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I make it through until the morning after the shower we take together silently but the moment we’re dressed, I look at him and say, “I don’t want to lose this.”
“I don’t either,” he replies.
“If you really meant that, you wouldn’t be lying to me!” I shout. “Don’t you understand? I can’t! I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. I want to. For fuck’s sake, I want to, but I can’t.”
“It’s nothing to do with your job.”
“Yeah. Right. So, a group of firefighters all have a secret that a state corruption investigator needs to overlook because a guy she’s falling in love with says it’s no big fucking deal!”
He looks like he’s been slapped. “I’m falling in love with you, too,” he says. “Get your shoes on. I’ll show you the secret.”
I break about a dozen rules by putting my shoes on and following him to his car. I break another one by allowing him to drive me out of town without questioning him. I’m not worried about getting hurt—whatever else Rory might be hiding; he’s not hidingthat.
Still, as each minute brings us closer and closer to the revelation, I feel panic building in me. By the time we reach the ranch, I am trembling with fear, even as I note that he wasn’t lying about going to a ranch, at least.
He parks the car and waves to an elderly, grizzled man sitting on the porch. The older man waves back and I say, “Is that your friend?”
“No, that’s his uncle,” Rory responds. “He visits sometimes.”
He leads me away from the house to a gate. On our side of the gate is a wide field dotted with shrubs and bushes around which hundreds of goats browse lazily. On the other side is a much rougher field, with rocks and dirt mounds and trees scattered among the brush. In the distance, I see the trees condense until they grow closely together like the rest of the forest.
Rory begins undressing and in the midst of my fear, I feel disbelief. Really? He can’t possibly think I’m going to screw him right now.
“Hey,” I say. “No more sex until you tell me.”
“I’m not trying to have sex with you,” he says.
“Then what are you trying to do?” I ask.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” I retort.
Then it does.
Everything suddenly makes perfect sense.
The lies, the secrets, and the suspicion from the other firefighters at the company. It all becomes crystal clear when Rory transforms and in place of the man I’ve come to love, I see an enormous, majestic white bear.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rory
Her eyes grow wide at the sight of me and she freezes. It’s not a freeze of fear. I can tell that by looking at her but even if I couldn’t, I don’t smell fear. She smiles slowly and says, “That’s the secret. That’s what you’re all hiding.” She reaches forward and strokes my head. It’s a remarkable thing because she doesn’t show fear. Most humans can’t look at a shifter in animal form and not be afraid we’ve lost all our humanity and our memories. Sure, our animal side is far stronger. Some shifters, like wolves and jaguars, feel far more aggressive. They have to work to control themselves as animals. Most of us feel pulled to the animalistic urges in one way or another. Me, the pull is toward swimming, really. If I shift near a body of water, I’m going to swim whether or not it’s prudent.
“Now I get it,” she says as she strokes my cheek. “If your secret gets out, everyone will know. It’s not a bad secret but you’ll get a few protestors camped out calling you freaks.” She lifts her other hand so now she has one on either side of my head. Her arms are still more widely apart than they were when she had them wrapped around my human body. “But that’s not your problem,” she says. “You’re more afraid of the do-gooders. The governor will make a big speech. You guys will be stuck doing a press junket. Then, there will be a bunch of people saying it’s not fair you’re all in the same Company and they’ll try to integrate you all. That will add a requirement for disclosure of your nature to the job description.”
That thought hadn’t even occurred to me. She’s right, though. We’d be expected to register in one way or another. Maybe we wouldn’t be required to register but there would be incentives and disincentives. “So, there’s a company of firefighters who are all shifters,” she says, “and that’s the big secret.” She smiles and says, “If you guys had just told me, I wouldn’t have had to keep digging. The only thing that kept me investigating was knowing you were all hiding something.”
She strokes my face and the way she looks at me is so filled with fascination and wonder. It’s actually quite thrilling for me. I don’t know what I expected. Although there are humans who know I’m a shifter, that’s usually because they find out while in relationships with other shifters. She’s the first human I show my true self personally. Rather than add a bunch of questions and fears to her countenance, it seems to eliminate them. She leans forward and presses her lips to my nose in a soft kiss. “I love your polar bear,” she whispers, “but right now what I want is the naked man that became him.”
She seems more shocked with how quickly I return to human form than she was when I became my bear. That doesn’t stop her from putting her hands and lips on me, though.
EPILOGUE: FOUR MONTHS LATER
Tabitha
“Oh Rory, yes!” I cry as my body is wracked with my fourth orgasm in fifteen minutes. Even for us, that number is impressive and I have a feeling we’ll finally break the record today.
