AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Have you ever seen a computer before?” I asked.
He gave his head a little shake. “No.”
“Do you want to know what it does?”
He scooted a little closer. “Sure.”
I did my best to explain the magic of the internet. He seemed interested enough to learn as I checked news stories and live feeds for any sign of Matty, but I wasn’t sure if he really understood it.
“Do you know if Lily had any luck finding my cell phone?”
Smart work there Never. Because a guy who’s never heard of a computer will totally know what a cell phone is.
I held up my hands in the vague size of it. “It’s about yay big, black, with a shiny screen?” I tapped the computer screen.
He lifted his chin. “Um, there was something...” He stood and crossed the room, grabbing something off the counter by the toaster. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
Thank Pete for small favors. “Yeah. Would you mind bringing it over here? I would do it, but I have a feeling Lily might tie me down if I try to do too much.”
His smile crinkled the skin around eyes. “Sure thing.”
He prowled across the room in clothes I belatedly realized I’d never seen before. Royal blue basketball shorts, a faded gray t-shirt that fit a little too tight, and running shoes that were cheap enough they didn’t have a logo.
When he handed me my phone, I motioned to him, up and down. “Where’d you get the new clothes?”
“Lily. She took off for a little while early this morning and came back with these.”
Hmm. “She didn’t say where she was going?”
He shook his head. “Just something about a donation bin?”
Clever. I mean, she could’ve taken a hundred bucks from my admittedly limited cash stash in my room. Hellhound Lily had seen me adding to and taking from that stash a thousand times. Instead, she’d filched almost new looking clothes from a secondhand bin.
“When you’re shifted, do you think the same way you do in human form?” I asked.
He sank down next to me, careful not to move me too much. “It’s not the same. You still have logic and reason, to an extent, but there’s a lot more instinct involved. The animal part of a shifter will always be more primal than the human part.”
“But you still understand what’s happening around you?”
He nodded.
“What kind of shifter are you?” I held up a hand. “Only answer if it’s okay for me to ask that. I don’t know anything about shifter etiquette.”
He hit me with another one of those defense-crushing smiles. “It’s fine to ask. My animal is a tiger, the same as everyone in my clan.”
“Holy shit. Are you serious? Like arealtiger? With stripes and fur and all that?” Meaning deadly teeth and claws.
Instead of answering me directly, he let out a low, terrifying growl through barely parted lips. Every fine hair on my fragile human body stood on end at the sound.
“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, trying to think of how to word what I was about to say. “But that was terrifying.”
His very human and enormously comforting chuckle replaced the growl. “That’s the point.
“Wait a minute.” My brain was super slow putting pieces together. “You said everyone in your clan is a tiger? Does that include Lily?”
His expression fell a little, becoming guarded. “I don’t know what happened to her in this world. I tried asking. She wouldn’t talk about it. But I can tell you, as someone who has seen her shift a thousand times, what she was when I arrived in this world was nothing like her real animal.”
“But you knew it was her. How?”
