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I almost laughed, but then I remembered the iron seal recognizing my fingerprint, Marion's face going gray, and the photograph of my mother with the same white streak in her hair that I had.

"My mother," I said. "Was she one?"

Tamsin's expression softened. "If you were summoned here, probably. But it could have come from your father instead. Or from both of them."

Something in me had already begun to believe her. I didn’t even know why. But the part that frightened me most was that Marion had known all of this was real.

Tamsin turned another page. "According to this, there are six Kindreds. Pack is for wolves and foxes. Pride is for big cats. Den covers bears, badgers, and most solitary or burrowing land mammals. Flight is for birds. Hoard is for dragons and other scaled shifters, and Tide is for animals that live in the water."

I looked at her. "Dragons?"

"That was exactly my reaction." She gave me a small grin. "Apparently there aren't many left."

Then she held out her hand. Her palm was damp despite the cold wind.

"I'm an otter," she said, and there was unmistakable pride in her voice. "At this point, I've decided otters are probably the best option."

I looked at her hand differently now.

"You really turned into an otter."

"A very confused otter. I spent ten minutes trying to get out of the bathtub, then another twenty hiding behind the toilet because I had absolutely no idea what was happening."

I laughed before I could stop myself, though the sound came out more nervous than amused.

"Two days later, a woman from the Council found me and gave me this packet," Tamsin went on. "Apparently, most shifters change for the first time when they're teenagers. If it happens after twenty-one, they call you a Latecomer. There are all sorts of charming assumptions attached to that. Weak blood, lesser inheritance, that kind of thing."

"But you did shift."

"Eventually."

I looked down at my hands. "I didn't."

That was the part neither of us could get around. Tamsin had an animal form and three weeks of undeniable proof that something had changed inside her. I had a black letter, a summons, and no evidence at all that I was anything other than what I had always thought I was.

"So I'm not a Latecomer."

"You don't know that," she said. "And apparently neither do they, or they wouldn't be dragging you all the way to Ironmoor for an assessment."

"And Ironmoor is what, exactly?"

Tamsin looked back through the packet before answering. "A school, sort of. It's for adults who need to learn control and Council law. After that, some people become Enforcers. Everyone else gets registered and sent home."

She ran her finger farther down the page and stopped.

"Sometimes with a monitoring cuff."

"A tag?"

"That's what it sounds like. The packet just uses nicer language."

I thought again about the wording on my envelope. Assessment and instruction.

"What happens if you've been summoned and you've never shifted at all?"

Tamsin opened her mouth, then seemed to think better of whatever she had been about to say.

"That part isn't in here."