It was like he had come back to someone else’s life altogether, like he was a completely different person than the extrovert he’d been.
Dissociation, his therapist would tell him kindly. It was a common way of coping with trauma and pain, and she’d given him a list of grounding techniques.
He’d used the anonymous settlement he received for vague damages done to start over as New Robert. It was enough to move two states over and buy a modest house in a modest neighborhood. Shifter Affairs had settled most of the mess with his credit and identity, but he still found himself randomly blocked for beingdeceased.His Facebook account was gone forever.
His therapist was good, but in high demand with shifters; Robert was far from the only one who had suffered in Beehag’s zoo, and many of them had been there longer and hurt more. As soon as he’d found a new job in a new field, he convinced her he was fine and severed her services with a platter of muffins and a hand-written thank-you card.
If she saw through his hard-earned facade of serenity, she either knew that there was little more she could do, or she was willing to honor his independence and let him try to bury those memories.
And now, so much later, here was a letter from the very resort he’d been kidnapped out of.
He couldn’t glean from the formal note whether it was an act of apology, or generosity, or simply capitalist marketing. He’d donated a token amount to the ‘Save Shifting Sands’ campaign, but the funds had come back after some kind of natural disaster had ravaged the island and unexpectedly closed the resort for more than a year.
He hadn’t ever expected to hear about the resort or the island again.
His stag nudged him.It was not the island that hurt us.
Robert deliberately clenched a fist and then concentrated on releasing it slowly as he breathed deep. He was bigger than this. He’d put his anger and helplessness behind him. Going to the island…would it disrupt the peace of mind he’d fought so hard to claim? Or was this a chance to prove that he’d truly gotten over everything? Either option felt numb and distant.
He should choose by logic, if emotion wouldn’t serve. It would be a shame to miss an opportunity to stay there for free—the offer had an expiration date—and he had time off coming up for Christmas. He didn’t have holiday plans here. There was nothing to keep him from cashing in some of the airline miles that Shifter Affairs had settled with his credit card company when he had to redo his finances from scratch.
Maybe Shifting Sands was exactly the escape that he needed.
CHAPTER3
“It smells like Christmas!” Felicity squealed, coming into the kitchen on her fourth morning. “Oh, what are those?”
Breck was standing with aplatter of cookies. “Chef is testing some recipes for the holidays. Gingersnaps and chocolate crinkles.”
Felicity accepted one of each, the chocolate crinkles hot enough to burn her fingertips. “Oh, yum! Yes, please!”
“They will suffice?” Chef asked anxiously. “Not too much flour?”
Felicity gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up. “They areperfect.”
“You’re a Christmas elf!”
Felicity gave a little start at the voice behind her.
A woman with a halo of white hair poorly contained in a very long braid was standing in the doorway.
Behind her was a tall, grim-face man. “She’s not an elf, Gizelle, she’s just shorter than you.”
“I’m shorter than almost everyone,” Felicity said cheerfully.
“But you’re not a child,” Gizelle said to Felicity suspiciously.
“You’re not an old lady,” Felicity said in frank return. Despite her shimmering silver hair, she seemed neither old nor young, and was almost certainly neurodivergent, if Felicity had to guess by the way she stared and the nervous twitch to her hands.
A smile split Gizelle’s face. “You’re not afraid,” she said with a nod of approval. “I like you. I also like sweets, and Chef is making cookies.” She ducked around Felicity, careful not to touch her, and snatched one of each kind of cookie off the hot tray. She danced them around on her fingertips until they were cool enough to eat.
“What kind of shifter are you?” Gizelle asked around her cookie, staring at Felicity again.
Felicity told herself that this was a normal question, that this was a shifter resort, and she was expecting this. “I’m a mouse,” she said, giving a little squeak.
Gizelle’s eyes narrowed. “It’s very quiet,” she said skeptically.
Could she tell?“Mice are very small,” Felicity said.Don’t look guilty!
