with a frown, a frown of disbelief. "My parents are dead." His words were just a whisper. In such a silent cave, talking normally was like shouting.

"You thought we were dead?"

"You are dead. I mean, my parents are dead. They were eaten by wolves. They've been gone for nine years." Pip couldn't remember the way his parents sounded, and he barely remembered their faces. His aunt and uncle never kept pictures of them around the house, so Pip hadn't really seen them for nine years. Their faces were in old newspapers, but Pip barely looked at those.

He vaguely remembered his father's brown messy hair and his mother's blue eyes. They were called Julie and David, regular names for regular people, not people who discovered werewolves and had to work in a Packhouse's basement for years.

The guy who claimed to be his father leaned forward too. His hair and beard were long, and wavy, and dirty. He stared at Pip, looking him up and down for a long uncomfortable minute. His observing frown softened. "My Pippor Miracle."

Pip tingled from head to toe. His lips parted to gasp. Nobody had called him that in so many years. Pip had last thought of that when he first saw the flowers blooming in the snow by the Shadow Packhouse almost two years ago. "W-Winter rose," he stammered.

The man nodded his head. The motion made is tears fall. "It really is you, isn't it?" he croaked. "Our Pippor?"

Pip could only blink in disbelief. A large part of him refused to process what was happening. "Tell me your names."

"I'm David, and that's your mother Julie." The man tried to wipe hair from his face as if Pip would see through his gaunt cheeks and bloodshot eyes and shaggy beard. "You've barely changed Pippor. You look so much like how I remember you."

Pip's eyes flicked to the woman. She sobbed quietly and tried to move close. Her chains only let her move a metre from the wall. The tall guy in the middle stared at Pip. There was something about his tilted head and dark eyes that were familiar to him.

"H-How do you remember me?"

"You've always had mad wavy hair. Though it's shorter now," the woman said with her wobbly emotional voice. "You-" she choked back a sob. "You've always had your father's dimples, and my eyes." She pushed her face further into the light and smoothed blonde greasy hair behind her ears.

For a second, Pip saw something he recognised, and his heart jolted. He remembered seeing the side of his mother's face a little, and the way her nose was a little crooked, and how her chin was a little pointy, and how her eyes crinkled deeply when she smiled, and how her ears would move when she grinned wide.

It's impossible. It's impossible. It's impossible. "My parents died nine years ago." He said again, not able to look away from the woman whose eyes grew more familiar the longer he looked. Something deep in his gut told him that he was drawn to her because she was someone important to him.

"We were taken nine years ago. We were badly injured by Debra's Rogues. We both almost didn't make the trip south. We begged for you to be taken with us, but Debra thought it was crueller to let us live without you. She punished you because we found out about the werewolves."

Pip felt his heartbeat all around his face, around his stinging eyes, and in the cut on his hand. "I had to live with Bert and Joanna."

The woman furrowed her thin brows. She shook her head with a small wail. "My poor boy. I worried that would happen, but I didn't know if my sister would take you in. I hoped she wouldn't. Anywhere would have been better than there."