She sipped her wine to moisten her throat. “My shark doesn’t—interact, much. At all. It’s alwaysthere, but I have to go and find it, most of the time. If I want to shift, or if I want to use its abilities. Sometimes it’ll come and, and sort of loom up behind me… in my own head… but that’s it.”
She waited, barely breathing, for his response.
In the firelight, his eyebrows pulled down. “You get people who’re like that. Quieter than quiet. I guess it makes sense some animals would be, too.”
Here we go.“Not everyone had to almost die before their inner animal turned up, though.”
“What?”
“It’s meant to be this magical moment, and I didn’t even know it was happening until I stopped drowning.”
Moss swore and gathered her into his arms. “Tell me—no. You don’t have to tell me what happened.” He cursed under his breath. “When you fell into the water and couldn’t risk shifting—god, Carol. You told Maggie she wasn’t the only one to be afraid of the ocean, but I never thought—”
“That a shark shifter could be scared of the water?” She sighed and stared into the flames. “I know. We’re meant to be the scary thinginthe water, not the one who’s scared.”
“Everyone’s scared of something. And the ocean’s a powerful thing. There are worse things to be afraid of.”
“Worse things than the place I’m meant to feel most at home in all the world?” Saying the words out loud stung. And this next bit was going to hurt even more. She braced herself. “It was a long time ago. Only—not that long, really. I was eighteen. First year of college. My parents were starting to worry that I wouldn’t turn out to be a shifter at all. Not that they said so where I could hear, but… some things you don’t need to hear out loud, even if you haven’t developed your magical mind-reading shifter powers yet.Especiallythen. Going away to college was a relief. And then I met other people like me, people from shifter families who’d shifted late or still hadn’t. And other shifters.”
“I remember leaving home for the first time and seeing how shifters lived in big cities where everyone didn’t already know everyone else’s business,” he said softly. “It’s not the same, but…”
“Suddenly it was an adventure. I wasn’tCarol Zhang, can’t even shiftanymore, I was part of a secret club. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t shift. Even justknowingmagic existed became something special, not something to be… to be stressed about.”Ashamed of, she added silently. “This one girl was the ringleader. She figured us all out and brought us all together. I never stopped to think why.”
“She made you feel special. Part of a secret group.”
“Told us no one else understood us, not other shifters, not non-shifters. But she did. Yeah. Classic cult shit.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “That night, it was me and a guy. Caleb. She invited us to a party on her boat, with all her closest friends, and when we were too far away to swim to shore, she pushed Caleb in.”
Moss swore. She nestled against him. His horror was strangely comforting. It was… good, to remind herself that everything that had happened around her first shift was legitimately horrifying.
“And it worked. He was terrified, he thought he was going to die, and his magic finally caught up with him. He shifted into a terrier—one of those small dogs? Eloise got us to fish him out with a net.”
“That’s psychotic.”
“He was happier than I ever saw him. He’d shifted. Found his inner animal. Who wouldn’t be happy? And it wasn’t like Elly would have really let him drown. He wasn’treallyin any danger. It was just—a trick. A game.”
“Sure. Did you jump in, or did they push you, too?” Doubt shadowed his words—and a deep, simmering rage.
She swallowed. “Push.”
He didn’t say anything. The silence sucked at her.
“I’d jumped off boats before. I’d beenthrown offboats before. Of course I had. Seven brothers, remember? And I’d—and I’d been night swimming. I’d done all the dumb stuff you do when you grow up thinking the ocean’s your territory. But this… it was colder than I expected. I’d dressed up. I didn’t want to lose my shoes. My shoes! I mean, she’d just pushed me in, and I was worried about myshoes.”
She dared a glimpse at Moss, half-hoping he would be smiling, sharing in the joke, whatever the joke was, because she sure didn’t know, but it would be easier if itwasa joke, right?
He was glaring at the flames like he wanted to murder someone.
And that was… better.
A huge weight lifted from her heart.
“I tried to climb back aboard. Eloise got a boathook and told the others to push me back down. Every time I got close to the boat, they pushed me under again. I thought—it was—”
“They tried to kill you.”
“They almost managed it. By the time my shark took over, I was sure I was already dying. I didn’t know what was happening.There was this other creature in my mind with me. My inner shark. I should have been over the moon. Instead, I was terrified out of my mind, so maybe… maybe that’s why we never really connected. And when I finally washed up on shore in human form, allThe Little Mermaid, I…”
She’d never connected to her shark. And never let it go, either. She’d told Moss her shark was quiet, but explaining how they felt like strangers sharing a soul when he’d been so in tune with his own octopus…
