Hagel ran his toy truck back and forth along the floor. He made no sound, but his small brow was furrowed in concentration, and his knuckles showed white through a bristling layer of downy fur. Jervis watched him, frowning and wondering what to do. The cub was upset, but he couldn’t stay half-changed forever.

  “He’s conflicted,” the school nurse said. “One minute he’s fine, spelling and counting and playing with the blocks like any other child, but the next he’s… Well, he’s like this.”

  “Can you leave us alone, for a moment?” Jervis asked.

  “Well, his mother hasn’t arrived yet.”

  And she will have as big a piece of you as I will, Jervis thought, If you keep me from my cub.

  He said nothing. He would not beg, or plead, or threaten. Hagel was his cub, and he loved him dearly, but the humans still had trouble coping with werewolves. Jervis had been hoping to keep his, Keelie’s and Hagel’s heritage a secret, and quietly book them passage to Morrow’s World before trouble could find them.

  Unfortunately, Hagel hadn’t been able to cope, and they hadn’t known, until it was too late.

  “She’ll be here, soon,” the nurse said, reading his mood with unnerving clarity, “So I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

  She left, closing the door behind her, with a reassuring smile, and Jervis breathed a soft sigh of relief.

  “Hagel,” he said, letting the wolf shape his words, as he partially shifted form.

  “Daddy!” the little boy shouted, and hurled himself across the room into Jervis’s arms, wrapping his arms around Jervis’s neck, and burying his face in the fur Jervis had allowed to sprout from his chest.

  Jervis wrapped his arms around the child and hugged him close. He was still hugging him, when Nurse Mackenzie entered with Keelie.

  His wife took one look at the two of them, and turned to the nurse.

  “If you could leave us, for a moment, please,” she said, and crouched down beside her two men.

  “Look at the pair of you,” she murmured, and wrapped them in her arms. “Giving away our secrets, like there’s no tomorrow.”

  Hagel lifted his head.

  “Secrets, mummy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart, secrets. Don’t you know the humans find it hard to cope with the lupine?”

  “Lupine?”

  “Us, Hagel. We’re lupine.”

  “Not human?” Hagel said, his large blue eyes filling with tears.

  Jervis felt his heart tear with sadness.

  This, he thought. This is what they’d been trying to spare their son. When he was older, he’d be better able to understand, but not at six. Life was so hard when you were six.

  “No,” Keelie said, and let the tiniest piece of her wolf show.

  The sight of it made Hagel laugh.

  “Mummy’s wolf is peeking at me,” he giggled, and Keelie laughed in return.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “And that is all the humans should ever see,” she told him. “Even daddy knows that.”

  Taking the hint, Jervis changed back to human, and then let his wolf creep into his eyes. The sight made Hagel laugh even harder, and he covered his eyes with his hands.

  “Boo!” he shouted, suddenly pulling his hands away and pushing his face close to Jervis’s.

  Jervis laughed, too, then let Hagel watch him put the laughter away.

  “Hmmm,” he said, tilting his head this way and that, as though inspecting his son very closely. “I see a problem.”

  Hagel’s eyes widened, and he looked down at himself. Jervis gave him a minute to work it out. Hagel might be only six, but he was pretty bright.

  “Oh,” Hagel said, and grimaced.

  Jervis watched as the fur disappeared from the child’s wrists and ankles, and his muzzled face shrink to a more human visage. He watched as Hagel’s claws became human fingers once again, and as his son’s ears lost their pointed tips, giving way to a more rounded outline.

  “Oh, way to go,” he said, when Hagel looked to him for approval. “What do you think, mummy?”

  Keelie picked up the game. She shuffled back, and repeated Jervis’s head-tilting inspection.

  “Hmmm,” she said, as Hagel watched with wide-eyed anticipation. “It’s not bad, but I think you’ve forgotten something.”

  Her voice held a teasing note that belied the worry Jervis saw lurking in her eyes, and he made a note to talk to her later. Something had happened to bring that level of fear to her expression, but it also explained why she’d been asking about the chances of an earlier flight. He wondered what it was.

  Hagel pulled him away from his concerns, standing up and looking down at himself. His son held his hands and arms out in front of himself and studied them carefully. When he was done with that, the boy reached up and touched his ears. Finding they had changed, too, Hagel touched his nose, and ran his fingers through his hair. When he found they were human, as well, he turned, looking over his shoulder at where his tail shouldn’t be.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed, seeing the offending appendage poking out of the top of his school trousers.

  Once again, he stood still and screwed up his face, making the tail disappear, shortly thereafter.

  “All good?” he asked, looking at his mum and dad for approval.

  Jervis levered himself up off the floor, and held out a hand to his wife. She took it, without needing to look, and stood, before stooping down to plant a kiss on Hagel’s forehead.

  “Perfect,” she said, and the child’s face broke into a pleased grin.

  He looked past his mum to catch Jervis’s eye and raised his eyebrows in question. Jervis gave him a thumbs up with his free hand, and Hagel smiled. Linking hands, with Hagel between them, Keelie and Jervis headed for the door. The nurse looked up from her monitor as they came out, and her face broke into a smile.

  “Oh, very good!” she said. “It’s nice to see you happy, again, Hagel.”

  Jervis was pretty sure she meant it was nice to Hagel human again, but he didn’t try to correct her. Instead, he said, “If it’s okay with the school, we thought we’d take him home for the rest of the day.”

  The nurse nodded.

  “Of course, Mr. Zymes.”

  “It’s just to make sure he’s settled for tomorrow,” Jervis assured her, although he wasn’t sure of that, at all. He wouldn’t be sure until he got home and talked to Keelie…and maybe had a chat with Hagel about what had got him so wound up in the first place.

  “That’s fine, Mr. Zymes. You give him all the time he needs.”

  And wasn’t that the strangest thing for a school nurse to say. Usually, they were very reluctant to give their charges any time off, at all, but Nurse Mackenzie’s words were an invitation for him to say he needed more.

  “I’ll see how he goes,” Jervis said, before deciding to take a risk on her, and reaching across the desk for the nurse’s post-it pad and pen.

  Is there something I should know? he wrote, keeping the words covered with one hand, and blocking the camera with his body. He turned the pad around, so Nurse Mackenzie could see it.

  She frowned, her expression flowing from instant denial, to worry, then to professional concern, although Jervis was pretty sure that last one was for the camera’s benefit.

  “Oh, I nearly forgot,” she said, reaching for the sticky notes and pulling them below counter level. “You’ll need to call the school if you decide to keep him home, tomorrow. Let me write the number for you.”

  She wrote quickly, frowning slightly as she chose the few words she could fit onto the page. When she was done, she tore the top quarter inch of pages off the pad and passed them across to Jervis.

  “Now, don’t forget, will you?” she asked. “We’ll need to know either way.”

  Jervis glanced at the paper, before tucking it into his jacket pocket.

  Her message had been clear and straight to the point.

  Anti-lupine group plans attack. Find a way to go, soon, & Good Luck!

  It was a struggle to keep his face straight, but Jervis managed it, reaching across the counter to offer his hand. As she shook it, he said, “Thank you, nurse. We appreciate your understanding.”