Keith thought the little boy might actually faint as he turned an awe-stricken gaze on the extended Raleigh family. Reverently, he whispered, “There arehowmany of you?”
“Thirty-six,” Keith’s dad supplied. “That’s just under five thousand dollars, by the way.”
Noah, still in a whisper, said, “’scuze me a sec,” and walked several feet away, where, with his back turned to the family, he went, “Yes! Oh myGod!YES!” and fist-pumped several times, then stamped his feet in an excited little dance before recovering himself and returning, all business. “You can bring your donations by my mom’s massage therapy business, or I can collect them now.”
Somehow not a single person in the family laughed, although Keith himself swallowed his own laugh so hard he felt the tubes in his ears squeak with compressed air. “I feel like since I started this, I better pay up right away, huh?” He took out his wallet, and suddenly his whole family was doing the same, counting out bills and trading with each other to make the right change while arguing over whether it mattered where that particular five dollars came from.
A few cousins only had cards, so having given Noah a genuinely surprising-looking pile of cash, the fifteen or so of them escorted the little boy back to his mom’s business, where he first proudly showed her the donations, then threw his arms around her for an exuberant hug, clearly blown away by his own success.
His mom, a small purple-haired woman with a Loki t-shirt and at least two visible tattoos, looked even more stunned than her child did. She mouthed, “Thank you,” over his head, and from the sudden burst of self-satisfied noise from his family, Keith thought they probably couldn’t do any better with holiday gifts than this moment. He couldn’t wait to tell Stacy about it.
Which was a silly thought, given that he’d just met her, but he knew in his soul that sharing this kind of moment with her would make every day of his life just that little bit brighter. He was a Virtue kid, born and raised in the little shifter sanctuary town, but Stacy was new, which was to say, he hadn’t met her before leaving for work a few years ago. He wondered if she knew Virtue’s secret, or if the fact he was a shifter was going to be a total realignment of what she knew about the world. Either way, he couldn’t wait to tell her that, too.
Tomorrow,his stag said.After dinner. We can walk in the snow and pose for her and she will be very impressed and love us forever.
“Easy as that, huh?” Keith murmured as he left the massage therapy building. He knew he talked aloud to his stag a lot, but these days people went around talking to ear buds all the time, so he figured he didn’t look any crazier than anybody else who seemed, at first glance, to be talking to the air. “You think she’ll be up to hearing—seeing—that I turn into a big ol’ stag after just one date?”
The stag tossed its head, so Keith did too, of course. It felt completely different with short hair.Of course she will. She’s our mate. She’ll understand immediately.
“Yeah.” Keith stood on the shop’s stoop, looking over the still-bustling bazaar, now lit entirely by tiny glowing colored lights and the enormous tree that had been erected in the gazebo. “Yeah, you know what? I think you’re right. I want to tell her right away, too. Maybe not about the fated mates part,” he murmured, “but definitely about who I really am. It feels right.”
It will beperfect, the stag assured him.
“Bro! C’mon, I’ve paid my dues. Let’s head out. I’m itching for a run.” Kevin came out of the massage clinic and knocked his shoulder against Keith’s. “That kid is charming Mom’s socks off, so they’re gonna be in there forever. I think if she wasn’t pushing sixty we’d end up with another little brother 'cause that kid is so cute.”
“Sister. There are enough boys in this family.” Kendra, the sole girl in the family besides their mom, spoke as she came out of the massage clinic. Like the twins, she was a redhead; only their brother Kyle had inherited their mom’s chestnut hair instead of their dad’s flaming red locks. “Should I grab the cousins? Are we going for a run?”
Kevin muttered, “A whole herd of us, great. Good thing it isn’t hunting season anymore.”
“Actually, it is,” Kendra said. “But only south of here.”
Kevin stared at her. “Why do you know that?”
Kendra dropped her voice to hiss, “Because I’m a part-time deer, you idiot. Whydon’tyou know it?”
“Because I’m not a hunter!”
Kendra turned to Keith in exasperation. “Is this one of those men/women safety things? Stuff men just never think about because they don’t have to think about safety in the same way women do?”
“It might be. I didn’t know it was still hunting season down south either,” Keith said. “It doesn’t seem like extra safety protocols should have to matter when you’re a deer, but if you’re in the habit of it as a human…that sucks,” he added helplessly. “I’m sorry.”
Kendra tossed her hair in a way that made his stag want to toss his head, too. “Don’t be sorry. Just stop the men around you from being jerks.”
“The men around me aren’t jerks!”
“First, are you sure?” Kendra eyed him. “Second, you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do.” Keith put his arm around Kendra’s shoulders and squeezed for a second. “Yeah, go get the cousins and we can all go out to the ranch for a run.”
Kendra nodded, went inside, and a minute later emerged with five cousins, and then a sixth who chased after them as they headed for their cars. The drive out to the ‘ranch,’ which was really acres of forest, only took about twenty minutes: Virtue was a pretty compact little town in terms of its population center. A five minute drive in any direction got you into its outlying areas, although its actual charted boundaries were positively enormous. Shifter sanctuaries needed a lot of space, and Virtue had staked its territory out centuries ago. Other townships, and more recently, corporations, had been trying to encroach on it for almost as long, but if there was any one thing the town did well, it was hold on to the land it had claimed.
Even if it wasn’t a long drive, everybody was bristling with energy by the time they reached the ranch. Keith hadn’t been out for a good run since the snow fell, and most of his cousins lived and worked in cities these days. It was dangerous enough to shift in a city anyway, and the fact that their family were red deers, native to Europe, not America, only made it more so. They stood out, in a place known for white-tailed deer: even if their coloration hadn’t been all wrong, the fact that they were pretty much twice as big would make anybody notice them.
A couple of the cousins bounced—on human feet—toward the forest as soon as they poured out of the car. They mostly tried to shift under cover of trees, because satellite surveillance was a thing now. Nobody wanted to be noticed by some overly enthusiastic employee at the DOD or a tech company, but everybody was clearly eager for the run. Keith ambled along, mostly to annoy Kevin, who twitched impatiently as his twin lazed toward the others. He muttered, “You’re such a jerk,” to Keith, then shifted, which seemed to set off a chain reaction: everybody else shifted, too, rapid-fire, until Keith was the last one to change into his stag form.
He shook himself thoroughly, just like everyone else was doing, settling his fur and stamping his feet a few times. It always took a moment to get used to the powerful muscles and strength a stag had, but he loved it. Then he tossed his head, which felt strangely light.
All around him, his siblings and cousins shifted back to their human forms, eyes round and mouths open. Kendra squeaked, “Oh myGod, Keith.”
