"Exactly. Chimera shifters are much rarer, and things like drag?—"
"Wait, so what exactlyisa chimera? I mean, I've seen you, obviously, you half cat-bat creature you, but…?"
"Technically a chimera is any mix of two or more species of shifter," Colton murmured, extending his hands and flexing his gloved fingers like he was a big cat. "It gets more complicated than that, though."
Jo gestured around the tent. "I'm not going anywhere. Lay it on me!"
"Hah! Yeah, I guess we're not. Right, okay, sotechnicallygriffins and pegasi and manticores and sphinx and a bunch of others are chimeras, because they're all mixes of two or more animals."
"Pegasi? Is that supposed to be the plural for pegasuses? Which, never mind that, do you mean pegasuses are real too? Oh my God!" Jo fell over on her side and kicked her feet a little, unable to contain her inner twelve year old girl's glee. "Okay! Okay I'm better now, go on." She sat up again as Colton beamed at her like she was the most wonderful person he'd ever met.
"I'm glad you're taking this so well. I wasn't sure what you'd think."
"I think it's nuts and amazing. So why are we focusing on the technicality here?"
"Because although all of those others are technically chimeras, too, my particulartypeof chimera iscalleda chimera. There are dragon-type chimeras and goat-type chimeras. I'm a dragon-type, but which one you are is just a roll of the dice. I've got three siblings who are goat-types. They have wings, too, but they're furry instead of leathery and their hind ends are goats instead of lions."
That, Jo thought, might be too much. She sat up again, staring at Colton and trying to process that. Eventually she got as far as, "…how…?" but ended up shaking her head. "Okay, no, never mind. I'm just going to roll with it. Goat types and dragon types."
"You think you're confused now," he said cheerfully. "Manticores arealsocat-dragon shifters, except they don't have wings and are about half the size of chimeras and very sensitive about it. But they can talk," he said almost grumpily. "Even in their shifted form. Most shifters can't."
"Wow.Wow.Okay. Wow. This is going to take some time to remember everything. Why are you telling me all this? These must be like state secrets, in shifter terms."
Colton hesitated like he wasn't sure of what he should say, but then smiled. "They are, but I know I can trust you."
"You'd better hope so," Jo said cheerfully as her stomach gave a sudden rumble. "I mean, you can, but yeah. Wow. Okay, food. I don't exactly have steak dinners in the emergency rations, but…" She opened another bag, pulled out a handful of energy bars, and then froze a moment, staring into the bag. Then she checked another and then the last, growing slightly more frantic as she searched. Finally, heart racing and a blush climbing up her cheeks, she had to turn back to Colton, whose expression had become concerned. Her ears burned as she mumbled, "We may have a small problem."
"What? There's not enough food? You keep it, that's fine?—"
"No, I've got a ton of ration bars. It's not the food. It's that there's only—" Her ears burned so hot she had to take her hat off and put her face in her hands as she mumbled, "There's only one sleeping bag."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Colton's first thought was,Yay!A night snuggled up with Jo Talbott sounded like the best of all possible worlds.
His second thought wasOh dear,because even he knew about the There Was Only One Bed trope. And clearly, from the way her ears were bright, bright red, so did Jo. "I don't have to sleep in the bag," he promised. "Shifters run warm. I'll be all right."
"That's insane," Jo said, still blushing. "It's about twenty-seven degrees out. You cannot sleep on top of the blankets."
"It's warmer in here, though. Honestly, I'll be?—"
"A half-frozen lump of misery," Jo said, and although Colton genuinely did think he'd be all right, she also wasn't wrong about that. 'All right' and 'comfortable' were not the same things, after all.
"I just don't want to make you uncomfortable," he said, and to his relief, Jo laughed.
"I'm not sure 'uncomfortable' is the word, Colton. Well, it might be," she amended almost absently. "I've never tried to put two people in a one person sleeping bag, but it's a wide one, for a mummy bag."
"A…mummy…bag?" Colton crooked a smile. "I may be mythological, but I'm notthatmythological."
She glanced at him and laughed again. "It's kind of shaped like a sarcophagus, like most sleeping bags have been for the past, I don't know, twenty years? I thought you said you were an outdoorsy kid!"
"I was! We hiked! We camped! But we…ah…"
Up went Jo's eyebrows. They were more golden than her hair, straight long slashes across her forehead. "You sleep in a big lump of chimeras?"
"Kindaaaaa?"
"Of course you do. In a huge tent, or just in a nice fluffy hollow in the ground?"
