“He shot me!” He sounded outraged.
“Yeah, but you get to decide if you’re his victim or not.”
“What do you mean? I am his victim. He shot me.”
“He shot you, but he didn’t kill you. He didn’t take your life, which means you still have a chance to have everything you had before, and more. But if you don’t put the effort into helping yourself out of this, then the bad guy wins forever, Tomas. He will win if you give up, but if you fight back, then you win, because you take back everything he tried to take from you. He loses if you try, but if you don’t even try, then you are his victim, forever and ever.”
“I’m not a victim,” he said, back to angry again.
“Prove it: Go to PT, go to the gym when your doctors say you can, or should. Work hard at getting better, because that’s how you take back your life; that’s how you go from victim to survivor.”
“I prefer the word thriver, because I’m not just surviving, I’m thriving,” Micah said.
“What do you mean? You’re like the king of shapeshifters almost, and you’ve got Anita.”
I wasn’t sure how I liked being listed as just one more accomplishment, or how Nathaniel liked not being listed at all.
“Now, but when I was eighteen I was attacked by a lycanthrope, a wereleopard. He killed my uncle and cousin and left me for dead. If two doctors hadn’t been out hunting on the same mountain and found me almost immediately, I wouldn’t be with Anita and Nathaniel, or head of the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Human and Lycanthrope Communities—I wouldn’t be anything, just one more victim of the bastard who killed my uncle and cousin.”
Nathaniel leaned into Micah, putting his arm around the other man’s waist. Micah put his arm across Nathaniel’s shoulders and let himself be held, but he kept his green-gold gaze on the boy in the chair.
Tomas looked shocked, the sullen cool that he’d tried to rebuild falling apart as he fought to deal with what Micah had said. His eyes flicked to the men holding each other, and it bothered him, but he tried to regain his cool, or his anger, something to use against the truth. He looked at Nathaniel and managed to sound disdainful as he asked, “And what’s your sad story?”