Chapter Eight
Rob was cooking a big pot of pasta and Ethan was making a salad. To help out, I figured I’d get the washing machine going. I wandered around the various rooms picking up everyone’s dirty clothes and towels, sorting and then starting a load of darks.
We ate dinner quietly, no one wanting to bring up what had happened unless I did. As I watched them eat, I realized that the dynamics in the room had changed. I wasn’t angry with them anymore. I was sad about my parents, but I didn’t feel the rage that had made me lash out at them. For some weird reason, Rob and Ethan seemed to care about me. And even stranger, I was starting to care about them, too.
“It was my anger that got me up that tree,” I said to no one in particular. “I was mad at Ethan for acting so smug.”
Ethan raised his eyebrows in pretended shock. “Smug? Moi?”
I ignored him and asked Rob, “Is that what you meant about using my anger for a purpose?”
“It’s not just your anger. It’s also your determination to succeed and your ability to focus on a task. You go after a goal without hesitation. Your strength at that moment, physically and mentally, is increased tenfold. Most shifters stay at an even balance, they’re this strong or this fast all the time, but you have these incredible spurts of power. I wish you could have watched yourself climbing up that tree.” Rob looked at me like a proud teacher. “There was nothing human about what you accomplished today.”
“Yeah, she’s definitely unbalanced.” Ethan laughed. I threw a roll at him and he caught it without even looking, taking a slow bite to taunt me. “Yum. Thanks.” He licked his lips.
“Does Ethan still get doses of the crazy serum? ’Cause he seems kind of unbalanced, too.” Bite me, I mouthed in his direction.
“No, he’s finished with that. Now he’s here working on his control, which occasionally is sorely lacking.” Rob sighed and shook his head good naturedly as Ethan chomped at the air in response to my taunt. “Speaking of the serum, you’ll be getting another dose tomorrow morning so you need to get a good night’s sleep. You’ll be transitioning into your animal and that takes a lot of energy.”
I slumped in my chair and thought about what tomorrow would bring. Certain animals were definitely more appealing than others. If I were a seagull I could fly off this island and go home. Sadness washed over me in a wave, my throat burning. No one waited for me. I had no home. I tamped down the tears and thought about what Ethan had said about me being some kind of large cat. That would be cool, I guess. I mean seagulls didn’t have sharp claws and I’d already shifted my hands. I was kind of hoping there were no shapeshifter giant sloths.
I threw the load of dark laundry into the dryer and started a load of lights. “What day is it?” I asked Rob who was putting away the leftovers while Ethan did the dishes, all the while humming “Go the Distance.”
“Today is Tuesday,” Rob answered. Without comment, I grabbed a throw blanket, walked out the front door and sat on the wooden bench on the porch. It was chilly out, but I wanted to think. Tomorrow I’d turn seventeen. Two weeks ago when I thought about my birthday I’d imagined eating cake with Justin and Maggie and a few of my friends from school, then maybe going out to a movie together. What movie had I wanted to see? I couldn’t remember.
I was supposed to be graduating in a couple of weeks, getting out early because of all the extra classes I’d taken, a lot of them college level. I’d be missing the ceremony and the typical parties afterward, most of which I wouldn’t have been invited to anyway. Maggie and Jason would have looked at me with pride as I got my diploma.
I pulled my feet up onto the bench and hugged my knees, wiping away a few more tears as I quietly mourned the life I was leaving behind.
But as the sadness played out with each salty drop, there was a stew of new feelings emerging: excitement, anticipation, fear, of course, but also hope. Throughout my life I’d balanced on a wire, dangling between normal and different. If I could turn shifter and be accepted into a community of people just like me, maybe I could learn to like who I was.
And tomorrow I’d be turning into an animal.
Rob sat next to me on the bench. I hadn’t heard him come through the door.
“Do you know who my birth parents were?” This is the question I’d wanted to ask all day, ever since he mentioned that there were shifter communities. Maybe my parents lived in one of them.
“After we see what you shift into tomorrow, I can put you in touch with someone who can help you search.”
“Could they still be alive?”
He hesitated. “I’m sorry, Jackie, but I don’t know.”
“What happened to you when you first changed?”
His eyes lost their sparkle and his mouth thinned out as he remembered. “I was eighteen and living in a town in Southern Oregon with a family who had adopted me when I was an infant. I was pretty happy and looking forward to graduation and college. I had a younger sister who was also adopted as a baby. At the time she was fifteen and had gotten hooked up with a bad bunch of kids. She’d been missing for about 24 hours when I found her drunk in a rundown house. I grabbed her to take her home and this guy she was with punched me and started kicking me while I was down on the ground. His two friends joined in and I could hear my sister telling them to stop. One of them started punching and kicking her too. Suddenly my clothes were ripping and I was changing into a monster, or so I thought.
“I had no control over my leopard. I attacked them in front of my sister, then ran out the door leaving her collapsed and crying on the floor. There were woods nearby and I headed there. It was late and I thought no one had seen me. I ran all night until I passed out from exhaustion.“ Rob’s face paled and his hands clenched in his lap, his knuckles turning white.
“In the morning I found myself back in human form chained up. I was now a captive of a man who ran a very different kind of program than I do. He explained what being a shifter was in only the briefest terms, then never explained anything again. He brought me food and water and left me in a boiling hot cell all day. He wouldn’t tell me if my sister had survived and I couldn’t remember how badly she’d been hurt. He beat me when I complained and continuously dared me to change again. When I finally did, he shot me with tranquilizer darts and beat me repeatedly. He didn’t give a crap about training me; he was just into this whole power trip. At the full moon I found out he wasn’t a shifter; he was a werewolf who enjoyed torturing shifters. I almost died that night. After three weeks, a group of shifters confronted him and convinced him by force to allow me to go with them. I found out later there were two other shapeshifters trapped in cages on the compound. They didn’t survive the beatings.”
I quickly wiped away a tear with my sleeve before he noticed. I couldn’t imagine what he must have felt, cut off from his family, thinking of himself as a vicious monster. Rob had been kind to me, putting a lot of effort into easing my fears. I reached out to squeeze his arm and he patted my hand with one of his.
“I was wild at first. For everyone’s safety, they kept me in a safe room. They taught me the basics of living as a shifter and how to cope with the anger. I learned to trust them and they helped me gain full control. I was free to leave, but I’ve stayed with them by choice. Maya, she’s on the Shifter Council, noticed that I had this calming effect on others and recommended that I become a recruiter. At first I declined the offer, but,” he hesitated, “for various reasons I ended up changing my mind.
“I eventually returned to my hometown to find out if my parents and sister were all right. They were fine, although they’d been told that I was dragged off and killed by the same wild animal that had almost killed the other men. None of them remembered anything from that night. Garrett scrubbed their memories once more and I never spoke to my family again.”
We sat silently, both of us lost in our own memories of a life left behind. I finally crawled into bed around midnight, feeling sad, yet somehow hopeful.
Rebirth - Book 1 Rogues Shifter Series Page 8