Undercover Bear: Portland: Shane
Page 8
The men around the around the table nodded. “I'd like to say that’s what we have them for, but the captain doesn’t trust anybody but us. You know how some shifters are about humans. They just don't feel like they do as good of a job. We all have our skills, I guess.”
I forgot about that. Shane and his entire unit were just like mine. All shifters. But unlike me and my guys, they were all bears. Something about the Pacific Northwest really brought us together. I think it was the fact that the world was a little bit more open to us out here. Ever since they had passed the shifter registration legislation, we'd been out in the open. That didn't mean that everybody accepted us the same, though. Seattle and Portland were known for offering jobs for shifters specifically. They provided a catchall when no one else wanted us. I appreciated that about our little town.
Even though most of the detectives were just like me, and certainly all the guys around this table, sometimes we didn't trust humans as much as our own kind and vice versa. It wasn't about what anyone thought really, we were just two different types of people. But at the end of the day, we all had one thing in common on the force: catch the bad guy.
I thought about their captain and his distrust of humans. It probably came from somewhere. I remembered when I had decided to become a police officer. My mother had obviously known my entire life that I was a shifter, and when I was old enough to find out what had happened to my father, she explained everything to me.
Wolves had to turn with the moon or they would literally claw themselves out of their skin, and then you had the bears, who could sleep for days and not eat without noticing. Those men were larger, not quite as fast as wolves, but sometimes with better instincts. And they preferred to keep to themselves. For a short time when I was still in uniform, I worked with a pack of wolves. They knew their stuff, but they were pain in the ass to keep up with. That pack mentality was a very real thing. I definitely preferred working with bears.
Then there were people like me. The big cats. I was a tiger. Tigers were a bit different than other types of shifters. We could turn at will and hide our true nature pretty easily. My father had been a tiger as well. Unfortunately, that was why he was killed.
I was nine when my mother finally told me the truth about his death. About how a young girl had been slain. That was before the legislation had been passed, and shifters were blamed for everything. Just like in any other society, people followed the person who was the loudest, the biggest bully on the playground, even if he was wrong. The mayor of the tiny town that we lived in outside of Seattle had been one of those assholes, and he blamed shifters for every problem that our little town ever had. Everyone knew about my father, as he didn't hide our life like it was some secret. And so when the little girl died, they went on a hunt. Took the shotguns and acted like he was just some escaped tiger from the zoo, completely wild. But that was not the way shifters were at all. We still had our human stream of consciousness even as the animal. We were separate from them, but still the same. He had control.
They shot my father in cold blood in an alley when he became trapped. He was even shifting back into human, trying to explain his innocence, to make them listen. It was a tragedy that shook our community to the core. Only a few friends from our community came to his funeral, and a lot of the kids from school weren’t even allowed to attend. I was devastated. But that was what put me on the path to becoming a police officer. I wouldn't let any shifters or any innocent people ever get treated that way again. I would fight for what was right for all people, regardless of if they were like me or not. So that was what I decided to do. I graduated high school and got an associate’s degree in criminal justice and then went immediately into the force.
It was just me and Ma then. I didn’t make time for any other women in my life. I was fine that it was just me and her. I didn’t need anyone else. To be honest, tigers had a little bit of a type A personality. I was always striving to be perfect. I couldn't help it. And even though shifters were out in the open, it wasn't like I was going to find another tiger like me. We are the rarest shifters of all, and there were only a couple hundred of us in the entire United States. And just because I was out in public didn't mean that everyone was. My father and his life had taught me that that was okay. I couldn't blame people for not wanting to tell everyone their biggest secret. Something that people might go after them for. In this day and age, people didn’t need another reason. Not when you could be the villain in someone’s eyes for just living. Humans did that enough to each other, so why make it worse? Sometimes being a shifter wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.
While I was sitting and looking at the paperwork, I realized that this was probably the longest time I'd been away from my mother since I was a kid. I got to go to a summer camp once before my father died. That was it. We'd been together ever since. She was one of those great Italian mothers who always wanted to feed you and do nice things for your friends. She was amazing like that. I remembered when she knitted scarves for Gavin, Harrison, and I for Christmas last year. They wore them to work every single day for a month, just in case she saw them. Those guys didn't have family like I did, so I appreciated her. They understood that she was special.
I took a swig from my coffee and looked around me again; the group had fallen silent. I spent more time sighing and in silence in the past week than I had in my entire life. There was nothing here, and we just needed to admit it to ourselves.
“Guys, we've got to look at this from another angle. We’re getting nowhere here.”
“Yeah, I think you're right. Maybe you should just go back to Seattle, Gio. If we find something, we’ll be in touch.”
I ran my fingers through my dark hair. Finally, the escape I had been looking for. Just then, I saw Shane's eyes narrow as he turned toward the door. Someone was coming, but he wasn't happy with the news that they were bringing. His hearing was impeccable; I had never seen anything like it. He knew exactly what was going on before anything actually happened.
The door opened and the captain stood in front of us, holding a cell phone in his hands.
“Well, gentlemen, I think we got the break in the case we’d been looking for.”
Finally.
Get the rest of Undercover Tiger: Sarge!
Undercover Bear Series
Undercover Bear: Harrison
Undercover Bear: Gavin
Undercover Bear: Grady
Undercover Tiger: Sarge
The End
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