Overdue

"You have reached your destination," Haru's phone informed her as she looked up at the tall, unassuming building.

She took in a deep breath for courage since she'd have rather come with her mother, but that definitely wasn't an option right now. She couldn't help feeling a tremor of fear as she walked up the modest set of stairs and let herself into the building.

It was a long boring hallway, but at least someone had put up a map of the different companies that had set up shop. Haru carefully scanned until her eyes found 'The Nest' before continuing her walk.

The appropriate door had the same nest logo as her notification, so she let herself in.

The receptionist looked up from her computer with a smile. "Ah, there's our four o'clock! Miss Yoshioka, I presume?"

"Yes, ma'am," the teenager responded politely, though she was still nervous.

"Take a seat if you like, I'll let the doctor know you're here," she promised with a dazzling smile before pressing a button.

Haru took a chance to study the front room, glad that they hadn't been obnoxious with the bird theme. Just some paintings and photos of birds in various poses, and a figurine of a crane on the receptionist's desk. She took in a deep breath to steady her nerves. "Are you sure that I don't need to fill out a form?"

"You're completely ready to go," the receptionist assured her warmly, pressing her headset to one ear before nodding with satisfaction. "Actually, I can take you back right now."

"Great," Haru sighed thankfully, although she was still nervous. She put a bit of steel in her spine and followed the receptionist through the plain door.

They passed two more before the matronly woman opened a room for her. "Make yourself comfortable, Dr. Biggens will be with you shortly."

Haru walked in but couldn't stop giggling in spite of herself.

Instead of the standard chaise lounge and high back chair that was popular for this kind of doctor, there were two identical chairs that were specifically designed to look like bird nests, complete with egg cushions.

"It was the doctor's idea," the receptionist answered with her own giggle, not needing an explanation for the girl's mirth. A gentle nudge encouraged Haru to finish entering the room and the door closed behind her.

"At least the guy has a sense of humor," Haru couldn't resist noting out loud, pulling off her navy coat and hanging it on the rack that looked like a bird's perch. She experimentally made herself comfortable on the chair that wasn't close to the desk, since it involved a bit of shuffling and readjusting the egg pillows.

Of course, it was just when she was settled when a tall thin middle-aged man with a pointed nose walked in, sporting a casual dark suit. His black eyes lit up when he saw her. "Miss Yoshioka?" he greeted her while eyeing his clipboard.

"Nice to meet you, Dr. Biggens," she responded, standing up and bowing respectfully.

"It is a pleasure to meet you as well. I hope you don't mind if I record our session. It's standard procedure," he explained while pulling out a thick phone that had a look of only being for business.

"As long as you don't share it with my mom, I don't care," she promised, unable to keep the bitterness out of her tone or face.

He gave her a startled look but shook his head sadly before turning on the recording and setting it on the desk. "This is Dr. Biggen's first consultation with Miss Haru Yoshioka. Date, January 5. Time, 3:55 pm." With a smile of professional satisfaction, he made himself comfortable on his nest chair while Haru did the same. He set the clipboard comfortably on his lap and clicked a pen. "Now, I'm sure you know exactly what you want to talk about, Miss Yoshioka."

She nodded, although it was a strange confusion to her senses to finally be able to speak as she pleased. "It's a lot of things, but I want to start with my mom."

He smiled encouragingly, so she continued, grabbing one of the egg pillows to hold it like a teddy bear.

'I wonder if this is why he picked this style of chair.' "First off, I want to be clear that I love her to pieces. It's been just her and me for longer than I can remember, and she's done everything she could think of to provide a good life for us." She bit her lower lip a little too harshly. "But… well…" She sighed and looked down in shame. "I don't think there's a gentle way to say it, but I'm pretty sure she's been lying to me my whole life."

The therapist blinked. "What do you think she's been lying to you about?" he asked curiously.

"About my dad. She insists that I came from a sperm bank after one too many bad dates, but there's been a few too many… times when something's…" Haru struggled for the right word. But then she shook her head and tried to give examples instead.

"One of the reasons I stopped believing in Santa Claus is because she freaked out when there were gifts for me on Christmas morning from Santa. I don't think it ever stopped because I make sure to set my alarm every year, and I always hear her going down the stairs first, as if to make sure there weren't any more surprise gifts before I see them. What's also interesting is that there's also gifts for my birthday, and whoever it is that's been giving them to me has gotten pretty good at making it hard for Mom to tell and easy for me to be able to lie about it so I can keep them. It's always tailored to my interests, too, so whoever it is has a way of keeping an eye on me without Mom being able to interfere."

Haru sighed tiredly before leaning forward. "Then there's her paranoia. She'd love to get security cameras so that she can monitor me even when she has to leave for work and has a friend staying at our house with me, but she's worried sick that someone will be able to hack the cameras and be able to watch us even better. Who would be that interested in our very predictable lives?"

One side of the therapist's mouth twitched as he made notes about that as well. "So you think your mother believes your father is stalking you."

"If it's not him, it's a close friend or a family member on his side. But that's something else that confuses me," Haru mused out loud, though it was the first time she dared speak it instead of thinking it. "Whoever it is always signs the presents 'someone who loves you', but if they love me enough to keep a good enough eye to know about my interests and hobbies, why don't they try to say more in the cards that come with the gifts? Even if you discount the fact that I've never seen evidence of a court case for custody, why not just approach me and try to sneak time with me? Or if all else fails, at least an attempted kidnapping?" She tapped a thumb against the cushion.

"It's probably a good thing no one but Mom knows how much I want answers, since one of the easiest ways someone could kidnap me if they felt like it would be to say 'I know your dad, he's at this place, and I'll take you there'. I know it's a bit irrational to be this obsessed with reading 'father' between the lines, but- this might be a good time to circle back to Mom's paranoia," she swiftly corrected herself while shaking her head to clear it. "She sometimes flies off the handle over little things I like, and the only logical explanation I can think of points to reminding her of someone she used to love over getting me from an unknown stranger."

"I'm all ears," Dr. Biggens promised while turning the page so that he could keep taking notes.

Haru let go of the cushion with one hand to give a sweeping gesture to his office that ended at the nest chairs. "You clearly have a thing for birds. I have a thing for cats. Despite the fact that it is not unusual to like cats, Mom keeps acting like I'm a fan girl for serial killers whenever it's brought up. Every single friend I've tried to bring home gets grilled on whether they or even a friendly neighbor has a cat, and if they answer yes, I'm not allowed to hang out with them anymore, and after a while she started taking it for granted that even if they say no, they're lying, and I still shouldn't see them. No one wants to be friends with the girl that has a crazy mom."

The therapist looked up from his note-taking with distress. "I'm sorry she's making this big of a deal out of it."

"Oh, that's just the tip of the iceberg," Haru groaned, rolling back onto the nest chair and bringing up her feet for a fetal position. "She hates cats so much, I'm not allowed to like anything a cat likes. If I want to eat fish, she freaks out and makes me order something else. Before my classmates gave up on me, one of them said I must have been a cat in a previous life because I like playing with yarn. She freaked out, kicked the friend out of my life and threw away my knitting things even though I was crying and begging her not to. I'm not allowed to own anything with a cat on it, and if I doodle one on a notebook, she tosses it even if I still need it for class! When I want to annoy her, I go find a box and stand in it until she notices what I'm doing, or bat a random tassel with my fist before she got rid of anything in the house with a tassel. I can't even take naps in the sunlight! Don't even get me started on the ridiculous detours she forces me to take with her if we see a cat while out and about. One time I substituted catnip tea for chamomile since the store was out of chamomile when she was too busy to do the shopping. I tried to get away with it by putting the tea bags in an empty box for chamomile, and she even enjoyed it before taking a closer look at the individual packaging before- what do you know?! She freaks out and grounds me for a month! Never did get to try it," she muttered mutinously.

The psychiatrist blinked in surprise, though he should have expected that outcome.

But Haru was on a roll and didn't give him a chance to ask questions. "Not that she can even ground me from all that much, since I have to be home before dark no matter what, because her second biggest phobia is the moon."

"Oh?" Dr. Biggens asked with interest, writing a few more notes before turning the page again. "How does she manifest that phobia?"

"I'm not allowed to look at the moon," Haru stated before covering her face like she still couldn't believe it. "Even if it shows up on a cartoon I'm watching, Mom freaks out and covers the screen with the closest blanket or even herself until it passes unless she just shuts it off and forbids that from me too. That counts for cats as well, but it's all just so stupid! What does she think is going to happen, that I'll turn into a cat monster if I look at the moon?!"

"How many times did you try to find out?" he asked slyly, making her lower her hand to grin sheepishly at him.

"Mom's got decals on my windows that are easy to tell if they're picked at, and my window's permanently shut, but yeah, I experimented when I could. Still a bit disappointed that the full moon did nothing for me except be beautiful, but I should be allowed to look at it, dang it! The fact that I can do it without her finding out should say plenty about how 'critical' her countermeasures are!"

Haru rolled over enough to sit up and give a level stare at the therapist. "Are you ready for the number one reason I've got to call baloney on the sperm bank story?"

"I'm all ears," he assured her with a wide grin while giving an encouraging nod.

"One of the few things I can do that she doesn't mind is running and thank heaven no one's pointed out to her yet that cats are one of, if not, the fastest land animal on the planet. A few colleges are interested in me over that, and Mom is encouraging me to go as far from here as possible!"

Dr. Biggens gaped in surprise. "With how controlling she is? Is she planning to follow you wherever you go?"

"I don't think so," Haru disagreed while secretly hoping that her mother never thinks of it herself. "Mom loves it here, and while we didn't talk about it, I'm sure she knows that I'll throw her rules out the window the second I get out from under her roof. That lends to the idea that it's not so much strangers in general she hates, but local ones." Haru finally set the cushion to the side to raise her hands and shrug her confusion. "Cats are cats, and it's the same moon, and it's still clear that she loves me, but I think she's thinking about my mysterious friend and that whoever it is won't be able to look after me anymore if I relocate somewhere else. I mean, I told her flat out that I didn't want to be taken out of school just to go on a cruise for my birthday, but there is no reasoning with her! In all honesty, her behavior about wanting to put me out of reach from 'totally not my dad' feels like Vernon Dursley trying to keep Harry from his acceptance letter. I think because I'm turning eighteen and will be able to legally do what I want, she's terrified that things are going to go down once she's not holding all the cards."

The therapist gave a slow, almost evil grin at that comment. Then he set his clipboard on his desk without taking his eyes off his young patient. "Indulge me, Haru. If this person was your father, and he approached you with answers, you would hear him out?"

"I would lock the doors and hogtie him to make sure he didn't try leaving before all my questions were satisfied," Haru growled like an animal. "I'm so tired of not knowing what's going on, I could puke."

That grin increased maliciously, and his dark eyes were sparkling with mischief. "I'll make sure to bring rope, then," he informed her cheerfully. "I'd pay big money to see you pull that off."

Haru blinked. "What?"

"The cruise," Dr. Biggens clarified, still smiling like an imp. "Seventy-one days until you turn eighteen, but the ship leaves port in sixty-nine days. I wasn't keeping track of exact days on both, but your daddy had an appointment yesterday."

The only reason Haru's jaw didn't fall to the floor in shock was because it was attached to the rest of her face.

"Oh, and don't worry too much about college scholarships if you want to go somewhere that hasn't made an offer. He and your stepmother have a pretty decent fund set up for your education if you end up needing it," he added cheerfully, clearly relishing her facial expression. "Oh, and if things get too heated with your mother, you've had a room in their house any time you need it. They update it every few years so that you'd still feel comfortable if something ever happened to your mother."

Haru held the side of her head as she tried not to sway in her seat. "… You know him?!" she asked hoarsely, making him nod without a trace of shame.

"Best friends since we were kids. Under ordinary circumstances, being his therapist would be a conflict of interest, but there wasn't exactly a great list of doctors qualified to keep him from losing his mind until he could approach you."

Haru's head buzzed with even more questions, even as her very blood seemed to exult that she had been right! "Why hasn't he approached me yet?!" she demanded, getting out of the nest chair. "Just what was that stupid fight over to make Mom this irrational?!"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss it," the therapist recited on instinct before shaking himself slightly. "But as you can tell from my earlier comment, your father is literally counting down the days until he can tell you everything in a way your mother can't run from anymore. I'm sorry, but it really would be best to hear it from him."

Haru was breathing heavily, wondering if it was going to be worth the trouble to grab the man by the shoulders and shake him until information came out. Deciding that it would be a bad idea, she closed her eyes and counted to ten instead. "… You swear he'll tell me everything?"

"He wants to," the doctor assured her gently, reaching out to grip one of her hands with both of his own. "He's been praying since finding out your mother was pregnant that you would understand how tied his hands are. He's done everything he could think of to make sure you call baloney on the sperm bank story. He's still hurt that your mother is trying to say he was nothing more when he made sure she knew he wanted to be your dad."

Haru was still breathing heavily, and she was still fighting not to sway from the sudden shock. "At least he believes in therapy," she muttered under her breath, since she had been begging her mom for a session for months before getting the notification for her late Christmas present to keep suspicions low.

"I don't want to think of what would have happened if he didn't," he agreed grimly, squeezing her hands like they already knew each other.

Which was probably half-correct, if her dad talked about her a lot.

She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. "Um… is there anything I need to know about my stepmom?"

His smile somehow turned even more gentle. "Just that she's been pouting over not getting to really be a stepmother to you. She can't have children herself, you see, and adoption's a bit tricky for their situation. But I've worked with her enough that she's not going to try to replace your mom if you don't want it."

If she didn't want it. 'That is definitely hinting that whatever the problem was, Mom was the irrational one.' Haru looked over at the recorder that was still taking in every word. "… I don't know if you were going to anyway, but you have my permission to let Dad and Stepmom hear the session. I want to know everything, and I want to know them."

The doctor actually got out of his nest chair to give her an extravagant bow. "Your wish is my command, my lady."

"You'd have been an uncle, wouldn't you?" Haru asked blandly, though she couldn't keep from grinning at his antics.

"Who says I won't be? There's still time," he retorted cheerfully before kissing her on the forehead like a child. "As much as I'm going to enjoy gloating that I got to talk to you first, I think you can understand why it would be a bad idea to have another session before you turn eighteen."

Haru nodded, feeling almost seasick from the combination of happiness and worry. "Just this much is a guarantee that Mom's going to escalate her behavior before the cruise. I got away with this one, but we don't want to alert her before the trap goes off."

"That's my niece," he cooed the exact same way she imagined he would if she had taken her first steps in front of him. He kissed her on the forehead again and gave her a tiny hug before leading her to the door, though she had to make a quick detour back for her coat. "You won't regret giving your father a chance, I promise."

Haru gave him a warm smile while slipping her arms through the sleeves. "Thank you. This is exactly what I needed."

With a bit of regret, Dr. Biggens shut the door, but then immediately set his ear against the dark wood to listen for her footsteps as she walked back down the hall. Under his breath, he counted to twenty, but had to do it again thanks to how quickly he was running through the numbers due to his excitement.

Once that gave Haru plenty of time to walk away, the therapist lunged for his desk and just barely remembered to shut off the recorder before tackling the old-fashioned phone that he had fallen in love with at a yard sale. Even as excited as he was, he couldn't help taking a childish delight in tracing every number to hear the disc slide back into place with a cheerful jingle before the phone rang once.

It only had time for the once before the line was picked up.

"How did it go, Toto?" a woman asked almost shrilly, since her husband was still at work.

"Hello, Pelia," the therapist nearly purred, half-sitting on the desk like a lounge singer across a grand piano. "I think you and Big Boy want to invite me and Tara over for dinner. Haru gave me permission to let the two of you hear the session, and I'll have Tara find a babysitter. There are some things the kids don't need to hear yet, and she'll have my head if I try to leave her out of this."

Despite the woman's age, she couldn't help a small squeak of happiness. "What did she say about me? Is she okay with having me around?"

The tall man closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down for Pelia's sake. "She is open to meeting you but remember our own sessions. Finding out why Naoko did all that will be a shock to her system, even if she has suspicions in the right direction."

"She does? Did she get the gene after all?"

"No, she was kind enough to check for us." Toto bit his lip, since there were several good reasons most therapists were supposed to avoid having friends for clients. "Just offer her support, Pelia. She'll worship you if you help keep her steady after she finds out. Turns out you and Muta were-"

The door slammed open, startling the doctor off his precarious perch. He groaned in pain and looked around the corner of his desk to see the lord of Muta's pride marching into the room like he hadn't even noticed there was a door. The therapist was just able to get up again to see the intruder make a beeline for the patient's chair. He sniffed around it before grabbing the egg cushion Haru had been gripping and burying his face in it to smell the scent clinging to it.

"Toto, what's going on over there?" Pelia asked with alarm as the phone swayed on its cord, since loud noises in a psychiatrist's office were rarely a good thing.

The young man raised his head from the pillow to almost glare at the doctor. "Who is your client?" he demanded in a tone that seemed to say torture was an option to him. "The one that was just here?!"

The therapist gaped at him, even as the corners of his mouth turned upward in delight. "You're sure?"

"I'm more than sure. Who is she?" Baron demanded again as his eyes began to narrow dangerously.

"Wait, is that Baron?" Pelia asked, snapping the doctor out of his excitement enough to reach down and claim the phone again, never minding his sore body parts from the fall.

His tone somehow managed to be twice as smug as before. "Pelia, why don't you plan on three guests for dinner? I think your lord is going to take a personal interest in making sure your stepdaughter learns all about her paternal heritage."

xxXxx

A/N; this is my response to all the YouTube ads about 'rejected mate' werewolf stories. It originally looked a little different than this, but my laptop decided to delete most of this one-shot and the sequel I was working on.

Kinda rude if you ask me.