Hereditary (A Holloway Pack Mini) by J.A. Belfield

 
HEREDITARY
    What do you do when you discover
your son isn’t human? How is a person supposed to deal with that
kind of knowledge?
    Yet, I am the
only one to blame.
    ***
    I knew next to
nothing about the father of my son, hadn’t seen him since that
first, and only, fateful night. If I screwed up my eyes and
concentrated hard, he appeared handsome enough in my mind’s eye—but
I guess most things did when the memory got collected during a
state of total inebriation.
    I didn’t ask
his name, and he never asked mine. He shared a few words of
flattery, told a few jokes, plied me with wine, then carried me
home—literally. Most men in my younger days left a calling card in
the form of a love bite. Not that guy. He had to go one better.
Nine weeks later, I discovered a tiny seed had been implanted
within my womb.
    For almost
seven months, I felt like a fool. However, when my son entered the
world? My opinions toward the man who’d helped create him no longer
mattered. In my arms, I held my boy, my firstborn. White-blond
curls framed his porcelain skin and startling blue eyes. He looked
like an angel. I named him Gabe—Gabriel Lewis.
    ***
    Throughout
Gabriel’s life, we did fine, just the two of us. It was no longer
considered a scandal to be labelled a one-parent family, even when
the mother was only eighteen. We struggled through the
terrible twos, and the ferocious fours, and the serenity sevens. By
the time Gabe had settled within school, parenting brought joy,
tears, and laughter, as opposed to the initial exasperation, tears,
and tantrums. He’d been a bundle of energy from the day he was
born. School, along with its extra-curricular activities, provided
an outlet for that.
    As life went
on, he turned into a gangly pre-teen, and I became a mother adept
at dealing with the onset of hormones.
    I’d heard girls
could be a handful. But when my son leapt in the air because he saw
an armpit hair, because his upper lip was slightly more shadowed
than at age eleven, or walked around swinging his hips because his
penis had finally begun to grow? That was some crazy stuff to have
to deal with—especially alone.
    Because
developing, he most definitely was. Especially a year on, when he
hit thirteen—boy, did he sprout.
    My
five-foot-three couldn’t be considered that small for a
woman. When standing beside my thirteen year old son, who towered
over me by more than half a foot, it somehow seemed smaller than it
used to.
    At fourteen, he
added another two inches, taking him to an impressive
five-foot-eleven, and it became impossible to look at him without
injury to my neck. Trying to reprimand someone who cast me in
shadow was a joke. Not that I ever needed to. Apart from his
infantile boredom, Gabe caused no worries for me. The hair on my
head bore no grey.
    Two years, four
additional inches and pubescent temper later? That’s when it all
changed. Like a switch had been hit, Gabe failed to represent the
son I’d raised and loved.
    His smiles
flipped upside down into frowns. His laughter died to make room for
grumbling mutters. And his passivity gave way for aggression to
move in. Not toward me, though—Gabe never treated me with anything
other than respect. His negativity was directed wholly within
himself.
    “I hate
hormones,” he’d say on a daily basis. “I’m sick of always feeling wrong .”
    “Gabe, what do
you mean, wrong ?” I’d ask.
    His fingers
would tug at his hair, greasy since his shower the previous night,
and his eyes would search the heavens for answers. Then he’d look
back to me with a sigh, and say in his deep masculine voice, “Just
wrong, Mum. I don’t feel like me .”
    Of course, we
tried the doctor. He’d have the answers, right?
    “What are the
symptoms?” the doctor asked when Gabe gave him ‘ I feel
wrong ’ as an explanation for the visit.
    We’d run
through them: explosive appetite; inability to sit still;
irritation and mood swings; constant perspiration;