by Chant, Zoe
She sat bolt upright and twisted to look over the edge of the couch at Matthew for real this time. "I wonder if that's why my grandparents left! I wonder if Mom knows! Where's my phone! I have to text Mabs and Mom!"
"And say what?" Matthew asked gently. "If they know about shifters? On an insecure connection? There's a reason we're secretive, Sarah. We have to be really careful, especially in the modern world."
"Oh. Oh yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Right, of course I can't call or text. I wasn't thinking."
"To be fair," Matt said, still gently, "you've had kind of a shock."
Sarah chuckled quietly, then said, "Wait, but the Barlows can't possibly want Virtue developed, can they?" in confusion. "Why aren't they out there with their money stopping it from happening?"
"Because they're wealthy and trying to stop a development they might well profit from would draw attention, and we try not to draw attention." Matthew sank into a less careful posture, although he didn't get off the floor. "They probably should have told you," he added more quietly. "I have the impression you'd fight tooth and nail to keep a secret like this safe."
"Of course I would," Sarah said indignantly. "Virtue's my home. The people are my friends. Even the ones I don't know very well. Well. So we have to stop it without their help. That seems silly, but I don't know what else I can do. If they're not going to save themselves, I guess we have to."
"So you're okay with this?" Matthew asked cautiously.
"I'm very confused by it!" Sarah sat for a moment in silence, thinking about it all. "But yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm okay with it. It sure does explain why all those families are so stand-offish. I wonder why Jake's isn't. Ooh! I wonder if his parents moved to another shifter town! Are there a lot of them?"
Matthew chuckled. "I don't really know. Like I said, mis abuelos told me I'd be a shifter, but I mostly grew up outside of shifter communities. I don't know that much more than you do."
"I doubt that." Sarah finally edged out from behind the couch to where she could see Matthew from the corner of her eye. He still looked like himself, not like he had a bear hiding inside him. "You must have been lonely, growing up away from other shifters."
He shrugged one shoulder. "It's hard to miss what you don't know."
"Still. Maybe now that you know what Virtue's about...maybe you can find some shifter friends here. Jake! You'll like Jake. I can't believe he didn't tell me, the rat!" Sarah straightened indignantly, then winced, discovering she'd strained a neck muscle with her fall. She started massaging it with a muttered, "Ow. Wow. Jeez. Wow. Are you going to get in trouble for telling me the truth about Virtue? Or am I going to be in trouble for knowing?"
"No." Matthew sounded incredibly certain about that. "No, they would expect me to tell you the truth about myself, and about Virtue, now that I've realized it."
"They would, huh? How come?" She turned her head carefully, testing the strain in her neck.
"Because you're..." Matthew took a deep breath, clearly preparing to say something, before his eyebrows furrowed worriedly. "Sarah, is your neck okay?"
"Mostly. I mean, it's been better. All parts of me have been better. I don't recommend falling over the back of a couch. But mostly, yeah."
"I'm sorry," he said miserably. "I didn't think about what would happen with a flight or fight response if you were on a couch that wasn't against a wall."
"It's all right." Sarah rubbed her neck again. It didn't really hurt all that much, but it gave her something else to think about, or at least, something to do with her hands. "It's not like you were wrong. I wasn't going to believe you unless you showed me. And honestly I don't think I'd have reacted any differently if you'd said 'and now I'm going to turn into a bear' before actually...turning into a bear...."
"Come here," Matthew suggested. "Or...I'll come there? Can I come over there?"
"You may."
A moment later he slid down beside her at the end of the couch, his big warm hand gentling massaging the strained muscles in her neck. Sarah groaned and leaned into it. "That...feels really good."
"Least I can do. I'm really sorry."
"All is forgiven." Sarah drew her knees up so she could rest her forehead on them again while he rubbed her neck. "Guh. That feels really good."
She could hear his smile. "You mentioned that. I think I should mention I'm not trying to seduce you immediately after you fell over the back of a couch."
"Mnngh. Okay." The strain in Sarah's neck was receding. "I'm terrible at being seduced by massages, anyway. I just fall asleep."
Matthew chuckled softly. "Which is flattering in its own way. Are you all right?"
"I think so." Sarah turned her head back and forth a couple of times, testing her neck, and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine, really. I'll put some arnica on my neck when I get up, just to be sure, but I managed not to hurt myself. Ugh, Doc will hate that. She doesn't like the smell of arnica and wants to clean it off me."
"I didn't know you had a cat. I'd have warned you she probably wouldn't like me, if I had."
"So do shifters not keep pets? Or are pets too much like...I don't know. Like keeping miniature versions of yourselves around?"
"We keep pets," Matthew said, obviously amused. "Most house pets and some other domesticated animals adapt pretty easily, as long as we don't try to eat them or anything. Goats and llamas take shifters in stride. Cows are confused but generally mellow, in my experience. With horses, it depends entirely on the individual, and sheep just can't cope. They run away."
"Ah," Sarah said. "So much for my sheep farm retirement plans." She stiffened a bit, suddenly worried about the implications. "Not that I expect you to be around when I retire. That was supposed to be funny."
"It was," Matt assured her, but Sarah was glad she had her face hidden against her knees. Somehow the idea that he wouldn't be around for her retirement was sad, not funny at all. Which was a silly thing to think about a man she'd known less than a week.
"Not to change the subject," she said to her knees, "but to totally change the subject, do you think you being a shifter will make the shifter families here more willing to talk to you? Us?"
"It might."
"And they're not going to, I don't know, run us out of town for sharing centuries-old secrets?"
"They're really not," Matt promised.
Sarah muttered, "Hnf. I'm still offended that nobody told me."
"Obviously I would have, if I'd been in charge!"
A bubble of delighted surprise rose in Sarah and she lifted her gaze, smiling at Matthew. "Yeah, I guess so, since you've known me for a whole four days now and you just shared a big secret. Wow, I don't know if I've got anything as massive to share in kind. Does that make our relationship unbalanced?" She glanced at the couch behind her and made a face. "Or does me going ass over teakettle do that?"
"Tell you what, promise never to fall over the back of a couch again and I'll call it even."
"I'm considering rearranging the living room right now so it's not possible," Sarah assured him. "Look, you know what, I think I'm fine, but I also think I'm gonna go take a really hot bath and some ibuprofen and, uh..."
"Come to terms with your hometown being littered with shifters?"
Sarah grinned. "Pretty much, yeah." She got up, testing to see if she was hurt. She really wasn't: the fact that she'd somehow sort of slid over the back of the couch rather than full-on falling had saved her a lot of bruising.
Matthew stood as well, saying, "I'll text later to see how you're doing?" as he stepped away.
Sarah caught his hand momentarily, a shiver of pleasure running through her at its warmth. "Matt." When his eyebrows rose curiously, she said, "Thank you. For sharing your secret. I'm glad to know the truth, and I won't betray it." She made a face. "To be melodramatic about my phrasing."
"I know you won't. I knew it from the moment I saw you." Matthew kissed her knuckles and released her hand, then left her rubbing her thumb over the memory of his kiss.
C
HAPTER SIXTEEN
His oso said, Told you she'd understand, as soon as Matthew left the house.
Matt, out loud, said, "She fell over the back of a couch. I'm not sure that qualifies as understanding."
The bear sent a memory from Matthew's teen years. He'd been exploring the Apennine mountains in Italy, above the city of Reggio di Calabria, because he'd heard stories about shifters there. He'd slipped on a steep hill, and his oso had truly enjoyed the head-over-heels tumble. It clearly felt Sarah's slide over the back of the couch was the same general kind of experience.
Oso, Matthew said with a groan, humans aren't as good at rolling as bears are, and it's different to fall over the back of something flat than down a hill anyway.
This was obviously an angle the bear hadn't considered. It sat silently a moment, then returned to territory it was confident of. She understood.
And in the end, Matt couldn't really argue with that. Sarah hadn't just understood. She'd been dismayed that no one in Virtue had shared the town's secret with her before then. That was more than understanding. That was pretty close to embracing. And she had been worried he might get in trouble for telling her, or that she might be in trouble for knowing.
He had wanted to explain why he was certain neither of them would be in trouble. No one would expect him to keep that kind of secret from his mate. She would be expected to know.
The only unexpected thing was that Matthew himself had no idea how to deal with a fated mate on one hand, and the job he'd worked so hard for on the other. If he'd only found Sarah in the city, it would have been so easy. But although he'd spent his childhood in a village, he'd never imagined living in a small town. He just really thought of himself as a big city person.
"I still have the job in New York to go to," he said quietly. "That hasn't changed."
If a bear had hands to throw upward in exasperation, his oso would have done so. Since it didn't, it could only sigh expressively. She understands, it said. Now you need to.
"Leave it alone, oso," Matthew said softly. "Just leave it alone."
The fact that the bear did somehow didn't reassure Matthew at all.
* * *
He was about halfway down the block, on his way back to the town center, when Sarah's old truck pulled up beside him again and she leaned across the bench seat to roll down the window. "Hi there, stranger."
Matthew, bemused, looked back the way they'd both come, then at her with his eyebrows lifted. "World's fastest bath?"
"Michelle Whelan called right after you left. Tom Barlow called her and said we were asking about the town charter and the old council books. She said he sounded like he had a bee in his bonnet and she wanted to know what I knew. Will you get in, please, so I'm not shouting about what I do know across half of Virtue?" She was still leaning across the seat, which happened to give Matthew a remarkably good view of her cleavage, although he was trying not to stare. Still, getting in to the truck seemed like a waste of the view.
On the other hand, she had a point about not spilling town secrets on the sidewalk. He got in and Sarah let out a huff of satisfaction as she started driving again. "I was obviously able to suggest I knew a lot more than she maybe thought I did, which I couldn't have done half an hour ago, so thank you."
Matthew, uncertainly, said, "Any time?" and she laughed.
"Probably not. Not unless you have a laundry list of bombshells to drop on me." She gave him a side-eyed glance. "Do you?"
You could tell her she's your fated mate! his bear said hopefully.
Matthew, rather loudly, said, "No!" and Sarah's eyebrows arched.
"Well, that's fine, one was enough."
Why not? The bear asked plaintively.
One thing at a time, oso. Shifters are a lot. She took it well, but...God. It's not that I don't want her, oso. She's incredible. But this is her home, and I'm...leaving. There was no way around that, and it just didn't fit into the stories of shifters and their fated mates.
His bear didn't seem to have any better idea of what to do than Matthew did, because it fell silent again as Sarah said, "Anyway, I told her I thought what I did know probably wasn't appropriate for a phone conversation, and she got really...kind of cagey-casual? Like she was pretending really hard it didn't matter but also it obviously did? And she suggested I—we—come over. So we're going over. And know what I think?"
"What do you think?" Matt asked, both fascinated and amused.
"I think maybe most of the people here don't know about the shifters. I've been thinking about it really hard—"
"For the last half hour," Matthew said, still amused, and she gave him a dry look.
"I think fast."
"No, no shade!" He lifted his hands in apology. "You do think fast. You have to, to keep all your plates spinning. I don't know how you do it."
"Practice. Anyway, it's the whole 'a secret known by six people isn't a secret at all' thing. There are about four thousand people in Virtue, maybe five and a half in the whole township. And if there are half a dozen shifter families, I can see how and why they'd all be able to keep their own secrets, but that's like maybe two hundred people, tops."
She shot another glance at Matthew to see if he was following, and at his nod, continued. "And some people must have married into those families and maybe their extended families know about it, but I really don't think most of Virtue does. It's a nice town," she said judiciously, "but there are some not-nice people in it, and I don't think they'd mind selling shifters out if they knew about them."
"La Caminata is only about three hundred people, and as far as I know, mine was the only shifter family there. But I was too little to know whether extended family or neighbors knew about us. Mom hasn't ever talked about whether the neighbors knew. She did, though. You don't keep a secret like that from your mate."
Sarah smiled briefly and shook her head. "Fated mates. I don't know, Matt. That sounds simultaneously amazing and terrifying. The idea that there really is someone out there for you? That it's actual real life magic? Taking the guesswork out of a relationship would be great, but what if you're a—a—I don't know, a super-spy," she said with a laugh. "And your fated mate is from the opposite ideology? Obviously that's not going to apply to most people, but what if it's something simpler? What if you don't agree on some of the big stuff? Having kids? Where to live? How does that even work? Does it mean you're not really 'fated mates,' or that somebody's supposed to change who they are? Or does fate just never match people with incompatible dreams?"
Matt, softly, said, "Honestly, I don't know. I always imagined it would be easy. True love, happily ever after, no questions about it. But I'm not sure anymore."
Sarah smiled again, glancing at him. "Well, I hope you meet your mate and figure it out. Anyway, didn't you say your father was from a small enclave of shifters? How does that square with being the only shifter family in the village?"
"The enclave didn't all live together," Matthew clarified, glad to think about something other than the clash of fate and plans. "Bears like a lot of personal space, and thirty spectacled bears all living in a five mile radius would draw attention. But they lived in the same general area, and knew each other."
"Right. Right, so not unlike Virtue. So there might be a pattern of sorts, is the point. The shifters know each other, but the vast majority of other people don't know about them."
"You're taking this pretty well," Matthew said cautiously.
Sarah split an enormous grin. "You mean, aside from falling off the couch? Look, I'm not saying it exactly explains things, because Virtue's not that weird overall. But it does explain the dual charters and maybe even why the old town record book is missing, and possibly even why the charters have been cut out of the front of the record books. If one of them mentioned the truth...anyway, I like to know stuff," she finished, sounding embarrassed.
"I like to know you," Matthew said, then decided that sounded idiotic and cringed.
Sarah, however, smiled again, a
ll soft and shy and sweet. "I like to know you, too." She'd driven them out of town again, in a different direction this time, but back out into forest. Sounding as if she was trying to return to some degree of professionalism, or at least not sappy teenager-dom, she added, "I never thought about why the founding families all lived in the woods. I guess if they're bears and...what else is common...?"
"Wolves. Big cats. There are some llamas and alpacas down in the Andes. Not that they're common, but...to some degree it depends on the region you're from. Like, I don't think you randomly find giraffe shifters native to North America, or moose in Australia."
Sarah's voice shot upward and broke. "There are moose shapeshifters? Gah, that's scary, moose are freaking huge."
"Well, I've never met one, but...probably? If there are alpacas, there are probably moose."
As they pulled up to a stop sign, Sarah asked, "Capybaras?" hopefully.
"Yes," Matthew said, straight-faced. "Shapeshifting rodents of unusual size do, in fact, exist."
Sarah squealed and took advantage of the fact they were at a stop sign to kick her feet like an over-excited six-year-old. "That's awesome!"
Matt grinned. "Yeah, it kind of is."
"Maybe Michelle Whelan is a capybara," Sarah said cheerfully.
"If she's descended from a family of English settlers, it's not terribly likely," Matthew pointed out.
"Leave me my dreams," she said, still cheerily. "Everybody should get to imagine they'll meet a shapeshifting capybara someday."
"And maybe you will," Matthew said, smiling. "Just probably not today." A few minutes later they pulled into the driveway of a much less imposing house than Tom Barlow lived in, although it was still roughly six times the size of any home Matt had ever lived in. It was more of a New England colonial than a Georgian manor, with high slanted roofs and enormous chimneys and the familiar, narrow-boarded siding that was so popular in colonial houses. "Do all the old families around here live in intimidating houses?"