Bronson put his head in his hands. “I knew you were lying.”
“No.” I leaped up and stood behind the armchair so as not to appear too intimidating. “Not about keeping a panther. I’m not and have never done that. But I’m not a photographer.”
My mate crossed his arms and his expression said, “Nothing you say can change my mind.”
I had to show and not tell, so I told him to stand on the back deck and watch. “You’ll be safe up there.” Hmmm, the safe part wasn’t going to put his mind at ease. “Or close the sliding doors and watch from inside.”
Not waiting for an answer, I took off and raced into the back garden. Flinging off my clothes, I made sure he could see me and told my panther to take his fur.
My beast was so proud to show himself to our mate, and he stood still with his head arched. Bronson walked backward—no, he staggered from the deck inside, and his face matched the white paint on the walls.
How had I expected this to go when he’d just been confronted with the impossible?
I took my skin and pulled on my jeans before racing to the front door as my mate was leaving. He reared away from me but didn’t lock himself in his car.
“You and the panther, you’re the same person.” He tugged at his hair. “I don’t understand how that’s possible, but I witnessed you changing into an animal.”
As best I could, I gave him a twenty-second rundown on shifters and our history.
He rubbed both eyes with his fists as if he were trying to unsee what I’d shown him.
“I gotta go.”
“Please stay, and we can discuss this over a meal… or something.” The something I’d envisioned had faded and was clinging on with little hope.
“Sorry, I can’t.” He headed for the car, holding his keys like a weapon. “I need to think about what this means for the world and humans.”
Oh gods, he was going to do what I feared more than him calling the authorities. He was going to reveal our existence to humans.
“But I’ll k-keep your s-secret.”
And then he was gone, and I was alone except for my beast, standing at the front gate as though I didn’t know where I belonged. And as Bronson had rejected me, I didn’t.
8
BRONSON
Of all the secrets and possible lies that had flitted through my head, Lincoln turning into a freaking wild animal was not one of them. If wild was the correct term. I hadn’t stuck around long enough to know if he was a panther body with a Lincoln brain or if he was a full-on, “I will eat you for dinner” wild animal.
I hadn’t stuck around for anything. I went into full-on panic mode and booked it out of there like my life depended on it. I couldn't imagine how that had made Lincoln feel.
And the messed-up part was my initial panic, the one that had me running out the door, hadn’t been because he grew fur. No, it had been that stupid caption on that stupid picture he sent me that stupid night.I’ll show you mine, if you’ll show me yours.Was that the equivalent of sending a nude? Had he sent a “nude” to his ex that day and had it end up with me? The thought of that possibility had me wanting to puke.
There was a whole lot to unpack about that, and I wanted to ignore all of it. Once again, I was getting green eyes over the ex of someone I had no right to be possessive of. We weren’t even dating. Our relationship had been one hundred percent aboutme getting the panther I’d thought was held in captivity to a safe place.
It wasn’t until I got home and was standing under the hot shower that I found some clarity. I’d been trying to figure out how everything had gone so terribly wrong when my focus started leaning more toward the fact that Lincoln wasn’t human and less toward his ex and my feelings involving that.
Lincoln was a cat. A huge-ass cat. At least part of the time he was.
As I fled, I’d promised I’d never tell, that I’d keep his secret, and I meant it. But as time ticked on, that didn’t feel like enough. Sure, he’d made a foolish-assed mistake sending a picture of himself. It didn’t matter who it was to… that kind of thing shouldn’t be on a digital footprint, that was for sure.
That picture answered a question I had as to if he was the only one out there. Obviously, he wasn’t, because “show me yours” meant that his ex was also a panther. Or maybe another animal? Were there others out there? Every time I scratched away at what happened, I got more and more questions.
It had been about a week since I ran off on him, and the first day, he didn’t contact me at all… not that I blamed him. I ran off and treated him like a freak.
If only he knew I had been the freak in that situation, letting my stupid jealousy get the best of me. I couldn’t say for sure that I wouldn’t have reacted the same had jealousy not reared its ugly head, that I wouldn’t have panicked over the fact that he was a man one minute and on four paws with a long tail the next. I had no idea how that would’ve played out.
That day, I’d struggled with a lot of what had happened. But what was hardest for me was not hearing from him. I missed him, as illogical as that was. I barely knew him, and we’d spent less than a handful of hours together, total, since we met. Still, I longed to have him by my side. And it only got worse as the days ticked by.
