“More than hard,” she admitted.
“Yeah.Plus, their parents… whatever collective they’re from, they’re not going to get the welcoming committee.Just like Ryan’s mom, she’s against the fact you’re Panther while he’s Lion.That kind of prejudice has a ripple effect.
“The parents hide their love and their bond basically to avoid the shit it reaps, and then to protect their litter, they then maintain that secrecy so their children aren’t objects of curiosity or scorn.It makes them closed to change and difficult to trust so they just maintain the façade.”
“They present as human?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.Isn’t that tough on them?”
“Yeah.Very.”
She wrapped her arms over her belly and cupped her elbows—already she knew the delight in running in her other form.Knew how wonderful it was to change and be in that skin.“How do they run?”
“They usually have private land.”
“That’s really sad,” she whispered.
“Yeah, it is.”Trip sighed again.“I’ll admit, I never thought about just how sad it is until you.”When she stiffened, he reached up to rub his hands along the length of her arms.“Not in a bad way, El,” he reasoned, “just in the sense that your nature has brought the situation to my attention, you know?When something or someone has such a vague presence in my world, it can’t affect me unless it happens to me directly.”
“Because you think I can shift into two creatures?”
“Yes.”
“Which ones?”
“A Panther and a Lioness.”
She shivered.“Is it bad that I’m glad about the Lioness part?”
He sounded amused.“No.Not at all.Makes sense.Why wouldn’t you want to fit in?”
“It would really suck if I was Panther and fucking Wolf in a Pride.”
He chuckled.“Yeah, that would suck although it would certainly improve relationships between the Pride and the Pantera and Pack.”
“Great,” she grumbled, “just what I always wanted… to help the politicians.”
He squeezed her in his arms.
She sighed.“Why do you think I’m a Lion?”
“Because you have the growl of one,” he said, a chuckle in his voice.“The other night at dinner, that’s why we all froze at the dining table.When you challenged Leilani, it wasn’t the Panther doing the challenging, and all our Lions heard that.”
“Why has the Panther come out and the Lion hasn’t?”
He shrugged.“There’s no way of knowing that.”
“One isn’t stronger than the other?”
“Not necessarily.You’ve been totally cutoff from that side of your life, El.That you shifted at all is a miracle.Getting used to one transformation, never mind two, is another thing entirely.To adjust to both is something we’d never have expected because we automatically thought you’d just be the one creature.We never imagined you’d be dual and would need to encourage both sides of the shift.”
“But why the Panther?In a Pride?Surely your Lions would encourage my Lioness out to party?”
Ryan snorted, and it jolted her attention, made her remember she wasn’t alone with Trip.At that moment, it felt like it.Wrapped in his arms, his warmth at her back, his words in her ear, his gentleness and love surrounding her, it was like being alone.
Her mates hadn’t gone though, hadn’t left her even though her scent must have been tormenting them, and the beast, or she guessed beasts, inside her were contented by their presence.
