Wolf with Benefits
Page 4
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So much rudeness in only a couple of sentences, Toni observed.
Its not my fault you dont understand my world.
I dont understand?
Was Kyle kidding? Antonella Jean-Louis Parker didnt understand the artistic mind? The brilliant mind? Tonis entire life was about understanding the brilliant mind. And not for some PhD paper she was writing or for an important article in Scientific American. Toni had to understand the brilliant mind because that was her life. That had been her life for more years than she was willing to count.
Because this was her family. Not just these four kids. Toni had six other siblings, ten all together. Her parents just kept breeding. Like rabbits. Or, actually, like the jackals they were. Because jackals paired for life and werent distracted by pack issues, they bred whenever they wanted to. And Tonis parents had done just that, their latest offspring being Zia and her twin sister, both born when their mother was nearly fifty.
And although their father, Paul Parker, was, as Kyle so eloquently put it, average, their mother, Jackie, was not. In fact, Jacqueline Jean-Louis was a world-renowned violinist. Shed performed on some of the largest stages in the world to sold-out audiences, performed in front of royalty, and had several best-selling CDs and DVDs that showed the world her skill. Yet Jackie was not only a great violinist, shed been a prodigy. A child so talented at such a young age that she was considered brilliant.
Now to have one prodigy in a family is amazing. Most families would never, no matter how long their bloodline stretched, have a prodigy. And yet . . . somehow Tonis parents had managed to have ten prodigies out of their eleven children. Ten. In one family. True, a family of jackal shifters; but shifters were no different from full-humans when it came to how many prodigies would normally occur in one family line.
The thing about prodigies, though, was that they werent simply brilliant. There were lots of smart, super smart, even geniuses in the world. What set prodigies apart from everyone else was their commitment. Her mothers skill with a violin would have meant nothing if she didnt spend several hours every day, since the age of three, practicing her instrument. Her sister Orianas genetics would have meant nothing if she didnt routinely go to her ballet classes every morning and evening, six days a week, while practicing on her own, seven days a week. All real prodigies had the drive.
Lord, the drive. Toni could imagine how some people would get sick of all the family support needed to get one prodigy wherever they wanted to go. But Toni? Well, Toni had to deal with ten. Now, true, the twins Zia and Zoe didnt really have that drive yet. At this stage they were just naturally gifted. But little Denny, who was trying to work his way onto her lap with Zia, although only five, had already found his drive. He worked for hours before kindergarten and hours after on his paintings. Paintings that resembled actual photographs they were so painstakingly accurate. Kyle, of course,didnt call that art. Instead he said, Denny is still in the discovery stage where he copies everything. Although Im confident if he gets out of that stage in the next year or two . . . he has quite the potential. For Kyle that was like calling his brother Leonardo da Vinci. Of course asking a five-year-old to quickly move through his discovery stage didnt seem odd to the Jean-Louis Parker kids. If you wanted to hang with them, you had to have the drive and the talent.
Tragically, Toni, the eldest, didnt have either. More than once, shed told her mother, Im not really your child, am I? Just admit it. To which her mother would always respond, You have my eyes.
But maybe Dad isnt
You have his nose, his feet, and his mothers curly hair. Just suck it up already, baby. Youre a Jean-Louis Parker whether you want to be or not.
So Toni had finally resigned herself to being the average one among a family of prodigies. But they were also jackals, and older siblings often helped their parents raise the younger ones. It was also true, though, that most siblings Tonis age would have moved on to their own families by now. Had their own pups. But with her mother still breeding up until the twinswhen finally the wonder that is flippin menopause kicked inand the rest of the kids being focused on their own careersToni just didnt feel right about going off on her own. Her family needed her. As the only one without any real skill, she was the only one who could manage all of them at one time. She had no other goal but to ensure that the rest of them reached their potentialand the age of eighteenwithout going to prison.
So Toni put up with Kyles snobbishness, Orianas brattiness, Cherises borderline agoraphobia, Freddys debilitating panic attacks and issues with setting things on fire and his thievery . . . on and on it went. Her siblings all had issues, and Toni took it upon herself to keep them as reasonably human as possible. It wasnt easy. Although her siblings would never lower themselves by bumping off their competitionsince they didnt consider anyone better than they were or a real threatToni did worry that some of them would bump someone off who got in their way. Who held them back. Once, some kid thought it would be funny to give nine-year-old Troy, the mathematician, the wrong time for an important math competition. He thought it was even funnier when a hysterically crying Troy tracked him down the next day to confront him. Sure. The crying . . . real funny. Except Troy hadnt been crying out of sadness or because hed been hurt by the kids actions. Hed been crying out of frustration. The emotion few in Tonis family knew how to deal with in a normal, rational way. So, those tears were no longer funny when Troy battered that kid into the ground with his backpack filled to nearly overflowing with all his hardcover math books.
Its not my fault you dont understand my world.
I dont understand?
Was Kyle kidding? Antonella Jean-Louis Parker didnt understand the artistic mind? The brilliant mind? Tonis entire life was about understanding the brilliant mind. And not for some PhD paper she was writing or for an important article in Scientific American. Toni had to understand the brilliant mind because that was her life. That had been her life for more years than she was willing to count.
Because this was her family. Not just these four kids. Toni had six other siblings, ten all together. Her parents just kept breeding. Like rabbits. Or, actually, like the jackals they were. Because jackals paired for life and werent distracted by pack issues, they bred whenever they wanted to. And Tonis parents had done just that, their latest offspring being Zia and her twin sister, both born when their mother was nearly fifty.
And although their father, Paul Parker, was, as Kyle so eloquently put it, average, their mother, Jackie, was not. In fact, Jacqueline Jean-Louis was a world-renowned violinist. Shed performed on some of the largest stages in the world to sold-out audiences, performed in front of royalty, and had several best-selling CDs and DVDs that showed the world her skill. Yet Jackie was not only a great violinist, shed been a prodigy. A child so talented at such a young age that she was considered brilliant.
Now to have one prodigy in a family is amazing. Most families would never, no matter how long their bloodline stretched, have a prodigy. And yet . . . somehow Tonis parents had managed to have ten prodigies out of their eleven children. Ten. In one family. True, a family of jackal shifters; but shifters were no different from full-humans when it came to how many prodigies would normally occur in one family line.
The thing about prodigies, though, was that they werent simply brilliant. There were lots of smart, super smart, even geniuses in the world. What set prodigies apart from everyone else was their commitment. Her mothers skill with a violin would have meant nothing if she didnt spend several hours every day, since the age of three, practicing her instrument. Her sister Orianas genetics would have meant nothing if she didnt routinely go to her ballet classes every morning and evening, six days a week, while practicing on her own, seven days a week. All real prodigies had the drive.
Lord, the drive. Toni could imagine how some people would get sick of all the family support needed to get one prodigy wherever they wanted to go. But Toni? Well, Toni had to deal with ten. Now, true, the twins Zia and Zoe didnt really have that drive yet. At this stage they were just naturally gifted. But little Denny, who was trying to work his way onto her lap with Zia, although only five, had already found his drive. He worked for hours before kindergarten and hours after on his paintings. Paintings that resembled actual photographs they were so painstakingly accurate. Kyle, of course,didnt call that art. Instead he said, Denny is still in the discovery stage where he copies everything. Although Im confident if he gets out of that stage in the next year or two . . . he has quite the potential. For Kyle that was like calling his brother Leonardo da Vinci. Of course asking a five-year-old to quickly move through his discovery stage didnt seem odd to the Jean-Louis Parker kids. If you wanted to hang with them, you had to have the drive and the talent.
Tragically, Toni, the eldest, didnt have either. More than once, shed told her mother, Im not really your child, am I? Just admit it. To which her mother would always respond, You have my eyes.
But maybe Dad isnt
You have his nose, his feet, and his mothers curly hair. Just suck it up already, baby. Youre a Jean-Louis Parker whether you want to be or not.
So Toni had finally resigned herself to being the average one among a family of prodigies. But they were also jackals, and older siblings often helped their parents raise the younger ones. It was also true, though, that most siblings Tonis age would have moved on to their own families by now. Had their own pups. But with her mother still breeding up until the twinswhen finally the wonder that is flippin menopause kicked inand the rest of the kids being focused on their own careersToni just didnt feel right about going off on her own. Her family needed her. As the only one without any real skill, she was the only one who could manage all of them at one time. She had no other goal but to ensure that the rest of them reached their potentialand the age of eighteenwithout going to prison.
So Toni put up with Kyles snobbishness, Orianas brattiness, Cherises borderline agoraphobia, Freddys debilitating panic attacks and issues with setting things on fire and his thievery . . . on and on it went. Her siblings all had issues, and Toni took it upon herself to keep them as reasonably human as possible. It wasnt easy. Although her siblings would never lower themselves by bumping off their competitionsince they didnt consider anyone better than they were or a real threatToni did worry that some of them would bump someone off who got in their way. Who held them back. Once, some kid thought it would be funny to give nine-year-old Troy, the mathematician, the wrong time for an important math competition. He thought it was even funnier when a hysterically crying Troy tracked him down the next day to confront him. Sure. The crying . . . real funny. Except Troy hadnt been crying out of sadness or because hed been hurt by the kids actions. Hed been crying out of frustration. The emotion few in Tonis family knew how to deal with in a normal, rational way. So, those tears were no longer funny when Troy battered that kid into the ground with his backpack filled to nearly overflowing with all his hardcover math books.
