“Oh,” I say softly.
Raquel steps toward me and awkwardly kneels in front of me, the tight silver fabric of her dress riding up her thighs as she gives me a watery smile. “I’d blame my reaction on hormones, but I think this would be a lot even for someone who wasn’t pregnant.” She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, then gives herself a shake before moving to sit next to me again, her steady gaze focused on my face. “Okay, you’re a shifter. Got it. Now, tell me the rest.”
I stare at her, open-mouthed. She’s taking this slightly better than I expected.
When I don’t immediately continue talking, she prods me with her elbow. “You’re going to owe me a better explanation of the whole shifter thing, but first I think you need to tell me what you mean by doing everything you can to get me out of here.” She narrows her eyes. “You’d better not mean that how it sounds. We don’t do the whole self-sacrifice thing, remember?”
“Uh… well…”
“Seriously?” She pokes me in the chest with her index finger, nail stabbing painfully at my sternum. “I thought we had an agreement after what happened at the Mitchells’ house. You know, when I tried to take the blame for the food you took so you wouldn’t get a beating your first night there? You’re the one who insisted that’s not how this friendship was going to work.”
I mean, she’s right. I did say that.
But I also knew, as a shifter, it would be a lot easier for me to take the beating than it would be for her.
“Fine.” I sigh and offer up a weak smile, then give her a brief overview of my conversation with Doyle and what I sort of agreed to. She nods slowly along with my words.
“You realize he’s full of shit, right?” she asks when I’m done. “I mean, what does ‘put on a good show’ even mean?”
“I have no idea.” I squeeze her hands. “But I would have agreed to just about anything to make sure you got out of here.”
She presses her lips together and shakes her head. “Are you kidding me? Even if I wasn’t a human in on your super-secret shifter society, I still stole from this alpha guy. No matter what kind of deal you made, he’s not just going to let that go. One way or another, we’re in this together.”
“But Doyle said—”
“Does he have some kind of mental power to get you to believe his BS? Is that a shifter thing?” Her eyes widen when I don’t immediately respond and most of her irritation seems to drain away. “Are the fanfics right? Growly alphas who can control people and mates and knots and stuff?”
I let out a shaky laugh. “No knots, but the rest of it? Yeah, pretty much.”
“So, Doyle can control you? Is that what happened?”
“It doesn’t quite work like that,” I say. “He could definitely make me perform a specific action and possibly cloud my mind, but not so much full mental control. Not that I’m aware of, anyway.”
“Okay…” She rubs at her chin as she thinks over my words. After a few seconds of silence, her eyes go wide again. “Wait a second… is this anomegaverse?”
The laugh that escapes me is part shock and part relief. If she’s focusing on that, then she’s not thinking about the whole self-sacrifice bit. “Yeah,” I say. “Your fanfics got some of that right too. I’m pretty sure some of them may even have been written by shifters.”
She giggles, but the sound is more subdued than usual. “Tell meeverything.”
So, I do. For the first time since I’ve known her, I sit there and tell my best friend the truth about what I am and the world I spent the first fifteen years of my life in. I start by explaining the basic hierarchy: An Alpha runs a pack, and each pack has their own set of laws they follow while the triumvirate is in charge of mediating disputes between packs and upholding the laws that govern all shifters.
“Over the past seven years, I’ve managed to pretend none of that matters anymore. I thought finding myself in the human foster care system after my parents’ deaths meant that I was free of pack politics and shifter laws. And I was glad of it. If I could have stayed away from the shifter world for the rest of my life, I would have.” I sigh. “Unfortunately, this casino is actually owned by Doyle and security recognized me as a shifter as soon as I walked in.”
Raquel’s face falls, her hand covering her mouth and her eyes growing damp. “I chose the target. This is my fault.”
“No,” I say firmly before letting out another sigh. “The shifter world was bound to catch up to me eventually. Since I’m not an official pack member, I’m not technically supposed to be in Vegasat all, not without permission from the Alpha, anyway.”
“What does that mean? Why aren’t you a pack member if you were born here?”
And here’s where things get a little more complicated…
“My birth was registered with the pack, but no one can become an official member until after their first shift.” I shoot her a wry smile. “And a crap ton of paperwork.”
She returns the smile, but her brow is still furrowed.
“Well, my first shift happened a couple days after my fifteenth birthday—the same day my parents died.” I go silent, again unsure how to say this next part.
Raquel reaches for my hand and gently squeezes my fingers. “Something happened with your shift then?”
