Page 26 of Bear My Heart

A ghost of a smile flickered over Shanti's face. "I doubt it."

There wasn't much Pete could say to that, so he just shifted into a bear.

CHAPTER 13

Shanti had seen the cat shifters change shape, so on one level she knew it was possible and believed that Peter Baranov was going to shift into a grizzly bear.

On another level, it was one thing to watch someone become a very large house cat, and an entirely different thing to watch someone become a very large grizzly bear.

She was pretty sure the noise she made was laughter. It wasn't quite a shriek, anyway. Her hands did cover her mouth as if by magic, muffling the sound, but she made it again and was more confident, that time, that it was a giggle.

Peter was a very large bear, even if she didn't have much to compare him to. He could almost look her in the eye, and Shanti was fairly sure that regular brown bears weren't five feet tall at the shoulder. His head was absurdly massive, and his black eyes, almost lost in the darkness of his brown fur were large and intelligent and focused on her. She could tell he was deliberately holding very still, which was good because there was almost nowhere he could go without crashing into something. He had extremely round soft-looking ears, and claws that she decided not to think about. Instead she put her hand out questioningly, then inched forward to sink her fingers into the dense, bristly fur of his forehead.

It wasn't nearly as soft as she expected. Neither were his ears, although they were softer. After a few seconds, Shanti breathed, "Wow," and backed off again. "Okay, I…wow. I believe you. I did anyway, after seeing the cats, but…wow. Can you talk this way?"

Peter swayed his head in a 'no,' then shifted to human again still shaking his head. "I can understand you, but not speak."

Shanti gasped, then laughed again. "Wow. Wow, that is...that is very startling. It's much more startling than a cat. Wow. Okay." She went to push the coffee table back into place, feeling it thunk into the divots it had made in the carpet, and sat on the couch, still staring at Peter. "I don't know what to say. You turn into a bear! How? Not how like…it's obviously magic, but…how? Do you just think about being a bear? If I thought about being a bear hard enough, would I become one?"

Peter smiled and came to sit down on the couch a few feet away from her, giving her space that she appreciated but wasn't sure she needed, and turning to face her with reassuringly open body language. "No, you're not a shifter. It doesn't just happen. It's usually a bloodline thing. My whole family are bear shifters." He tilted his head, looking thoughtful. "And I guess I do just think about it and become a bear. I've never thought about that, before. It's as natural as breathing to me."

Shanti said, "Wow," for what she thought was the fortieth time. "Where did the magic come from? I didn't think magic was real."

"I don't know if other kinds of magic are real, but we are. But nobody really knows where we came from. There have been shifters as long as there have been people, as far as any of us can tell. There are all kinds of stories about people taking on animal aspects through shamanic practices, and gods who trick or punish people by making them into animals." Peter shrugged one big shoulder. "I guess part of me has always thought those stories probably had some truth in them."

"Oh! Yes, of course. There's a lot of shamanism in Buddhism. They're both animistic, I mean. It makes sense, is what I'm saying. How wonderful," Shanti added more softly. "How wonderful that it's real. And Virtue is full of shifters? I feel like I should have known that."

"Like Luke said, we don't advertise it. It's dangerous." Peter hesitated long enough to spark Shanti's curiosity.

She scooted closer, eyebrows drawing down. "What's wrong?"

"Probably nothing. I just learned that some of us were shifting in public to help with a rescue effort a few months ago. There hasn't been any real sign that it's gone…" Peter made a small motion with one hand. "Viral, for lack of a better word. But it's still nerve-wracking. And it's the last thing I wanted you to have to deal with when I told you about myself."

"Is that—no, it's not. It's not what you wanted to talk about privately, is it? That has something to do with…" Shanti bit her lip, remembering how comfortable she'd felt with Peter from the moment they'd met. Realizing that even now, with his extraordinary secret revealed, she still felt exactly the same way: like she'd come home, somehow. "Sabrina said she knew what it was like. Love at first sight. How overwhelming it was. She called it fate. Is that what…is that what's happening between us?"

Peter's eyebrows shot upward, and a glow of hope seemed to warm his whole being, although he also spluttered, "She shouldn't have said that."

"I got that impression," Shanti said a bit dryly. "The cat ladies⁠—"

Both of them burst into laughter, with Shanti saying, "I didn't mean it like that!"

"No, I know, but they are, aren't they? They're leaning into it. The Caturday Bookstore. I wonder if they are cat ladies."

"I don't know," Shanti said, mystified. "Do shifters have pets? Would you have pet bears?"

"Bears do not tame easily," Peter replied with amusement. "But cats have been pets for a long time. And yes, we do, although some animals really don't like shifters. It can get complicated. Do you have any pets?"

"No, not even a goldfish. But the cat ladies looked pretty shocked and dismayed when Sabrina mentioned fate. I got the impression she'd broken the rules somehow."

Peter sighed and nodded. "She jumped the gun, at least. She shouldn't have assumed you knew anything, or that I was a shifter, or…well. We're really careful for a reason, but in her defense, shifters and their mates usually know when a true human is a shifter's mate and safe to talk to. It's a kind of sixth sense that lets us build a community. I've never actually heard of anybody's mate telling the wrong person about us."

"Back up," Shanti whispered. "Explain mates. Because it seems pretty clear, but also…"

This time Peter's sigh was even deeper. Shanti scooted closer, offering her hand and curling her fingers around his when he accepted its. Warmth spilled through her at the touch, and she simply wanted to crawl closer to him, into his arms, into his lap, and nestle up quietly so she could listen to his heartbeat as he spoke. But that seemed too forward, so she only tightened her fingers around Peter's and waited.

"I didn't have a good plan for what I was going to say to you," he said eventually. "I just knew I didn't want to rush it. You seem pretty reserved and cautious and I didn't want to throw too much at you."

Shanti ducked her head. "I am. Risk-averse. But we're in the deep end now, aren't we? So go ahead and explain it."