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Almost reflexively, he set the baby down and shifted to smell again. In his polar bear form, it confirmed what he already knew. The fur on his bear body stood on end, and he instinctually howled. Nora and Hannah stopped throwing their snowballs and came running.
“What’s wrong? Is the baby sick?”
He’s…he’s…he stammered. Even in his own mind, he couldn’t organize his thoughts. He quickly shifted as Nora grew more concerned.
“What? Hudson, is he hurt?” Nora bent down to scoop him up, but Hudson cut her off by grabbing the baby gently. He stood and raised Peter into the air. “Peter is a shifter! Oh, Nora, Hannah. He’s a shifter!”
Every fiber of Hudson’s being tingled. The vibrations coming off his little boy, plus the unique shifter scent, made it a certainty. Whatever gene combination between Nora and him …love plus shifter genes …had mixed inside their boy. It took being outside in the cold for the DNA to mature and for Hudson to sense his boy turning into an animal shifter.
Nora reached up and took her boy into her arms. She looked him over carefully.
“How can you tell? He looks the same, Hudson.”
“But he smells like me!”
Nora sniffed Peter. Hannah came closer and also sniffed. “All I smell is a dirty diaper.”
A scent no one in the family had picked up before …the mix of musky earth and the sweet scent of tree sap. The signature smell of a polar bear shifter.
“He’s here. The next in line to the clan. Our baby boy will lead the clan far into the future. The lineage is held. We did it, Nora. Your love and my genes. We made the impossible possible.”
Nora held Peter while Hudson and Hannah threw snow at each other. The baby clapped his little hands and merrily laughed. Hudson wondered if that was what the little boy had been cooing about all along.
“Hudson, so what you told me long ago, it can really happen? Just through love and genes?”
“It can if the love is pure and everlasting, yes. Elders from many generations before talked of such a combination. It has ended up in our lore. Some think that is how it all began, with the love of a good human woman who cared after an abandoned baby polar bear. And that original baby bear went on to father shifters. The birth of a man who belonged in both worlds and could return to his bear roots.”
“Shifters, humans, fur, or skin. I don’t care how we started, my love. I care how we have ended up. A loving family, from now until the end of time.” Nora reached up and kissed Hudson.
“Nora, little Peter, and my dear, sweet Hannah. That we are.”
