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He pressed another tile into place.

The morning fire in Primrose Court had struck a different, ancient chord with him. He had smelled the fire before he saw it. Mid-run, the smoke had been a blaring signal to shift into his other form so that he could move faster. His first response in a crisis was always a struggle for self-control. He’d resisted the urge, grounded himself in human form, but all the while his instincts kept scratching at the door. Frustration with the faulty wiring and his own negligence about addressing it sooner made him want to roar. He could still feel the pressure of it building, demanding a release.

Press, space, press.

Sometimes it happened when there was no threat, no anger, no prey giving chase. Sometimes it was just the animal inside wanting out, wanting the chance to breathe, to exist and be acknowledged. There were still some nights when Dan felt like he couldn’t stay indoors. When it was late and the city was quiet and no one was around, the urge to let his inner beast run free could become overwhelming. A nice long jog, till he was too exhausted to think, usually helped with that.

He sat back on his heels.

The completed section now ran ten feet across, black and white, each tile a counterpoint to its mate, a necessary part of the pattern’s progress. The border would give it boundaries, would give the eye a place to rest. But as it stood, unfinished, there was no beginning and no end, no winner and no loser. Just an ongoing negotiation between darkness and light, balanced on a never-ending line.

Dan had been careful for such a long time. Careful in the way that became a habit and then became character and then, if you weren’t paying attention, a cage. He was good at holding back, remaining still. He’d perfected the art of academic distance, using facts as a shield, a border to keep himself safe from the chaos of his dual nature. He had built his adult life on this. There were worse things. But he wondered, not for the first time, whether he had domesticated himself past the point where he could find his way back.

Dan stood up and stretched. Then he moved to the center of the room, away from the tile work, closed his eyes and allowed himself to dissolve into a cloud of molecules, atoms, the essence of a being.

For a split second he hung in the air as little more than a shimmer. A possibility. A disassociation from himself. It wasn’t something he could hold on to. His cells needed to find order, like a magnet seeking polarity. With a quiet whoosh he snapped back into his own skin. He was whole again. But he was not a man.

The shift had been so quick and seamless. As simple, painless and natural a transformation as the last time, even though it had been many years since. Even braced for resistance he found none. He’d been afraid, without fully examining the fear, that his long hiatus might have turned him into something partial, a being stuck between shapes. But the long-restrained animal aspect of him had coalesced and reformed in full, not a hair or whisker out of place.

Dandelion Wilder was not partial. He was, at last, entirely himself, standing on all four feet in the middle of The Wildernest on a Tuesday evening. The relief of it was so large and so quiet that he remained there for several seconds without moving. And then he employed his feline eyes, taking in the tavern from a whole new perspective.

The room was different from down here. Lower, wider, the dark corners revealing more secrets. He could smell the entire building in layers. The old brick bones of the original building beneath the new plaster. The sawdust and adhesive, the ghost of everything the room had been before he came along.

He looked down at the floor.

The penny tiles looked extraordinary from this new perspective. The field he had laid read as something close to optical illusion, the black and white resolving into depth, the pattern pressing forward and receding simultaneously. He had designed it and calculated it from human standing height. Yet it looked most striking from this middle distance.

A memory of his father came to him then, unbidden and intrusive, the way his father always tended to appear, arriving in his body rather than his mind.

The last time he’d shifted.

His father had always assumed Dan had inherited his mother’s weaknesses, along with the fae blood. He’d relished the fact that his offspring were inferior to him, additional subjects that could easily be loomed over. His father had built his life around that assumption. He’d chosen his mates deliberately and accordingly, for their inferiority, and had expected no more from his children.

But he’d been wrong about Dan.

Dan relived that previous shift now. The moment his father’s face had changed. Not to anger, which would have been familiar, but to something his father had no experience managing. Shock, and beneath it fear. The sudden vulnerability of a man who had misled himself for years, understanding the magnitude of his error.

Dan had not meant to shift in front of his father that day, but he’d known it was inevitable. He’d known it would happen, in the same way that one knows a frayed strap will eventually fail. It was only a matter of time. His sudden shift had been so dramatic and unexpected that his father had taken a step back and stumbled.

His father’s new family had been there. That part of the memory, Dan shied away from, even now. The young faces he had not meant to frighten still haunted him.

He’d poured everything into his studies after that, blanketing and insulating himself with unfeeling facts that held the world at a distance. It was a comfort to him to know things in precise ways. A gift to exercise absolute certainty. The mindful pursuits of academia were a balm. He told himself he never needed to shift again. Maybe if it were a life and death situation. But he would not be like his father. He would not use his form to intimidate.

His decision to remain indefinitely in human form had not been wrong. It had been necessary. But underneath the necessity, underneath the shame and fear of becoming the frightful, threatening, narcissistic face he’d abhorred, was something else. He knew he couldn’t keep repressing his lion form, if he was going to be whole. This was just the start. Proof that he could be himself without anyone getting hurt.

Dan shifted back to his human form as gracefully as he’d left it and sat back down to finish tiling.

He was not going to call Sara’s friend. He was not going to go to dinner. There was the border still to lay, there was the bar that could not go in until the floor was finished. There was Chicago. There was more than enough for now.

He finished the final section just before two in the morning and crouched down to look at it.

It was some of his best work. But there was nobody there to congratulate him.

SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF NATURAL MAGIC

Office of Practitioner Wellbeing and Staff Welfare

[DATE REDACTED]