Chapter 18

He clenched his hands on the cheap sink in the hotel bathroom. Feeling the porcelain crack under his hands, he tried to ease back, but he couldn't. Voices flew through his mind.

Help. Who are you? Why? Get out. Help. Help. Help.

A chunk of the porcelain broke in his hand and the blood trickling down his palm calmed the voices. They didn't leave; no, they faded to the background, waiting for him to open himself again to their onslaught. Who in the hell were they? What was wrong with them? And why, out of everyone, was he the only one who could hear them?

"Owen?"

Glancing up, Owen looked in the mirror, seeing both his leopard and wolf swirling in his eyes, he knew he needed a minute before even attempting to walk into the emotional chaos outside of the bathroom. "Sorry, I tripped," he called out, pushing humor into his voice when he felt none.

Bryn laughed on the other side of the door. "Hybrids and their strength."

"Yeah," he mumbled back.

He thought back to her words earlier. He could have chosen whether he was a hybrid or not. He chose to be who he was. The thought was daunting. Knowing that he had caused all the pain he had gone through, knowing that he could have been normal tilted his world on its axis.

The blood began flowing down his forearm, and he glanced down at the cut, only to growl at the hair. Taking a deep breath, he pushed his wolf back. There were a couple of things him and Ally agreed to keep secret, and hybrid's abilities to partially shift were one of them. The world wasn't ready to realize there were actual wolfmen walking around.

His leopard yowled, and Owen shook his head in annoyance. Yeah, there could be leopard men walking around too, but luckily, his cat wasn't quite so quick to jump out. No, his wolf was the one ready to fight at a drop of the pen. He was the one who couldn't keep it in his pants long enough for Owen to heal his own damn hand.

Before opening his eyes, he took one more deep breath and pushed both his animals back. His cut was gone, the fur was gone, and the corner of the sink was still in his palm. With a frustrated sigh, he tossed the chunk in the bathroom garbage and plopped down on the toilet seat lid.

The voices were still there, but for the moment they seemed to want to leave him alone. Why? He didn't have a clue, but he sent a silent thank you in their direction.

Welcome

He jerked upright, his heart beating hard in his chest. He was so not having a conversation with some random person in his head. Nope. That would be another thing he pushed back until he broke. When he got closer, he'd have a conversation with them in person. Until then, he wasn't listening and he wasn't talking back.

"Hey, Owen?"

He paused for a minute before recognizing the voice as Molly. It wasn't some random person in his head, it was a real life person on the other side of the bathroom.

"Yeah?"

Someone hissed something, but Owen wasn't quite in the present enough to hear who said what. "Would you mind letting me in for a minute? Oh, be quiet, Barron!" she hissed. "He's not going to do anything."

Owen chuckled in real amusement as he jumped to his feet. Pulling the bathroom door open, he moved to the side to let Molly slip passed him. "I'll let you have it."

"What?" she glanced back at him, before glaring at Barron. "No, I just wanted to talk to you for a minute."

"Molly," Barron growled.

Her hands shot on her hips as she narrowed her eyes further. "Ward the bathroom, we're having a private conversation."

Owen glanced at Barron and watched as the man's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "No."

"Please?" Molly asked, her eyes still narrowed. "If we're not done in four minutes, you have my permission to break down the door."

"Deal," Barron agreed as he pushed Owen into the bathroom with Molly and slammed the door shut.

Owen wiggled the doorknob, finding it locked from the outside. "So, were locked in?"

"For four minutes," she replied cheerily. "So, I'm just going to drain the bathtub like I should have earlier, ignore the broken sink. Then, we can talk."

Looking towards the woman, he shook his head as she bounced around the bathroom, her red curly hair a frizz ball around her head. Yeah. She was exactly what Barron needed. He needed a ball of happy energy to push at his doom and gloom attitude.

"What is it exactly that we have to talk about?"

Before she answered, he felt a little burst of power flow through the room. "Just making sure it was warded. So, really quickly, I come from a family of witches. I can make healing water, which is actually quite worthless unless you carry around a gallon of water everywhere." She glanced towards him as she set on the edge of the tub. "I actually tried that once, but I kept forgetting it places."

"Okay," he said in amusement as he took his previous seat on the toilet lid.

She leaned towards him. "The thing is, witches don't really share the secrets of the trade with everyone. My family is weak compared to the majority of witches. Heck, were actually the only group that I know nearby who only do a couple things, but to be honest, that's a little bit of a choice on our part. With witches, it's more about how much you learn and practice and less about natural ability. We're not like shifters; our powers aren't in our blood."

He looked into her brown eyes that swirled with a little bit of magic and a lot of her animal. "Are you trying to tell me you lied earlier when you said all you could do was the water thing?"

"No," she said with a little shrug. "That is all I can do. I learned at a young age to read other's emotions. Not all the time, and not the weak ones."

"You could feel mine?" he asked as his hands clenched into fists. No matter how much he tried to throw his emotions to the back of his head, they always threw themselves back up.

She winced. "So, I could kinda pick up the crazy emanating from the bathroom as soon as I came back and wanted to know if you wanted to talk about it."

"It's been four minutes!"

"Come back in four more!" Molly yelled back with a laugh. "He can't hear me, can he?"

"Nope," Owen said, "but I have a feeling he'll give you a couple more." He leaned back on the toilet before shaking his head at the entire situation. "I'll give him a couple minutes, and I have no idea why I'm about to unload all this on you, but you know about the voices?"

"I've heard them mention them. It's the people you're looking for?"

"Yeah. They're calling me. I think it's the whole Alpha thing, but I don't know how to deal with it. There isn't a handbook that they passed out. Hell, we only spoke about it briefly before I came here about the whole thing. I'm over my head, hearing voices, and my wolf keeps doing a partial shift."

Her eyes widened in shock and Owen cursed beneath his breath. "Oh, don't freak out, I already knew all the origin stories. They were taught to us at a young age, just like everyone. I just didn't know you were a hybrid."

"Wait, how in the hell do you know that?"

Understanding dawned on her face, but Owen had no idea what she had just realized. "You came from one of those idiotic speciesist groups, don't you? They don't tell you anything about your heritage, instead they make you think that you're a monster. Man, I wish I had my Gammie's book. There's a whole back story about shifters in it." She glanced up at him sheepishly. "To be honest, I didn't pay much attention when she read them to me. I was like twelve, and there were more important things in my mind."

"Do you remember any of it?" he asked, feeling some type of emotion clog his throat.

"A little. Pretty much back in the day, all the shifters intermingled. The problem was the high mortality rate. People were beginning to realize their species were dying off. So, they started separating again. This was before the witches came in and helped."

"What'd they do?"

"Hmm?" she asked as she tried patting down the wild main of hair surrounding her head. "Oh, someone along the lines figured out a spell. It allows hybrids to choose which animals they wanted. It kept them from having to deal with two animals clawing at the other for dominance." She smiled at him. "Not all hybrids are as strong as you are. Not many could handle the battles going on in their head."

"If they found a way to help us, why are we still looked at like monsters?"

Molly sighed. "Not many shifters will take help from witches. We don't really intermingle without someone getting hurt. And most of the older ones just thought that it was nature's way of telling the world that shifters weren't supposed to mate outside of their species."

"So," he asked as he cleared his throat. "Are you saying there is a way to help these people?"

"They just need people to teach them how to choose one over the other." She shook her head. "They should have already known that they could have gotten help. Most mothers talk to someone before they even have their kids."

"And you know someone who would be willing to help?"

"Personally?" He nodded. "Nope, but I'm sure my Gammie does." A knock sounded on the bathroom door, and Molly jumped to her feet. "I better open that before he knocks the door down."

Owen chuckled, feeling lighter than he had more than four minutes before. "Yeah, you might want to get that. I think everyone wants to hear your story, but Molly?"

She glanced back towards him. "What's up?"

"Thanks for everything."

"There's nothing to thank me for yet. Thank me when we get you to wherever your magic radar is taking you." Her eyes sparked with humor. "Then after that, hopefully things will be calm enough that I can get you those books. I have a feeling you'd appreciate them."

He nodded as she slipped out of the bathroom. Raising up from his seat, Owen ran the tub to wash the dried blood off his hand. He wasn't going to be the one to test the sink quite yet. With a chuckle, he dried his hands on his pants. The voices were still there; they were still calling out to him. They were still waiting on him to come help them, but for the first time, he didn't push them back. This time, he sent reassuring thoughts their way. This time, he smiled as they answered back, because now, he knew what to do. Now, he knew he could help.