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I walked between the trees, and a moment later, I let my magic spill out of me. The power took over, pushing against my skin like a giant hand, and I fell to my knees. My body twisted and grew, my bones popping and breaking to rearrange themselves, rebuilding my skeleton. The power I used to shift into a bear stopped the shift from hurting. I didn’t know how the biology worked, the science behind it all. All I knew was that when I shifted, I turned into a large brown bear.
I sniffed the air after the shift and shook myself out before I moved through the trees. I didn’t look for prey—I wasn’t hungry. I just needed to get out, to get away from the human world for a while.
The air was crisp and tasted like the ocean, and it ruffled my thick fur.
I walked through the trees until I found the clearing with the pond in the middle, and I stretched out in the sun. Carletta and I had come here to swim and shift when we were young, playing between the trees as kids, escaping the pressure of who we would have to become.
I could spend all day here, if I didn’t have so much else to take care of. I didn’t hate my job—my various companies kept the money rolling in and funded my club, which was a hobby. I loved being at the club, and I always felt accomplished when my businesses were successful. I covered everything from logistics to real estate, and I had two factories that created super cars.
All of those were great.
Sometimes, I just wanted to get away from it all.
I’d only started feeling like this when Delaney had died. Before then, I’d done everything, working around the clock, barely spending any time with my family. My dad had left behind so many wrongs I’d had to make right, I hadn’t noticed that I was screwing up in other ways.
I hated that I’d done that. I hated that I’d wasted time I could never get back.
When the sun started sinking toward the horizon, it was time to head back home. I shifted back into human form. Doing it always felt like I put on a suit and a mask, but that was what life was like, wasn’t it? As a shifter, as the alpha, it was a lonely road, and no one completely understood the road I had to travel every day.
When I let myself in through the back gate again, I sniffed the air. The atmosphere had changed—magic hung in the air that hadn’t been here before. Someone was at the house.
I took two steps and recognized the magic. The tension that had bunched together in my shoulders bled out again, and I stepped in through the glass doors that led from the garden.
“I thought you would be out there,” Carletta said, smiling when I walked in.
“Have you been here long?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to bug you. I took a nap, and I finished the food you had in your fridge.”
“I was going to eat that,” I said.
Carletta shrugged and flipped her chocolate brown hair over her shoulder. She came to me and hugged me.
“You should have joined me,” I said.
“It’s too far to go on foot.”
I knew she would never shift, and the trek on foot in human form was harder.
“How are you?” I asked her.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I could do with a cup of coffee, though.”
I chuckled and put on the machine to make her a cup of coffee. I wanted something stronger.
While the machine did its thing, I took a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and poured three fingers into a tumbler.
“It’s too early to start drinking.”
“I’m too old for you to still tell me how to live my life.”
Carletta laughed. “I’ll always be your older sister, Jamie.”
I sipped the whiskey while Carletta added sugar to the coffee that was ready. I studied her while she doctored her cup. She had dark circles under her eyes that showed through the makeup she used to try and cover it up, and her shoulders hunched like she was carrying the weight of the world.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Carletta looked up at me. “Does something have to be going on for me to see my baby brother?”
