Fallon watched Dione grab sketchbook after sketchbook. This one’s too big, that one too thick, the paper is too thin, this paper too textured. He patiently waited for her to find the perfect one, she knew exactly what she liked after decades of drawing.

  Fallon couldn’t count on his fingers how many sketchbooks she’d filled by now. Many of the drawings were of him. He often sat still in a certain position for some time as he read or ate or slept. She then took the opportunity to use him as a model. She tried to draw their kids too, but they didn’t sit still as often. Especially not when they were young. Most of the drawings of Tayen or Hyde were either unfinished or them sleeping.

  Dione held a smaller sketchbook in her hand. She opened it and felt the paper between her fingers. “This one’s nice.”

  “You sure?”

  Dione hummed as she thought it over.

  Fallon heard someone coming into the store but didn’t bother seeing who.

  “Maybe—”

  “Dad!” Dione was interrupted.

  Fallon turned around to see his son, to his surprise. “Hyde?”

  “Oh, hey hon.” Dione smiled. “How’d you know we were here?”

  “You told me you were gonna buy a new sketchbook during breakfast.” Hyde looked around the art supply store. “Didn’t think you’d take all morning.”

  “We haven’t been here all morning, we went to other places first,” Dione defended herself.

  “We have been here for over half an hour, though,” Fallon added with a grin.

  Hyde absentmindedly breathed out a chuckle as he observed some fancy coloured pencils beside him. He grabbed one.

  “We could get you some stuff too, if you want,” Dione told him.

  Fallon looked at her and saw her smirk.

  Hyde put the pencil back. “Oh, no. I’m not here for that.” He stepped closer to Fallon, close enough for Fallon to catch a whiff of his scent. Fallon squinted a little. There was something oddly familiar about it, it wasn’t Hyde’s own.

  “You have to come home, there’s something you need to see.”

  “Uh, okay.” Fallon looked at Dione again. “Do you want that one, or…”

  Dione nodded. “Yeah, I’ll take this one. You go ahead, I’ll go to the cash register.”

  “Okay.”

  Hyde took Fallon’s hand and dragged him out of the store. Fallon kept smelling that scent on him, he had thought it might’ve been his mind playing tricks on him the first time.

  “What do I need to see at home?”

  Hyde let his hand go, they stood in front of the store. He scratched his cheek. “I’m not sure how you’ll react to it.”

  Fallon raised his eyebrow. “Okay, ominous. What’s that scent on you?”

  Hyde perked up in surprise. “Oh, you can smell it already?”

  “I guess so?”

  “Do you recognise it?”

  “It’s familiar, but”—Fallon shook his head—“my mind must be playing tricks on me.”

  Hyde gave him a knowing grin. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  Dione came out of the store with a little, paper bag. “Oh, you waited for me, how nice.”

  “Let’s go,” Hyde said and began walking. Fallon and Dione followed him.

  Hyde turned around and walked backwards as he said, “I should tell you about something before we get there. You know how I said Rune’s parents were dead?”

  “Hard to forget,” Fallon answered.

  “Right, well, one of them isn’t anymore. His father’s alive now.”

  Fallon stayed quiet, processing that for a second.

  Dione answered first, “Huh? So he wasn’t dead?”

  “No, he was. But not anymore.” Hyde glanced away with tense shoulders. “It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try to summarise. In the village I was staying at, I had this witch friend who was researching the dead. Turned out she was researching and experimenting to bring a dead person back to life and also have their soul return to the body. And you know those ‘dangerous connections’ Rune mentioned? They killed him at some point, he was dead for three weeks. But then he was her first successful experiment. And now her potion seems to be following us somehow? Cause only a month later, Rune’s father showed up out of nowhere, and for him, it was like he jumped eleven years into the future. So yeah, point is: resurrection is possible.”

  Fallon, again, didn’t know how to respond. He only stared at Hyde, who was waiting for a reaction.

  “Rune was dead?” is what Dione picked up from all that.

  Hyde rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah…”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  She gave him a sad frown. “That couldn’t have been easy for you. Why didn’t you come home?”

  “The witch told me she could bring him back, I wanted to be sure I’d be there.”

  “Why are you telling us all this now?” is what Fallon landed on eventually.

  He could see Hyde thinking and considering how to answer. “The scent on me that you smell, what do you think it is? What—who—does it smell like?”

  Fallon tilted his head slightly in confusion. He knew it was a who? How was that possible? “It smells like—” Fallon wasn’t sure if he should say it. It wasn’t possible, he’d sound crazy. He looked at Hyde waiting for him to answer, as if he knew what he was going to say. “—my dad,” Fallon admitted.

  Hyde only grinned for a moment before changing the subject. “This morning, Rune and I visited the cemetery for a bit.”

  Fallon flinched slightly. “Okay, jumping around a bit.” He had trouble following his thought process.

  Hyde shrugged. “Not really. The mausoleum was wide open. Later, we found an exhausted werewolf in the forest and took him home to rest. He told me he lived in your house with his wife, son and his son’s girlfriend. And his name is Barry.”

  Fallon stared him, unable to process all that. It was possible? Apparently, it had happened twice before. Had he told Hyde his name before? He couldn’t recall. Fallon noticed Dione frowning at him from the corner of his eye.

  “He has quite a lot of scars,” Hyde continued. “The potion that brought them back leaves scars in the places where the fatal wounds had been. Three claw lines on his face”—Hyde mimicked the motion over his face with his hand—“and a big one in his neck.” He squinted. “Now that I think about it, I thought it might’ve been a burn before, but he had half his neck ripped off, didn’t he? He also mentioned missing fingers.”

  Fallon didn’t react, he didn’t know how to. He stared at the ground as they kept walking. All three were quiet for the rest of the way.

  Barry waited on the couch, anxiously bouncing his leg. What did Fallon look like after all these years? He was over twice the age he was when Barry last saw him. Would he accept him back? He wasn’t sure why he wouldn’t, but a lot might’ve changed. Fallon might’ve changed. Barry wouldn’t be surprised if Fallon was angry about his death. Fallon had told him not to go, that it was a trap. He hadn’t listened.

  He glanced at Rune reading a book at the dining table. He hadn’t spoken a word. There was something weirdly familiar about him. Something about his face. Or his general vibe.

  The front door opened, Barry snapped his head towards it.

  “We’re back!” Hyde yelled.

  Hyde walked into the living room, followed by his parents. Barry smiled at the sight of his son. He pushed off the couch as he called, “Fallon!” He stepped towards him.

  Fallon froze and stared at him, his face pale as if he saw a ghost. Barry guessed, to Fallon, that was what he saw. Barry tensed and grew anxious about his silence.

  “Hey,” he said in a small, soft voice.

  Fallon didn’t move.

  “I’m alive, again,” Barry added with a little smile.

  “I see that,” Fallon finally breathed out.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “No idea.”

  Hyde stood next to Fallon, turned to Barry. “Is he really your dad?”

  Fallon only nodded.

  “You okay?” Hyde frowned. “You look like you’ll faint.”

  Fallon glanced down, then grabbed at his hair. “I might. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

  “Me too,” Barry admitted.

  “Maybe you should go talk somewhere,” Hyde suggested. “Alone.”

  Fallon glanced up at Barry, then nodded. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Fallon sat on the edge of his bed with Barry beside him at a small distance. It reminded him of when Hyde came back, except now, Fallon was the son of the two.

  “You’ve… aged,” Barry decided was a good opener.

  Fallon glared at him. “Is that how you want to start this conversation?”

  Barry looked down and shook his head like he was disappointed in himself. “No,” he whispered. He glanced back up with narrowed eyes. “Are you older than me now?”

  Fallon shrugged. “I guess so? I’ve lived longer than you.”

  Barry frowned. “Yeah. I’ve noticed the lack of your mother.”

  “She got cancer and died three years after you, a few days before my daughter was born.”

  Barry perked up. “Oh shit, you have a daughter, too?”

  Fallon nodded. “Tayen.”

  “Where is she?”

  “At home with her husband, who’s recovering from an injury.”

  “What happened with the pack after I—died?”

  Fallon sighed and turned his head away. “They tried to pressure me into killing whoever killed you, but I refused. They’ve hated me ever since. Think I’m too passive. But all I wanted was to be left alone, I was already going through a lot. Not only my father’s sudden, violent death, but also the fact that I found your body first.” He tensed his shoulders. “The sight of that will haunt me forever.”

  Barry rubbed the scar in his neck with a painful frown. “I wish you wouldn’t have had to see that.”

  A moment of silence. The image went through Fallon’s head again. The blood, the missing pieces, the gore. He glanced at Barry’s hands. All back in one piece.

  “Are you still alpha?” Barry snapped him out of it.

  Fallon shook his head. “Not since last year. Tayen’s husband Warlon took over after their wedding.”

  “Why not Hyde?”

  Fallon tensed again, he rubbed the scar on his arm through his sleeve and stared at the ground. “He didn’t want to,” is all he said.

  Barry was quiet for a moment, Fallon knew he could tell there was more to it.

  “Did something happen between you?”

  Fallon sighed deeply and caved in, “We had a bad fight, six years ago. He was gone until a few months ago because of it, he blamed himself and was afraid to face me again.”

  Barry sadly hummed. “Seems like you’re okay now, though.”

  “We are.”

  “It’s nice you and Dione are still together.”

  Fallon smiled. “Yeah.”

  Barry took a deep breath with a frown. “It is sad I missed my grandkids’ entire childhoods. Even a chunk of their young-adulthoods.”

  Fallon didn’t know how to respond to that. But it did sound like something that would warrant a response. “Yeah…” is all he could come up with. He squinted at a certain drawer in the room. The one Dione stored all her filled sketchbooks in. “You know, Dione has made a lot of drawings of the kids over the years, if you’d like to see them. And of me. Mostly me. I guess you could see me age, too.”

  Barry raised his eyebrow. “Why mostly you?”

  “Because I sit still long enough to be drawn.”

  Fallon got off the bed and went to the drawer. He pulled it open and lifted the big pile of books out. He dropped them on the bed next to Barry, then flipped the stack upside-down so the oldest was on top. He sat on the other side of the stack.

  Barry grabbed the one on top and opened it. He flipped through the drawings, most of them indeed of Fallon in various poses and locations. There were also a few nature scenes. And even some of Fallon’s mother. One of them was of her in bed with Fallon sleeping against her side, she wasn’t looking too good. Barry frowned at it. The next one was of a sleeping baby.

  “That’s Tayen,” Fallon told him.

  Barry smiled. “Cute.”

  Next were more drawings of Tayen and Fallon and them together as Tayen grew into a toddler. Eventually, there was another baby.

  “That’s Hyde, I’m guessing?” Barry said before Fallon could.

  Fallon hummed in agreement.

  Barry continued flipping through the stack of sketchbooks, seeing Hyde and Tayen grow up and Fallon grow older, too. He caught up to her latest drawing, which was Fallon napping on the couch. He closed the book and laid it on the other stack he had built next to him.

  “Is it nice to see it all?” Fallon asked.

  Barry smiled with sad eyes. “It is.”

  Fallon could see he was emotional.

  “Are you getting used to me, yet?” Barry asked, teasing.

  Fallon breathed out a chuckle and rubbed the back of his neck. “I can form coherent sentences now, so that’s something. It still feels like I’m dreaming, though.”

  Barry snickered. “Would you be okay with a hug?” he asked, uncertain, and held an arm out to him. “So I can prove I’m real.”

  Fallon responded with a hug. Barry relaxed and wrapped his arms around his son. He rubbed soothing circles into his back. “I love you,” Barry told him.

  “Love you, too,” Fallon mumbled. “I missed you.”

  Barry only hugged him tighter.