“Why not? It’s true.”
“Will you stop that? Listen to me. You might not have had the best start in life, and maybe if you had, you wouldn’t—”
“No, don’t do that. Don’t make excuses for me. Plenty of people have shitty childhoods, but not everyone chose a life of crime. I didn’t have to join the Vipers. I wasn’t forced into it. I did it of my own free will.”
“Perhaps,” Eve said. “But I can understand why you would join them. I can’t imagine how it must have been for you having your panther talking to you for your entire life and being told that it was wrong, that you had to ignore it, that it was a delusion you had created in your mind.”
He started to look away, because how could he look at this perfect woman, this flawless creature, and listen to her trying to justify every shitty decision he’d ever made? But she reached out and caught his chin, her fingers like sunlight caressing his skin as she turned him to look at her.
“Sure, you made some bad choices in your life, but what matters is that you recognized the path you were on was wrong and you did something about it. You can’t change your past, but you can damn well change your present,andyour future.”
Liam sagged in on himself. The words were everything he’d always wanted to hear. To have someone know everything about him and accept him anyway made his eyes well up with emotion.
“So, after all these years, I’m not crazy after all.”
“No, and even if you did have a mental illness, that does not make you crazy. You of all people should know that.”
“I do, but it sure felt like I was crazy at times.”
“I can imagine.”
“Can you show me that thing with your hand again?”
Eve chuckled and held her hand out in front of her. The air around it seemed to shimmer, then it morphed into a claw right before Liam’s eyes. He let out a burst of laughter and the sound surprised him. He hadn’t had a lot to laugh about in recent years, or at all, now that he came to think about it. It felt good.
“CanIdo that?”
“Why don’t you try it?”
He looked down at his hand with a frown. “I don’t know how.”
“I can help you, but first you should know that as shifters, we’re taught from an early age to listen to our inner animals. You’ve basically been taught to do the opposite, and I think that’s why you’ve been having the blackouts and losing time. See, we have to let our animals out regularly. They need to run—to stretch their legs. If we don’t let them out, they get agitated and depressed, and eventually, they’ll force their way out. I think that’s what has been happening with you.”
“Force their way out?”
“You’ve been denying that part of yourself for so long that your mind has blocked out what’s been happening to you, but I think it has been trying to tell you all along.”
“How?”
“Your nightmares.”
Liam nodded, trying to suppress a shudder as his mind recalled the black panther—hispanther—leaping at him. And yet, it had never hurt him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess that makes sense.”
“So, to shift partially, you have to have command over your animal. You have to reach inside yourself and pull it a little closer to the surface. To do that, you need to accept it. It’s a part of you and it’s nothing to be afraid of or ashamed of.”
Liam sighed. “I think that’s going to take some time. Years of conditioning, you know?”
“I understand. Why don’t you try talking to your panther in your mind? Ask it if it’s there and wants to come out a little.”
Liam felt silly, but he did as Eve suggested.
Are you there?he said in his mind.
Of course.
He looked down at his hand and said in his mind,would you come out for me?
