“We’ll likely need to speak to him again,” Nancy said as Shirley strapped Alfie into the car seat. “But not for a little while… he doesn’t—” She glanced over at Oliver, who was standing silently in the corner of the car park. “I think they both need some time to reset.”
Shirley nodded, handing Nancy a business card. “Today’s my last day. My replacement’s starting tomorrow morning. He’ll be taking over the care of Alfie.”
Nancy nodded. “I see. What’ll you do now?”
Shirley shrugged, glancing at Oliver, then back at Alfie. “I don’t know. But I don’t think I’m cut out to be a social worker anymore.”
Oliver and Nancywalked in silence towards the on-site cafe, as neither of them felt like debriefing middle management at that precise moment in time.
“Well, then—” Nancy said, as they slid into one of the side booths. “That was awful. Poor kid.”
“Yeah,” Oliver replied, staring into his cup.
“You did well though, babes. Don’t beat yourself up. It was always going to take time.”
Oliver frowned. “I feel like I did more harm than good, Nance. Maybe I shouldn't have introduced the cars, or held back on asking him about the dolls. And I never even told him about his parents.”
Nancy shook her head. “Nah, you didn’t need to. It would be better coming from somebody else, seeing as you’ve got to try tobuild a positive relationship going forward. And besides, you did one good thing. One fuckingamazingthing, actually.” Oliver’s eyes flicked up inquisitively. “We won’t be seeing Shirley-fucking-Spencer again. Today was her last day.”
Oliver let out a sharp breath. “Thank fuck for that. Who’s taking over?”
Nancy shrugged, “Dunno, a bloke. She gave me his business card.”
As Nancy handed it over, Oliver’s stomach dropped when he saw the name.
Mr Patrick Coletta. Alpha.
His ex-boyfriend from six years ago.The man who nearly destroyed him.
TEN
SUNDOWNING
Unsurprisingly, that evening Oliver didn’t feel like sparring or socialising—or even leaving his flat for that matter. The interview with Alfie left him feeling like a ship cast out to sea, directionless and without a clear way forward. The news about Patrick Coletta had been the icing on a shit-flavoured cake.
He went straight home after dumping the recording equipment back at the station. Fortunately Nancy agreed to de-brief management in his absence.
He’d pet and stroked and squeezed Roger the koala half a dozen times, but when the clock in his living room ticked over to eight, he was well and truly in the throes of a biscuit-eating frenzy. He paced around his flat, the soles of his bare feet leaving imprints on the carpet as he went from room to room.
Patrick Coletta. PatrickfuckingColetta. The alpha had been absent for just over six years—in fact, Oliver’d heard on the grapevine that he’d married an omega called Danny and the two had produced a litter of children. Why now? Why West Newton of all the fucking places?
Oliver’s jaw ached from grinding his teeth, and as he walked into his bedroom for the twentieth time, he was beyond agitated.
“Shit,” he muttered, throwing an empty packet of chocolate bourbons into the wastepaper bin.
Late evening was never a good time to shift, especially when one was not in the right frame of mind. Wolves—especially those past their middle years—were known to go missing in the woods after sundown, having strayed from the lamp-lit paths or lost the scent of their pack. Many times in Oliver’s career, dispatch sent him out to search for wandering shifters, only to find the human side cold and confused the following morning.
Regardless of the time, he couldn’t stay inside and refused to allow his racing thoughts to keep him up late into the night. Patrick Coletta had haunted his dreams for long enough, and he wouldn’t allow him to trespass there a moment longer. So, slipping on a hoodie and a pair of trainers, Oliver grabbed a bottle of water and headed down to the shifter park.
It was completelydark by the time he reached the changing rooms, the kind of blackness that cast the park in a heavy blanket of gloom. He wasted no time slipping out of his clothes, the bite of the British winter nipping at his skin. The abruptness of his shift made him shiver, and he skittered across the wooden floor as though a mouse were running between his legs. He was on edge. He knew it, and his ears knew in the way their white tips twitched back and forth.
Six years. Six fucking years since he’d been lying in a hospital bed, with medical staff flushing his system over and over again as they tried to save his life. How many times had he woken up to his mum crying, or his dad pacing up and down the corridor? And Matteus… even in Oliver’s half-conscious state, the look onhis brother’s face at the side of his hospital bed still haunted him to that day.
Oliver shook his head, raising his hackles as he pushed open the hut door. The frigid evening air stung his chest as it hit his lungs, the wolf's body far more sensitive to change than the human. Huffing out a misty breath, he pushed his nose along the path and into the damp, earthy scent of the playing field. There’d be frost come morning. He could tell it in the way the grass stiffened.
Stalking across the park, he made his way to the treeline. The paths were lit, but beyond that the woods were like a dark abyss. Leaves crunched under his paws as he followed the lamps to the crest of a hill, taking a sharp left at a weather-worn bench. Although not a marked path, he had taken the trail many times before. He broke into a run as soon as he was off the path, relishing how much crisper the air felt at night, and how the atmosphere was less turbulent than in the day. It made clearing his head easier.
As the canopy thinned, he looked up at the moon hanging in the murky sky. The stars weren’t visible through the clouds, meaning there’d likely be rainfall before the frost set in. He shivered at the thought of waking up alone in his poorly heated flat.
