"Around and around." Max smiled weakly. She got up and began scraping her scraps into a bucket under the sink. Seeing Gio watching, she said, "This is for the chickens. Come on, let's clean up in here and then I can show you around the town."
* * *
They stepped out into a brisk, beautiful morning. It had the sharp kick of a typical autumn day, and the air felt thin. Gio wondered what their altitude was. Thanks to shifter resilience, he didn't feel particularly bothered by it.
Max's sister's house was right in the middle of town, located in what turned out to be a beautiful village made up of stone and adobe houses perched on the side of a mountain. The buildings were small and brightly painted, arranged along narrow, cobbled streets.
Below them, the valley fell away in a series of terraced fields that turned into forest thousands of feet below. As far down as the mountainside went, it seemed to go almost that high above them. Snow-covered peaks seemed to scrape the brilliant blue sky.
"You grew up here?" Gio asked Max.
She nodded and pointed toward the hillside above the village. "My family's estate is up there. You can just glimpse the walls from here."
The vast, sweeping vistas of the mountains filled Gio with strange longings he was unused to. He wanted to shift and run and hunt. Was this what shifter instincts felt like?
"The hunting's good up in the hills," Max added, almost as if she could read his mind. He glanced at her, wondering once again how exactly they had come to be here.
"Max, can shifter mates communicate telepathically?" he asked.
Max looked a little sad, as she generally did when the topic of mates came up, and Gio immediately regretted saying anything. But she answered readily. "Not that I'm aware of. Mythic shifters, maybe. They can do a few things regular shifters can't, like shift with their clothes on."
"Is a mythic shifter what I am?"
"I don't know what you are," Max answered. "I don't think anyone's ever seen anything like you before."
But she didn't say it in a mocking or hurtful way. She sounded more like she was impressed. After a moment, she took his hand.
Hand in hand, they wandered the streets. The village wasn't very big, and it was clearly not geared toward tourists. There were a few little shops, mostly selling necessities such as food and clothing. People looked at them curiously, not used to seeing strangers. In spite of having eaten earlier, they were both soon hungry again and bought skewers of meat from a vendor.
"There's something you should know about this place," Max told him quietly as they sat on a stone wall to eat, looking down into the valley. "It's a shifter town."
"I've heard rumors of such places. I wasn't sure if they were real."
"Oh, they're very real. And their locations are very well guarded, as you might expect. Actually, it's not just the locations that are guarded. The towns themselves are well guarded, too. We couldn't have come to a safer place to stay for a while."
Gio had private doubts about that, but at the very least, they should be safe for a couple of days. "Will I be welcome?" he asked.
"You're a shifter, so certainly; you can stay as long as you like. Elina is more complicated. She's human, as far as I know, and humans can only stay for a short time under very specific circumstances. I invoked the right of sanctuary for her, which means we're responsible for her while she's here. Honestly, I don't think she'll be much trouble." Max grimaced and looked as if she'd lost her taste for the skewer in her hand. "The trouble is me."
"How do you mean?"
She looked down into the valley. The shifting wind moved strands of her hair around. Gio felt an almost overwhelming compulsion to reach out and brush them away for her.
"I mentioned that I'm an exile, didn't I?" Max said. "Ten years ago, I fought a duel with my clan alpha Nacio, and lost. I had to leave."
Gio felt an odd sensation in his chest. It felt like a vibration. He didn't know what it was until it emerged from his mouth as a growl. "Howdarethey," he snarled.
Max looked startled. "I lost fair and square. It was—"
"They had no right! This was your home. What did they do, throw you out of your home, your family, and tell you never to come back? That's wrong!"
"It's our way," Max said.
"It's wrong!" He had no way to fully articulate how deeply abhorrent the very idea was to his Italian soul. Family was the most important thing in the world.
Max smiled a little and resumed eating her skewer. "Not everyone obeyed the rule not to speak to me. Sofia has been contacting me for years, sending me pictures of her girls and trying to talk me into coming back and working things out with Nacio and the rest of my family."
"At least someone around here has some sense. Is she the only one? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you're well rid of them if they're all willing to let you go so easily."
