“I made a cage out of sticks and twine and put it in the water so it couldn’t escape,” he explained. “It’s strong enough that an animal can’t get loose, but if it’s a shifter, it should be able to shift and break free easily. We’ll have our answer when we reach the river.”
It was a clever trick. I was impressed.
“You know the town,” I began as we approached the river. “And you didn’t recognize that man, did you?”
“No. It’s a small town, so I’d recognize an outsider, even though I left a few years back.”
A strange golden koi and a strange outsider… It couldn’t be a coincidence. If he was here to try and hurt Sage again, he would pay dearly.
Blood roared in my ears as I skidded to a halt beside the river. It was the moment of truth.
“There,” Remington said, gesturing to where the twine had been attached to a heavy rock on the shore to keep the cage in place.
I ran for it, then peered into the water.
The golden koi was still there, struggling against the makeshift cage. I felt a flood of relief.
“It’s not a shifter,” I said.
Remington stared at it with a frown. He didn’t seem convinced.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” he mumbled. “Why is someone’s pet here? Nobody except a shifter or an animal can get into the wildlife reserve.”
I wracked my brain for possible answers. “A bird could’ve picked it up and dropped it here.”
Remington didn’t reply. He shifted, then to my surprise, reached into the water and picked up the koi by the tail.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Sage said he wanted to eat a fish, didn’t he? If it runs out of air, we’ll know it’s an animal. A shifter would change before it ran out. It’s a physiological reaction, so it would happen automatically, even if it was stuck somehow.”
That much was true. I never would’ve fed another shifter to Sage—the idea was appalling—but Remington was right about the reaction to shift being instinctive. The body knew better than we did sometimes about when and where to shift for our own safety.
I watched in strained silence as the koi wiggled and thrashed in Remington’s hand. How long could a fish last out of water? If it was a mere animal, I didn’t want it to suffer. I raised a hand, ready to shift and unleash my claws to end it quickly.
“Wait,” Remington said, narrowing his eyes.
Right at the moment where it seemed too late, something happened.
The fish in Remington’s grip slipped, enlarged, fluidly shifted into a different shape. It hit the ground as a man with long, flowing golden hair.
“Ow,” he said.
I stared in utter disbelief at Remington, who shared my reaction even though his hunch had been correct. The man gasped and sat upright, breathing heavily. He touched his body with his hands as if he was as shocked as we were.
“Ah… Ah! I’m back!” He laughed in desperate relief. “I’m not trapped anymore!” He grabbed Remington’s shoulders. “Thank you!”
Remington blinked and peeled out of the man’s ecstatic grip. “Er, you’re welcome.”
As the man continued to pat his damp body with his hands, I murmured, “You’re a shifter.”
“Huh?”
Ignoring the man’s confusion, Remington turned to me. “That’s not him, is it?”
I examined the man’s face. There was no doubt about it. It wasn’t the same man. Even considering the span of time that had passed since that night, his hair wouldn’t have grown that long. But I couldn’t deny there was some familiarity in his face, perhaps an echo of the man I’d met that night. I smelled the scent of alpha on him, too. I hadn’t noticed it when he was a fish in the river, but it was distinct now, even beneath the rivulets of water running down his skin.
“Scowl,” I ordered.
