6
Humming a lullaby for Treasure, I laid him gently in his crib beside my bed. I picked up the nearest lizard toy in his crib, smiling as I remembered how he tried biting off the toy's head. It hadn't been easy rearing him up in the village. Thanks to Jane and my mom, who were mothers, even though Jane had to leave her children behind for a sin she'd never committed. They taught me how to take care of my baby boy, including ways I could prevent him from crying: always making sure his diapers were dry and clean, keeping his formula ready, and using a pacifier. I owed them more than I could ever repay.
With the sweet memories of Treasure lingering in my mind, I began tidying up my room, carefully picking up his toys and keeping them where they belonged. I took a wet rag from my bathroom, cleaned the items on my small vanity, and then headed to the nightstand.
Cleaning the lamp, I found an envelope glued under the lamp. In a flash, the happiness I felt soured, a sharp pain overwhelmed my heart as memories from the envelope engulfed me.
In a vain attempt to vanquish the sudden pain that threatened to crush my heart, stuck the envelope out and ripped it apart in a swift motion. While the letter in the envelope and half of the envelope went along with my grip, part of the envelope didn't, it adhered to the lamp. A platinum credit card and a few shreds of the envelope littered the floor. A second barely went by when I furiously tore the letter into pieces, took the credit card, disintegrating it into uncountable part.
Although I hadn't read his letter in five months, after having Treasure, Alpha Rhys's words still wrenched my heart. The presence of Treasure discarded that part of my memory bearing the letter. Shock coursed through my veins, anger exploded in my heart, as Alpha Rhys's letter shattered my emotions.
Destroying the letter didn't stop my vision from displaying the words as they were in the letter. Parting my lips to accommodate the fast beating of my chest, I closed my eyes to shut the ugly words out, but they were still on my mind, displaying. I palmed my heart, squeezing hard at it. Agony attempted to thin my sanity, but Treasure cooed, righting my anguished heart.
From that moment, I realized that Alpha Rhys's letter would no longer torture me, my son would always shield me. Filled with determination, I got a vacuum to trash the mess the letter made.
Five years later.
After shopping at a small, local glossary store that barely had goods, I rushed back home, almost running. The village was too small, we didn't need a car. Only the elders had cars, and they barely used them. There was no gas station, and not more than fifty liters of gas were imported in a month. I got home and kept my glossary bags on the kitchen counter.
"Where's Treasure?" I whispered to my mom, who just came out of her room a few minutes after I'd entered the house. We kept our voices very low whenever we talked about Treasure.
"Where else should he be?" She asked in a reluctant tone.
"In your room." I began offloading the grocery bags and asked, "Didn't he take lessons today?"
The reason I could read and speak fluently was because of my mom, she taught me everything I knew. And now, she was also teaching Treasure, only that we apportioned the timetable. Still, my mom did most of the teaching because she was much too good at it.
"Just because he doesn't go to a proper school doesn't mean he shouldn't have holidays." My mom took an apple from the things I'd bought and made her way to the kitchen faucet.
I put the liquid milk in the fridge, and whistled, looking upstairs to see my handsome son climbing down the stairs. Whistling was one of the ways I called Treasure to come downstairs. When he didn't, I said loudly, "There was so much steak at the grocery that I ended up buying half of it."
My mom began washing the red apple.
Treasure loved steak, and I made sure I emptied the grocery store each time I went shopping. Not seeing him coming down the stairs rippled the happiness I felt.
"Soon he will be six."
"In five months he would be six; I know that very well." I returned to the counter, taking the vegetables to the fridge.
"How long will you hide him in this village?" My mum stood at the edge of the counter and folded her hands across her chest, holding the apple in the pads of her fingers.
"Can we not talk about this?" I asked, irritated by my mom's consistent nagging in sending Treasure and me off to the city.
"When are we going to ever talk about it?" she asked, angry. "When he's forty?"
"I don't know."
"Being stubborn will only put Treasure in danger." My mom held my arm as I was about to walk back to the counter, violently dragging me until I stood before her. She said through gritted teeth, "He can't keep on living this way."
I forced my arm out of her grip and continued what I was doing, keeping the groceries where they were meant to be. My mom was right in everything she said, and believe me, countless times, I'd thought about taking Treasure away from this pack. But the thoughts kept giving me a reason to think about Alpha Rhys and Danica. The threats in his letter still found a way of crawling back into my mind, torturing me and keeping the option of moving to the city far from my reach.
Done with the arrangements, I left for my room, leaving my mom standing like a statue in the kitchen.
I almost stumbled over when I accidentally stepped on Treasure's shoes that lay at the entrance of the door.
"What…" I bent at the waist, looking closer at his blue sneakers that were coated with a substance that shook me to the core. Not sure of what I was seeing, I picked up his sneakers, and that was when I gasped. There was mud on the soles of his sneakers. I looked at the remaining pair on the floor, then tilted my gaze to him, my heart fell into my stomach.
He sat there, on the bed, pretending to be oblivious to my presence while he read a novel placed on his lap. He'd left the mud on his shoe soles on purpose and kept them in the open, where I could see them. Treasure always kept his things in order, and thinking about it, I wonder how many times he had wandered off.
"I told you it was dangerous out there."
"Are you a bad person?" he asked, flipping the page of his novel.
"What?" I asked, feeling I didn't hear his question correctly.
"I made a friend eight days ago—"
"Eight days ago?" I asked, shocked.
Treasure stared at me. "I was still talking."
He continued reading.
"There's nothing to talk about. You met a friend. Who is this your friend? Did you tell this friend where you stay?" I asked him streams of questions and scurried to the window to see if anyone was looking at our house, but the street was void of shifters.
"I won't answer any of those questions."
I closed the window and shut the curtains as I asked, "What question will you answer then?"
"Why don't you answer my question first?"
"Do I look bad to you?" I turned to him, sad by his sudden question about my personality.
"I can't tell."
"Talk to me." I went to the bed and sat, facing him, my legs wrapped against each other. "Where did I go wrong?"
He finally took his attention away from the book, closing it. "My friend told me why people come to this village."
"Not all crime is that bad." I swallowed hard. He believed everyone in the village was bad because he learned about the rules.
Keeping the novel beside him, he wrapped his legs, reflecting my stance on the bed. "Then let's go to the city."
"Once you're in the village, you can't go to the city," I lied, and my heart squeezed with sadness, but keeping the truth from him was the only way to discourage him from talking about the city. He had all the opportunities to go to the city if only he wasn't my son.
Treasure would have been among the children going to the city to get rehabilitated and educated, only if he wasn't Alpha Rhys's son. Depression made me sick to the stomach.
"Have you ever been to the city?" he asked softly.
"Yes," I replied. "Your grandmom was very ill, uncle Larry found a way into the city."
"I have an idea." He adjusted on the bed, a smile lightened his dashing face. "What if I frame to be sick? Will Uncle Larry get us a pass?"
"The pass expires." To scare him a bit, I added, "It gets very dangerous after the pass expires."
"I hate this village." He lay down, backing me.
"Everyone does."
"Not as much as I hate it," he whispered in his frustrated, little, cute voice.
"Can you tell me about your friend?"
"Nothing to worry about. I played dumb."
I lay next to him, facing the ceiling. "Promise me you won't meet your friend again."
"She's nice," he said softly.
"Promise me," I insisted.
"I promise."
"Pinky swear." I turned to him, stretching my pinky finger.
"No, mom." He sighed roughly.
"Treasure." I sat up on the bed, fuming a bit due to his stubbornness.
"I don't want to." He ran out of the room.
That was a sign he made me an empty promise. I palmed my throbbing chest, scared something would happen at any moment. Treasure was going out, and it wouldn't be long before the shifters in the village noticed his presence. That was the time to act, but fear tied my hands from taking an action.