“Don’t touch my hair.” Liv swatted her hand away, then stood. “Ben, come here.” She tutted at the wolf like she was calling a pet.
“Sorry, Liv. So many questions,” Fern breathed, rendered speechless—for her. “Is he still Ben?”
“Ben’s consciousness is in there, but in the back seat. We have to be closely in tune with our animals because wearetwo different beings,” Noa explained. “If we don’t stay in their good graces, they can get difficult.”
“Can I pet him?” Fern stuck out her palm, then yanked it back. “Oh my god. No. Is that a weird thing to ask?”
Adam snorted, but she looked past him, searching for Elliott. He’d positioned himself in a patch of shade by the side of the house, leaning against the yellow siding to watch from afar. Could she pethim? Was he a wolf too?
“Go ahead,”Liv said through a chuckle as she buried her hands in Ben’s fur. “He’s a good boy, he won’t bite.”
Fern ran a hand down the soft fur covering his spine and found herself laughing, letting loose a confusing jumble of feelings. She’d read allaboutshifters, omegaverse—which they were not—aliens, normal humans, ancient humans, fae, monsters, portals to different realms,magic... Not once had she expected to encounter it in real life. Her mind spun, but Ben’s fur—Ben’s wolf’s fur?—calmed her.
With a huff, Elliott pushed off the siding and drifted around the house, out of sight.
“Are you all wolves?” Fern blurted. Elliott didn’t seem like a wolf.
“Nope,” Liv answered. “I’m a bobcat, Noa’s a fox.”
“I’m a bear,” Adam announced proudly.
“Holy freaking fuck,” she breathed as the dam blocking her shittily restrained questions shuddered, cracked, and burst. “Liv, how are you an animal? How do you become this? Are you all born this way? Does it hurt when you shift? Do you have to eat raw meat while you’re in animal form? Is anyone a horse? What about a worm? Are there shifter lobsters? Can you come back whenever you want? Is this a full moon thing? Is it even the full moon? I wanted to be a cat when I was a kid. Can I be a cat—like a housecat? I like Maine Coons. Do you pick your animal? Can someone please say something so I can stop talking?”
Adam and Noa cracked up, and when Fern looked to Liv, hoping for someanswers, she found her wheezing with silent laughter, tears leaking from her eyes.
“Ben, shift back,” Olivia demanded as Elliott came back around the side of the house.
The wolf blurred before shrinking in some spots and elongating in others, then Ben stood before her, in the flesh...allflesh. Fern shrieked, getting an eyeful of her best friend’s boyfriend’s dick before she could avert her gaze.
Elliott’s distant growl slipped through the others’ laughter, and while Fern wanted to look for him again, she stared resolutely at the grass until Liv whispered it was safe to look up.
“When we shift, our clothes travel with us, but they come back next to us,” Noa explained.
“Why?”
“That’s a great question, really. No clue,” Adam said.
“This is insane. You guys know that, right?”
“It’s not insane, it's our life.” Noa grinned. “Want to meet my fox?”
“I want to meetallof your animals. Please?” she tacked on.
“Food’s ready,” Elliott announced gruffly, sidling up to the rest of them.
“Shifting demonstration for Fern, then we can go eat,” Ben said, and everyone nodded.
As hungry as she was for lunch, she was desperate to see their alternate forms first. Dealing with a brand new side of a world she thought she understood for nearly three decades took precedence over a hamburger.
Noa and Liv shifted together, and Olivia’s bobcat hopped up onto Fern’s cross-legged lap for pets while Noa’s fox headbutted her hand, in need of scratches.
“This is unreal,” Fern giggled as Adam morphed into an enormous grizzly—if she wasn’t mistaken.
Uninterested in their human activities, Adam’s bear wandered to the far side of the pond and started scratching his back against a tree.
Noa and Olivia changed back to human, and expecting the nudity, Fern studied a crack in the bedrock while they got dressed.
“Do I get to see your animal?” She braved Elliott’s gruffness, too curious to keep her mouth shut. “And no one ever explained how you healed so quickly.”
