It’s a small bit of backstory from one of the secondary characters that ultimately, I decided was just a tiny bit too close to the main character’s back story. I doubt it’ll be all that interesting to people who have not read either Lost Kitty or the shorts that eventually became Lost Kitty, but here is a small bit of set-up for those people who want to read it anyway…
Keith finds a small ruffled cookie cutter while looking over Lilli’s apartment that reminded him of the woman who had effectively raised him. This snippet’s place in the broader Lost Kitty storyline is fairly early in the book, not long after Lilli first finds out what she is. While Lilli is unable to return to her regular life, Keith seeks to make sure she doesn’t lose everything in her apartment and goes there alone to figure out what he would really need to pack up and save. I think these are the essential facts required to read this snippet; there aren’t that many connections to the book other than just knowing who these people are.
Minus the nastiness from his actual mother, Dawn made his childhood full of happiness and love until he hit puberty and couldn’t avoid his mother’s pack any longer. It didn’t take him long to understand where his mom got all her nastiness from; it was a long time before he realized it wasn’t all because of him that the pack was just a very nasty one.
It didn’t matter what he did; the pack tore him apart for it. If he didn’t fight, they attacked him for it; if he fought back, they tore him to pieces, outraged a sport would dare to stand up for himself, nothing he did was acceptable to them. He was between a rock and a hard place, they fought him harder when he fought back, but not fighting wasn’t an option as they nearly killed him more than once. It didn’t take him all that long to figure out that they were putting him in a position where they could eventually kill him. Then he learned he would have ultimately been Alpha if he hadn’t been a sport, so he learned to fight. They discovered they couldn’t best him in a fair fight, so they fought dirty.
Day after day, Keith came home covered in bruises, when he hit 15, he started occasionally coming home with broken bones. Still, Dawn did everything she could to make it up to him.
Lynne slowly started to resent Dawn and the relationship they had; she began to be nasty to the woman she once called a friend. Still, Dawn stayed, though Keith could see the pain in her eyes.
Finally, when Keith turned 16, the pack forced Dawn out of Lynn’s house, since Lynn lived wholly on the pack’s mercy, they had the final call. As much as Keith wanted to stay near the only loving family he’d ever known, he left the day she did. He wasn’t stupid, the other pack member’s attacks had grown, and he knew the next step was death. Dawn was too afraid to follow him, so it was a hard move for a child of 16 with no family and not one penny to his name.
After a year on the streets, Keith finally found a pack that would take him in and give him a home and a job. He kept in touch with Dawn as well as he could, but until he learned she was in the hospital, he had no idea she was keeping the reality of her life from him.
Able to see how panicked he was, and much more sympathetic than his old Alpha, the new Alpha let him go to Dawn, even giving him the money he needed to do so.
Dawn looked so small and broken lying in the hospital bed when he got there. He’d only been gone for around a year and a half, and yet she was so different, starved and thin-looking, dark circles under her eyes. At that moment, he realized how lost he’d be without her, and knew he’d been blessed to have had her in the first place.
Dawn opened her pale blue eyes, and they lit up when they saw him. “Come here, my sweet,” voice softer than usual but full of love none the less; she reached out to him.
Suddenly terrified, Keith came forward to clasp her frail seeming hand and sit next to her.
“Ma,” he whispered, completely unable to keep his eyes from filling up, daring to use the pet name he only used when they were utterly alone.
“Hey now, none of that.” Her fingers were feather-light when they brushed the tears from his cheeks, “I’ll be fine.”
“Didn’t anyone tell you, you shouldn’t lie to children?”
“Children? Look at you, all grown up.”
Keith felt his cheeks grow red, and he looked away. He alternately felt a million years old and no more than twelve depending on the situation, but the woman who raised him, calling him grown-up made him feel weird.
Then he remembered why he was here, “Why didn’t you tell me?” He didn’t even know what was wrong with Dawn!
She clasped his hand tighter but looked away; her face pained “How could I?” she asked softly. “I was afraid if you knew you’d come back to save me…”
“Of course, I would!” Keith insisted, interrupting. He tightened his hand around the frail one he held.
Dawn took her hand back so she could gently cup his cheek, “That’s why my love, I knew you’d come home, and I was terrified they’d…..” Her already quiet voice fell to barely a whisper, as if saying it could make it happen, “…kill you.”
Before her eyes, his face gained age and became hard, his time away had changed him, “they can try.” At that moment, showing some of the man he’d become, and it was impressive.
“That’s not a risk I’d ever take.”
Just like that, his face went back to the child she had raised. “You should have been mine,” she whispered.
“Yes, I should have,” and he leaned forward to carefully kiss her thin face, “what happened, Ma?” He hadn’t been gone that long! And when he left she’d looked in good health. “What did they do to you?”
“It wasn’t all them.” Keith gave her a look that said he didn’t believe her. “No seriously, I’ve been sick for a long time, I just never told you.”
“You can’t tell me that in a year and a half, whatever is wrong with you did this.” He gestured at her sallow cheeks and bruised sunken eyes. She looked away, and Keith turned her face back toward him, “I’m not stupid.”
“I know you’re not, but I…”
“Just tell me, what’s the point of keeping it from me now?” His voice cracked, his green eyes full of pain.
Dawn sighed softly. “Yeah, yeah…” Her eyes drifted past him. “After you left, things got…hard. They didn’t treat me well and started passing me around.” The hard-red flush that crept up her face let him know exactly what she meant. She meant that she’d been their bitch, being passed along from member to member.
Keith stood as rage filled him, his leopard struggling to burst from him.
“No, Keith!” Dawn’s hand clutched tighter, “no! You know they are expecting you; they will kill you.” Suddenly stronger than her body should allow, she yanked him back down. “No! I will not be the reason you are killed, do not give them this.”
Shoving his cat back down was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and she was the only person who could have asked that of him.
So, he stayed with her, no one from the pack visited, not even Lynn, and Keith listened and remained in the hospital with her 24/7, unwilling to lose even a single moment left to them. He watched the only person who’d ever loved him slowly fade before his eyes; she refused to tell him exactly what was wrong with her, saying it didn’t matter now, and maybe it didn’t.
For a week, they talked, laughed, argued, and simply soaked in each other’s presence. Dawn continued to keep the worst of what had happened to her from him, and he didn’t push, not wanting to sully what little time was left to them.
“I love you, my sweet as if you were my very own.” Her tear-filled eyes stayed locked on his, too weak now to do much more than lightly squeeze his hand.
“I love you too, Ma, more than I’ve loved anyone else.” Keith leaned forward to rest his forehead on her frail chest, tears falling unchecked. “There is no one else who has ever been there for me, and I will never forget you.” He felt her hand oh so gently brush across his hair, and he remembered every time she’d done that before, leaving flour behind. The hand slid down, and he listened to her breath shudder out one last time.
“No!” The word felt like it was torn from him, and he wrapped her tiny body in his arms, wishing more than anything that they had had more time, that they hadn’t had to steal their moments of tenderness. Not being able to exact revenge on the evil creatures that ultimately had killed Dawn was so intolerable that he tore the room apart in a rage. He’d promised her that he wouldn’t go after them, and he wouldn’t, but his leopard screamed inside him. When he heard people running for the room, he tore his way through the barred window and ran, not stopping until he physically could run no more.
Dawn’s death left him without a family he was willing to claim. Keith brushed his thumb along the ruffled edge of the cookie-cutter, he supposed in that way he and Lilli had something in common. No doubt, a similar background was part of why he felt so connected to her. As he did with all his girls, he’d done in-depth research when she’d first been passed on to him. He’d known that her family had died when she was young, he’d had no way to know that she’d been without a family or pack for the rest of her childhood. Changers seldom completely abandoned their children, even if none of the family wanted the child, it would be passed on to someone, even if just a different pack. It was far too dangerous for humans to end up with a clueless changer child.
Keith knew what it was like to lose family, to be unloved and uncared for, and that gave him and Lilli a connection.