He smiled and shook his head. “You’re almost too good to betrue. I mean it.”
“Has this ever happened to you before? I mean, turning into a…?”
“Peregrine falcon,” he supplied.
“Uh, yeah… Has it happened in front of anyone who wasn’t ready for it?”
“No. I’ve been pretty lucky. And I’m working hard on controlling my shifts. My dad was big on teaching us self-control.”
“So, your dad is a…”
“A shapeshifter. Yes. We’re human, but peregrine falcons in our other form. My father, brother, and myself.”
“But your mother isn’t?”
“No. If both parents had been shifters, I would have had pure shifter genes and better control, but I’m only half shifter. My mother loved my father enough to take a chance on him, and we love her even more for handling the weirdness.”
Merry looked at him sideways. “How much weirdness are we talkin’?”
“Well, we liked to shift in the backyard to fly. That meant getting naked before we left the house.”
“What did the neighbors say?”
“Thanks to a private yard with loads of trees, they never found out. Mom was still worried about small planes and helicopters passing over at the wrong time. And we had to promise to stay away from jet engines.”
Merry chuckled. “That’s a good idea in any form. So, what else was weird for her?”
“Besides the fact that she could never join in? Well, we’d bring the occasional pigeon home for dinner.”
“Pigeon? Yuk, that’s disgusting!”
“No, it’s really good. My favorite is mourning dove, but there’s plenty of both in any city. We lived in the suburbs but hada few special places my father would take us to hunt. And don’t freak out, but we used to love rabbit, too.”
Merry’s hand flew to her chest as she gasped. “You wouldn’t hurt Buns!”
“No. He’s your pet. Even in falcon form I’ll be aware of the difference between Buns and a wild rabbit. I promise I won’t do anything to hurt him.”
“But… other cute animals? Chipmunks? Kittens?”
“We really didn’t bring anything cute and furry home to Mom. She would have been furious. So, we stuck to mostly pigeons, but she didn’t even want them. Once she put her foot down and said she wasn’t going to pluck our pigeons and cook them for us, so we had to settle for store-bought chicken. If you ask me, she’s the weird one. Who wouldn’t prefer fresh game?”
Merry wrinkled her nose. “Okay, so you like fresh game. How about quail or pheasant?”
“Sure. I like just about anything except owls and eagles.”
“I should hope not. Aren’t they endangered?”
“Not as endangered as we are around them, becausetheyeatus!”
“Oh! That must be frightening if you run into them on your… flights? But don’t you have the upper hand since you can turn back into a person when you want to?”
“Yeah, usually. You should see their eyes when they suddenly have a mouthful of heavy human.” He laughed.
“But if you’re up in the air, the fall could kill you!”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve been lucky. But under stressful conditions, it’s a lot harder to handle the shifts.”
“So, I guess you reallyhavebeen lucky.”
