His words hit me like a bucket of ice-cold water.
I wanted to deny it again. Everything I’d been taught, everything I was, depended on me proving him wrong.
But the proof I was looking for stared me in the face. Large as what he was claiming I actually was… hadn’t known I actually was on the inside…
Remembering all the times I’d felt a strange tingling in my hand when someone said something to me that made me violently angry, I made myself visualize….
Reuben denying me in the barn… Amanda commenting on my full plate at the breakfast table… The other Wölfennites laughing at me at Tara’s wedding reception…
“Oh, my heavens! Oh, my heavens!” I nearly dropped the silver medallion when my entire hand and forearm disappearedunderneath a long mitt of jet-black fur and a palm covered in what looked like some kind of worn dark-gray rubber.
“Hiya, so you’re a black bear, then—not a brownie, like the High King and me.” Tadhg raised his red eyebrows on the other side of my shifted paw. “I’m certain the Shadow King’s line will be impossible to deal with after they find out we’ve finally got another black bear who isn’t related to them.”
Tadhg tucked the medallion back into his shirt. “By the by, not to sound too superior, but wolves can’t turn just one part of themselves, either. That’s a special power, Strawberry, just for us bears.”
He was still trying to convince me, but I didn’t need it as I clamped and unclamped five claws over a spongy palm that was no longer light brown but a dark and dusky black.
This is not a wolf paw, I realized, staring at the one piece of me I’d turned just to see if I could.
It was too big. Too fierce. Too other. Just like me.
No more denials. My throat clogged with tears, and for several moments, I couldn’t even talk.
All these years…
All these years of feeling like a freak of wolf nature, and here was my answer.
I’d never been a wolf. I’d been a bear. One of Tadhg’s and Cian’s kind all along.
Another epiphany hit me. My mother must be a bear, too!
That would explain so much. Why she almost never talked about her past or my father. Had made me large portions of food,despite complaining about the outrageous expense of my out-of-control gluttony.
Of course, she had lied to me. Hidden what I was from me with shame and criticism. That was clear now.
And relief… Relief like nothing I’d ever known, even when I released my bladder after months of being shut in my room, filled me up like a bottle of maple syrup. Sweet and sticky in a way that clung to the container, even after it was emptied.
At the warm thoughts, the violent tingling faded, and I once again found myself gazing upon my human hand.
“I’m a bear,” I whispered.
“You’re a bear,” Tadhg confirmed. “Even the Shadow King is trying to tell you.”
He nodded in a new direction near the table, and a shout of laughter burst from my mouth when I found the Shadow King, still in bear form but once again holding the whiteboard between two paws:You’re a BEAR!!!
Bear was in all caps and underlined three times.
But wait…
I stopped laughing and scrunched my forehead when I realized, out loud, “That still doesn’t explain why you kidnapped me.”
“Oh, well, actually…” The chagrinned look returned as Tadhg explained, “That was the story I’d planned to lead with, but then this weirdly existential conversation came up. You see, Sadie?—”
The blare of dual alarms, loud and even more piercing than a rooster’s crow and a kettle’s steam whistle combined, cut him off.
I found out where the terrible sounds were coming from when Tadhg pulled out a phone, and the Shadow King’s bear lumbered over to the leather remnants of the pants he’d shredded through to presumably do the same.
Tadhg’s expression went from laughing to serious in the next moment. “Gods, I didn’t expect them to suss it out so fast,” he said before pressing something on his phone screen.
