b“/bWas that thest you saw of him?”

b“/bNo. He kept his word. When he wasn’t out of the territory as a prospect he woulde by for dinner when he wasn’t badly injured. He became two bpeople/b, acting like nothing was going on and if mom or dad asked he refused to tell. He wouldy on the floor and y with the three littles, allowing bhimself /bto take a break from his own life.

Although dad is certain things have continued to get worse for him Cole has never said another word about it. After about a year, everything returned to as normal as they could be. Cole was always on the mind of mom, dad and I but time is a funny thing sometimes. I guess when the drama of something to terrible isn’t in front of you every day you don’t think as much about it.”

“He made quite an impact on you.”

“Yes sir. On all of us.b” /b

“When I mentioned something about Damian being correct about drugs being put in Cole’s food, you wanted to talk really bad then. What happened tha makes you think Cole was drugged against his knowledgeb?/bb” /b

“There were only two times after his apprenticeship ended that he came to bus /bin really bad shape.”

“I thought he hade to you several times?”

“Well, yes. About six months after his apprenticeship ended he stayed with us a couple days at a time three or four times over a byear’s /btime frame but there’s only been twice that he was so bad off dad couldn’t help him without taking him to the hospital.”

“So what happened?”

“Shortly after my seventeenth birthday, about a year after he left us, we had a loud knocking at our door. More like desperate banging really. It wasteb, /bten maybe eleven at night. Dad partially shifted before answering the door. He ended up finding Cole throwing up in the bushes beside the door. He was struggling to breathe, in a lot of pain and ording to dad, appeared to be throwing up bile. Dad picked Cole up and hauled tail to the car and the hospital. On the way there all Cole kept saying was ‘he overdosed me‘ but wouldn’t or couldn’t tell us what it wasb. /b

It was only after we got to the hospital and stripped him of his clothes that dad and Dr. Carter found multiple puncture wounds all over his thighs and upper arms. They also discovered a spot that looked like an IV had been roughly removed. Dad had toy on top of him in order for Dr. Carter to get a new IV started in his leg. He took a lot of blood to try and figure out what was poisoning him. I was never told what it was they found. I’m not certain why bhe /bgot even worse about his food after that, considering it looked like he had taken dozens bof /bshots, but he did.

He was doing better mentally for a while after he left the apprenticeship but it seems like things started getting really bad for him again when he started in the warrior program. About a month after he returns the council starts poking around. Alpha won’t do anything while they are there but Cole bgets /breally rough looking for several months after they leave. Dad’s tried to link with him several times but Cole tends to push him away. Tells him that he doesn’t want to know what’s going on. That talking makes it worse.”

He sits back in the chair with a sigh. He looks like he’s fighting back tears again as he finishes what’s left of his bottle of water. bThe /bbhell /bthat I bwas /bbguessing /bCole lived in is far worse than bI /bcould have imagined and this is just a small snippet of his lifeb, /bfrom eighteen to twenty–one. bI /bstand from bmy /bchair and without a word pull Jamison up out of his chair and into the hug I know he needs.

bChapter /bbComments /b

Nakia Miller

Dimitri is a really good man

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