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Mara studied him. “How long have you been able to do that?”
“My first shift was when I hit puberty. That’s when it happens for shifters.”
“So you were born like this? And Dana?”
“Yes. She’s a bear shifter too.”
Mara thought immediately of Toby and Nell. “The kids?”
“They inherited the shifter gene, but neither of them is old enough to have shifted yet. That won’t happen until puberty.”
For some reason, the ordinary way he explained it made the whole thing even more extraordinary. Mara pictured Toby reaching for an apple in the orchard and Nell dragging her by the hand to the best tree, and tried to reconcile those children with the knowledge that one day each of them would become a bear.
“Does everyone in Bear Creek turn into something?”
Gabe smiled slightly. “Not everyone. But there are a lot of shifters here. Bears, wolves, other kinds. Most people outside the supernatural community don’t know we exist.”
“Supernatural community,” Mara repeated. “You keep saying things as though they’re normal and then adding a whole new category of impossible.”
“That’s probably fair.”
There was no fear in her now. Mostly amazement, and a growing awareness of how many things she had walked past in Bear Creek without ever realizing there was another world threaded through the one she knew.
Then a different thought surfaced.
“You didn’t tell me.”
The humor faded from Gabe’s face. “No.”
“Why?”
He took a breath before answering. “You’d just come out of an eight-year relationship and arrived here alone. I wanted you to have a chance to know me before I asked you to accept something like this.” His voice softened. “Then everything with the charity baking happened, and I kept putting it off. I already knew I had to tell you before you left. After last night, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. I came back this morning intending to tell you.”
He had made the decision before Scott arrived. Mara thought back to the strain on Gabe’s face when she told him Scott wanted her back, and the relief when he heard she had said no. He had been carrying this the whole time. While she stood on Main Street telling him about Scott, he had been waiting to show her his bear. Had there ever been a worse morning for it? She almost wanted to laugh, and she almost wanted to hold him.
“You were going to tell me anyway.”
“Yes.”
She believed him.
Mara had a dozen more questions, but Gabe’s smile faded.
“There’s more.”
She let out a slow breath. “Okay. What else?”
Gabe reached for her hand. “This part is harder to explain.”
Mara looked down at their joined fingers and then back at him. “Then explain it anyway.”
Gabe was quiet for a moment, and the familiar distant look crossed his face.
“Is he talking to you?”
“Yes.”
“What does he say?”
