After Decision, after ID.

Ora watched the decision flow over Silas’ face and body, his fangs vanishing, his smile coming back. There wasn’t that much to watch, but after this many years, she knew her mate well enough to see the shift.

A blind man could have seen the possessiveness as he welcomed her former Kept into their house. Ora didn’t mind. Silas had a right to be possessive when someone was challenging his right to their family.

She looked Adder up and down as he entered their property. The boy looked thin, wan, grubby. Worn down. “You said the world was falling to hell.” She would never have the arch skill with language that Silas and his late family did, but she could put make herself sound calmer and more innocent than she was. “What about yourself?”

~

Adder tried not to look as relieved as he was when Ora’s… what, husband? Keeper? Nobody was wearing a collar… when the man calling his son son invited him in. Act calm. He didn’t mean them any harm. He wasn’t sure he could do them any harm.

Ora’s question threw him right off his calm. “What?”

“Falling to Hell?” She was laughing at him. Damnit. She’d always found him funny. Adder swallowed and reminded himself that funny was better than a threat and a lot better than useless right now. He wanted her to remember she liked him.

He twisted his lips in an aping of a smile. “Oh, well, you know. I’m surviving.”

“Just surviving?” It was the first thing Hunter-Hale had said in a while, and Adder found it stung how disappointed his son sounded.

~

“I do all right for myself.” The boy who said he’d given Hunter-Hale his name shrugged. Hunter didn’t know what to think about him. He looked like a refugee, like one of the lost ones that wandered through sometimes, like a drowned rat just looking for a hole.

Hunter stopped in his tracks and stared at the man for a moment.

“Dad wasn’t kidding. You really are a charity case, aren’t you?”

The man flinched. He couldn’t quite meet Hunter’s eyes, either. “Those were your father’s words.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re not true.”

“No… I suppose it doesn’t.” Mom and Dad had stopped a few yards away. Adder looked over at them, and then back at Hunter-Hale. He shrugged again, looking young and lost. “Yeah. Some people didn’t end up as lucky as others.”

Mom’s voice carried, and she was back in Queen mode. “Luck had nothing to do with it.”

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After Convincing, after Identity.

“Tell me who you truly are, and give us reason to believe it.”

Adder panicked.

Stuck in the man’s gaze, he had no choice but to answer. But what could he say?

“I’m Adder, sh’Hana, cy’Caitrin, called the Link. I was oro’Orlaith in my first year of school. We joked about it being oro-oro, remember, Ora? And when I Named Hunter, when I named my son,” he was freaking out and he didn’t know how to stop, damnit, the first time he met his son and he was hyperventilating. “When I named Hunter, you looked at me, and rolled your eyes, and you said, ‘why, Addy?’ and all I could say was ‘he’s going to need both halves to get through it.’ Is that enough, Ora, please?”

He dropped his Mask, holding out his hands with the tiny pointed fangs under the nails. “And you know I never show anyone these.”

“Careful with those, Adder.” Her voice was level and unimpressed. “Silas, I’m convinced. This is the boy I Kept my last year of school.”

Adder held his breath. There was no mistaking the fact that she was deferring decision to this… this man. This man who had taken his spot, his Ora, his son.

He needed them. Adder waited on judgement.

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After Persuasion, after Hyphens, after Step-Father, after Old History, after At the Gate, after Fathers.

Orlaith looked at Silas. She didn’t miss the tone in his voice, even if it looked as if their son – and the man claiming to be their son’s father – had overlooked it.

Silas had not taken easily to jealousy. It did not suit his cy’Linden nature at all; straightening out the terms of their relationship had been a complicated dance that did not always involve only two partners.

Silas wanted to let this one know who was boss.

And it would do him good to have her back him up on that.

She smiled. It wasn’t her nice smile, her doctor-face. It was the one she generally smiled when someone was going to pay for something.

“Well, he does have that little tattoo on his left buttcheek, just inside the crack… but I like your method better, darling.”

Adder was looking panicked. “I have a tattoo?”

Ora laughed. She’d expected that response, actually. Not many people took the time to look there on themselves – or on their partners. “I left my mark on you, when you were sleeping.” She felt a little apologetic about that, but only a very little. “I was feeling possessive that day.”

“…ah…” Adder was blushing. “So…?”

“I like Silas’ idea. I’ll be more sure you’re actually who you say you are, that way.”

Adder looked between her and her partner, looking more and more like a lost puppy.

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After Step-Father, after Old History, after At the Gate, after Fathers.

Charity case. Hunter-Hale didn’t question his father.

Nor did he question his mother. “I’ll be right down, darling.” Her voice sounded both tinny and icy over the intercom.

He turned back to the guy claiming to be his father instead. “So you’re Adder.” He didn’t look like much. The way his shoulders rolled forward, the way he kept looking at the ground; he looked like a beaten dog, one really hoping someone would throw him a bone.

Hunter-Hale wanted to feel sorry for him, but his parents had taught him the dangers of that. What they hadn’t taught him, the end of the world had.

(“You little shit,” the man had screamed at him. “Do you know who I am?”

“All the cops have fled the city. Right now, the only law is us.” Hunter had done a little jerk with the shotgun he’d seen on a movie he wasn’t supposed to be watching. “Get out. And don’t come back.”)

That man had fled, but he hadn’t been the only one. It made Hunter-Hale reach for his gun when this one spoke again.

“I’m Adder. And you’re Hunter-Hale.”

“I am. You know, I’ve always wondered – why the hyphen?” He peeked up at Silas to be sure he wasn’t screwing anything up.

Adder didn’t seem to mind burning time talking. “It needed to be the whole thing, and putting it as one word didn’t look right.” He shrugged one shoulder apologetically. “It’s the way it came in the vision.”

“Hunh.”

“Who’s the guest, Silas, Hunter-Hale?” Mom was moving forward like she was a Queen in her castle. Hunter liked it when she did that, but it could be a little scary. “Oh. Oh, hrm. Has he proven who is is, yet?”

Mom sounded intrigued. More than that, Hunter-Hale realized, she sounded predatory.

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Just for fun.

Year 28 of the Addergoole School

Hunter-Hale was just barely fourteen, and all his sisters and one of his brothers had headed off to school, when the man with a face like his rang the bell at the front gate.

(The world had started ending more than ten years ago, but his mother was a doctor and both his parents rather clever, and in their little corner of the city, the electricity still ran, most days.)

It was Hunter-Hale’s turn on the gate, so he answered it, his gun ready but not aimed. Standing on the sidewalk, rucksack over his shoulder, was the face he saw in the mirror every day.

“Hi. I’m here to see my son, Hunter-Hale?” He even had the same sideways smile Hunter-Hale had borne his entire life.

He did not shoot the interloper, although it was tempting. He pushed the intercom button, instead.

“Dad!” He hollered. “There’s a guy at the gate who says he’s you!”

While he waited for his father to show up, he stared at the stranger. The stranger, clearly confused, stared back.

“You look like me.” The other man broke the silence. “But you’ve got Ora’s eyes.”

Hunter-Hale coughed. “Look. I know, reasonably, that my dad can’t be my biological dad. I remember meeting him, sort of, when I was a baby. But even if you look like me – that’s a pretty simple Working, isn’t it? – you’re a stranger. Who happens to know my name and my mom’s. Which makes you a creepy stranger.”

“And your mother taught you not to talk to strangers?”

“My mother taught me not to invite strangers over our threshold, and to shoot if threatened. Actually.” He grinned, because it felt good. “My father taught me that part.”

“But I’m…”

“Sit tight. My dad’ll be here soon.”

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