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He swallowed hard, knowing what was coming next.
“You were feral,” she said, slowly.
She didn’t move, but he could tell she was thinking about it. The concept of feral shifters terrified humans. Most had never met one.
“I’m not anymore.”
Silence.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was even, and she held herself perfectly rigid.
She knows she can’t run, he thought.
“Don’t be,” he said.
Daniel reached one hand across the table and slid it over Charlie’s. He could feel the tendons in her wrist, tight and jumpy.
“Was Kade feral?” she asked.
Daniel shook his head.
“Not Kade,” he said.
Charlie finally looked down at their hands, and Daniel thought he saw her shoulders relax a fraction.
Slowly, she turned her hand over in his so they were palm to palm, and warmth spread through his whole body.
“Kade saved you,” she said.
Daniel could feel her pulse under his fingertips, strong despite everything, and it almost made him dizzy.
“I was the first one,” he said. “He’d just gotten his discharge from the army, and I think he was in a pretty bad place. He found out about me, somehow, someone told him that there was a shifter in really bad shape, and somehow he decided that since he was in bad shape, too, he’d come talk me out of it.”
“That’s an insane thing to decide,” Charlie said.
Daniel smiled, tracing circles on the inside of her wrist, his heart skipping beats.
“Kade makes decisions very quickly and very firmly,” he said. “And somehow, he decided I was his project. So he tracked me down, found me in the woods, wrestled me to the ground, and shifted back to human.”
Charlie’s eyebrows went up.
“He knew my name and he wasn’t afraid of me,” Daniel went on.
He paused.
“In retrospect, I don’t think he was afraid of anything then,” he said. “I think part of him wished he were dead, and it made him fearless. But he got me to shift back.”
“And now you’re mates.”
“From that day.” He tapped the inside of her wrist, then took her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the back of her knuckles. “Kade likes to rescue people, he likes to fix things. He likes to feel useful and like people need him. That’s his curse.”
“What’s yours?”
“You know mine.”
“That you were feral?”
