Real by Amy Bellows
H
I head toward the den I saw earlier when I was checking the place out. Unlike the other rooms in the house, it only has small windows covered with drapes. It will be a good place to rest until I can get a better handle on how often people walk along the beach and whether Buddy is a flight risk.
When he ran off, I noticed a tracker around his right ankle so at least we’d be able to find him if he tried to escape. But the last thing I want is to call the police and tell them I need their help finding Buddy. They might change their mind about letting the sanctuary care for him. Hell, they might decide to give him back to the man who claims to own him.
The den has a big leather couch situated in front of a flat-screen TV. I sit at the center of the couch and reach for a remote on the ottoman in front of me. Buddy stands in the corner of the room, clasping his hands together.
“Would you like to sit down?” I ask.
He glances at the cushion next to me, then meets my gaze again. I think he wants to sit there, but he’s afraid to. I look away from him and flip on the TV. Buddy fell asleep in the car when I was focused on the road. Maybe he’s not used to people looking at him.
As I flip through the streaming services available, Buddy inches closer to me. I pretend not to notice and select a calming baking show. He slowly lowers himself onto the couch. The movement is a bit strange. If he was a normal human, it would require a lot of strength in his glutes and quads to go that slow. I expect his legs to shake. Instead, he reminds me of a forklift lowering down.
It makes me realize how precarious his situation is. What if he did something like that in front of a lawyer or judge who will decide his fate? Buddy seems extremely human one moment and mechanical the next.
I set the remote on Buddy’s lap.
“You can switch it up whenever you like,” I say.
He grasps the remote with his silicone fingers. They seem so lifelike. Now that Buddy’s hood is off and I’m sitting this close to him, I notice the scuff marks on the bottom of his chin and a small crack in the plastic at the nape of his neck. His body isn’t as new as I initially suspected.
It’s impossible not to notice other things about Buddy too. Like how striking his blue eyes are and the deep pink of his lips. I wouldn’t say he’s pretty exactly, but he’s definitely handsome.
He scoots farther and farther back on the couch. He trembles as he leans against the backrest, his gaze darting in my direction. In his eyes, which have to be human or at least organic, there’s a clear question: Is this okay? He couldn’t communicate it any clearer if he said it out loud.
Sometimes nonverbal communication feels safer to survivors of abuse. They’re so sensitive to the emotions and actions of people around them they assume other people will be too, so I don’t say that sitting next to me is okay. I simply turn my attention to the TV.
It takes a few minutes, but the tension slowly leaves his body. After the host declares a winner of the first challenge, Buddy says, “Candlewick likes this show because everyone’s nice to each other. He hates reality TV that focuses on all the drama.”
“Did you two watch a lot reality shows together?” I ask.
He smiles, not brightly like he did when Steppe mentioned we’d be going to the beach but softly. “Yeah. He watched all sorts of stuff with me.” His smile fades. “Do you think Steppe will be able to get him out of jail?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “But the lawyers Steppe works with are good. If there’s a way to get him out, they will.”
Buddy pulls his legs to his chest and rests his head on his knees. “I shouldn’t have gone with him.”
“It isn’t your fault that Candlewick got arrested.”
Buddy stays curled in a ball. It’s obvious he doesn’t believe me. It makes me want to gather him in my arms and hug him tight. He shouldn’t feel guilty that someone tried to save him.
“The lawyers for our sanctuary are very good. They almost always win.”
That’s because they’re usually representing children with curly red hair and big green eyes. Most judges will agree to anything the sanctuary suggests on their behalf because everyone cares about children.
What I don’t tell Buddy is that our lawyers have a tougher time representing the adults at the sanctuary. Red wolf shifter omegas emit a pheromone that makes every unbonded alpha who comes into contact with them believe they’ve found their fated mate. It’s called a red wolf thrall. Human trafficking rings exploit this ability to swindle rich alphas. The official term for that kind of con is a thrall hustle. It involves isolating a rich unbonded alpha and convincing them to pay a large sum of money to save their new “mate” from a violent debt collector or something similar. Depending on the strength of an omega’s thrall and the size of their victim’s bank account, they can rake in millions of dollars per hustle.
Red wolf shifters are deliberately trafficked for this purpose and the omegas are threatened with violence if they refuse to cooperate. They also rarely, if ever, see a cent of the millions of dollars they are exploited to steal. But judges usually send thrall hustlers to jail for the rest of their lives if they’re caught. Stealing from a rich alpha isn’t something the justice system forgives people for. If the judge decides that’s what Candlewick did by helping Buddy, he’s in trouble.
Buddy and I watch several more episodes. I fade in and out. I’m not quite ready to leave him on his own yet, so this is the closest thing to a nap I’ll get today. At about eleven o’clock in the morning my phone buzzes in my back pocket. I open my eyes and pull it out.
Steppe is calling.
Buddy turns off the TV before I even ask. I thank him and answer the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey. I’m assuming you made it all right?”
I should have called him when we arrived. After chasing Buddy around, I completely forgot.
“Yeah, sorry. We were resting. How is the case going? Do we know anything yet?”
“Buddy has to go to court tomorrow. The judge will be doing a short hearing to determine whether he should be categorized as property or human. Can you get him ready? We have some slush money we can spare for a button-up shirt, a pair of slacks, and a tie. We’re not springing for a full suit this time. One of the lawyers will come by tomorrow morning to prep Buddy.”
I almost agree to prep Buddy for court, then I stop myself.
“You think Buddy should wear a tie?” It seems like that would just make him look more robotic.
“H, I have to be honest with you here. Dorian Gray is loaded. The lawyers made it clear that the chances of us winning this are almost nonexistent. Also, Buddy isn’t a red wolf shifter.”
In other words, he’s giving up on Buddy.
I understand his perspective. Sometimes we do have to make hard choices about how we use our resources, and we’re the only ones uniquely qualified to help red wolf shifters. Our resources should be used on them.
But who is uniquely qualified to help Buddy? He doesn’t have any family to advocate for him, and his only friend is stuck in jail for trying to rescue him.
We’re Buddy’s only hope.
“What angle are the lawyers using?” I ask. There are a lot of different ways to prove Buddy’s humanity. Maybe I could test some of their ideas today so tomorrow’s meeting is more productive.
“I’m not sure. We had a dozen kids sent to us this morning. I’ve been too busy with that to track specific court cases. I’m sorry.”
He shouldn’t apologize. Steppe is doing his job. He’s an important man, and his work makes a big difference in the lives of the people we help.
I’m a lot less important. I can do the extra work for Buddy.
“Who is the lawyer in charge of his case?” I can call them directly and discuss strategy.
“Hanson.”
I school my emotions carefully. Buddy is watching me, and I don’t want him to see me upset. Hanson is the lawyer we hired because his alpha father gives the sanctuary an obscene amount of money every year. It was a hard choice to make because we’re reliant on our lawyers, and most of them are incredible.
Which is why we can afford to have one lazy and entitled lawyer who is never put in charge of any cases.
“How did that happen?” I ask.
“He was complaining that he’s never the lead on any cases.”
I wish I was good at arguing like Steppe, then I would explain why Buddy deserves more than a cheap tie and Hanson as a lawyer.
Buddy must sense my concern because he curls into a ball again. He looks so scared. I won’t give up on him, even if his case is a long shot.
“I need you to assign him a different lawyer,” I say as firmly as I can manage.
“You know I don’t have control over stuff like that. We hired a good legal team for a reason. I can’t go over their heads—”
“Have I ever asked you for anything before?”
Silence stretches between us. Steppe probably doesn’t know how to react. During the last twelve years, I’ve always been the guy in the background who simply did what everyone told me to. And I don’t mind that. I don’t want to be in charge.
I just want Buddy’s case to matter.
“I’ll talk to the legal team. Who do you want?” Steppe asks.
“Felicity.”
She’s the one who preps the kids I work with. She’s kind and never condescending. I think Buddy would respond well to someone like her.
“Felicity specifically requested to be taken off Buddy’s case.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You could give her a call and find out. I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”
The line goes dead. I remind myself that Steppe is a busy man. I just wonder if he’d be so short with Ken, the director of the sanctuary, or Timber, helps with fundraising, or even Manny, who works for the same vigilante group that rescued us from the red wolf shifter breeding pits.
I think Steppe would take all of them a lot more seriously. I’m just a caretaker to him. In the culture we grew up in, caretaking was omega’s work and not considered as important as the work the alphas did on the compound. I think Steppe sometimes forgets the culture we grew up in was backward and wrong.
Maybe that’s how he justifies the sanctuary’s choice to send so many children back to red wolf shifter compounds. I lose sleep over it, even though I know placing those kids in other homes probably wouldn’t be safe.
Buddy is still watching me closely, his body completely still. It was insensitive for me to have that conversation in front of him.
“Everything will be fine,” I assure him.
He lowers his eyes to his lap. “Okay. I’m just… worried about Candlewick. It doesn’t matter what happens to me as long as he can go free. I’ll go back to Dorian.”
He’d go back to the man who made him afraid of the world for the sake of his friend. My chest fills with an emotion I don’t know how to label. Sympathy? No, that isn’t it. Longing, I think. Longing to fix the world so Buddy can be happy and free.
I reach for his silicone hand. It’s warm. Combined with the incredible detailing, it’s hard to tell it isn’t made of flesh and blood. Only the dent on the outside of his pinky gives it away. It feels far too similar to holding hands with an omega, and I’m ashamed when I realize how nice it is.
Maybe I’m no better than Dorian.
“Listen to me. I’m going to do everything I can to get both you and Candlewick a fair trial. I’m your friend, okay? You aren’t in this alone.”
He searches my face, the uncertainty from before present in his eyes.
“There were people who once thought I wasn’t human too,” I tell him.
Buddy’s eyebrows furrow. “Why?”
I release his hand and rotate my wrist until he can see the bluish green veins on my forearm. “Because of the blood that runs through my veins. I’m a red wolf shifter. People buy and sell red wolf shifters all around the world.”
“That’s horrible,” Buddy says.
“Yes, it is. How you’re being treated is horrible too. I won’t let them get away with it. I swear to you.”
It isn’t a promise I should make. The odds aren’t in our favor.
“I’m not real, though,” Buddy says. “So it’s different.”
I grasp his warm, soft hand again and look him straight in the eyes. “You’re real to me.”
His cheeks turn pink, and he ducks his head. “You don’t mean that.”
Before I can stop myself, I grasp his chin and lift it until we lock eyes again. “Yes, I do.”
He stares back at me with a mixture of fear and hope in his eyes. I don’t know how much time passes as we sit there, taking each other in. I have no business noticing how full his lips are or letting my gaze lower to them. He isn’t mine to kiss.
I wrap my arms around him instead, bringing him in for a hug. I tell myself it’s to comfort him. I hug patients all the time. But I like how he feels in my arms a little too much.
He curls into me, relaxing his head on my shoulder. I like the way that feels too. It makes me ache for things I can’t have. When I was a younger man, I would have given anything to claim an omega for my own. It wasn’t just because I wanted to have sex. I wanted the winter nights cuddling in front of a fire and tender kisses before leaving for work. I wanted to raise a child with someone and grow old with them.
Now I only get to help children on their way to other families. Buddy is the only omega I’ve touched in a very long time.
I extricate myself from Buddy on the couch. “I should go make a phone call.”
Just because I’m advocating for Buddy, doesn’t give me an excuse to take advantage of him.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asks.
“No,” I assure him. “Not at all.”
Then I walk away from him before I’m tempted to reassure him in other ways.