Page 54 of Not Your Ordinary Shifter

For a while she’d had high hopes. She was doing it! She was finally going to find her answers! Those hopes slowly died over the weeks and then months she’d lived in town.

Sitting in her empty apartment was too much after the day she’d had, and after she’d eaten, there wasn’t much else to do. Finally she sighed. “Okay, I’m just… I’m overtired and stressed. Maybe a walk will help.”

Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t a walk she needed. But she’d pretend it was, putting her shoes back on and grabbing a sweater against the evening chill. Outside her apartment building, she picked a direction and started walking.

It didn’t matter which way she went; she was always going to end up at the same place. Lying to herself didn’t make that any less true. Without deliberate planning, her feet found the hiking trail and took her to the lake.

Like her distance vision, her ability to see in the dark was much better than normal. It made following the unlit path easy enough and once she broke through the trees there was plenty of moonlight to see by.

The lake was beautiful and almost immediately the stress she’d been carrying evaporated. Being near open water always helped. The dark depths called to her, encouraging her to swim. She hesitated, but after the day she’d had… she needed it.

She slipped out of her clothes, leaving them piled on the shore, and gave in to her urges.

Chapter

Four

Family were the people who were supposed to love you no matter what. They were the ones who welcomed you, when you had no place else to go. They were also the single biggest source of stress in his life, but he supposed that was just part of the balance.

Jacob followed the gentle curve of the long, graveled drive, enjoying his last moments of peace. When the house was finally in sight, he winced. There were at least a dozen cars there, which meant a mob scene was waiting for him inside.

He ignored the urge to turn around and go back the way he came, but it wasn’t easy. With a long sigh, he pulled the rental in at the end of the line of parked vehicles. He wasn’t going to sit out there and stall because it was a sure bet that they’d heard him pull in.

Getting out casually, as if he wasn’t stressed, was the best plan, but when he opened the door and stepped out, a shower of small white things fluttered to the ground. “What the hell?” He squatted down to pick one up.

More feathers. He knew goose feathers when he saw one, and there were five or six of them scattered next to his car. Findinggoose feathers at his family’s house wasn’t unusual. There were bucketsful, in all sizes, lying around.

But he was sure they’d dropped from him when he got out, and there had been that one in his hair. Maybe…

Ridiculous of course. The most likely explanation was that a clump of them had blown into his hair, and he just hadn’t noticed the rest. “Stress is making you imagine things, Jacob. You need to settle down.” And then after a second, “And maybe stop talking to yourself out loud, before someone calls the funny farm.”

He couldn’t help the fact that he tended to talk to himself, especially when he was anxious, but he tried not to let anyone else hear him. As for the feathers… he shook his head. They didn’t mean anything.

There was no time left to consider the matter. The front door opened with a crash and people were pouring out, shouting “Jacob!” “You’re home!” “You came!” as they converged on him.

For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he quickly kicked the feathers away from him, and moved to greet his family. Despite everything… he was glad to see them again.

They all but carried him into the house like a returning hero, and he was starting to wonder why he’d ever stayed away. Fresh snacks, drinks, fawning younger cousins all trying to get his attention—it was fun, until it wasn’t.

“Hey, what’s this?” Marly pulled at his sleeve, and he looked down in time to see his cousin dragging a long white feather from the cuff. Her voice had been piercing in its excitement and the sound of it cut through the room. Everyone turned to look.

It was larger than the ones in the driveway and impossible to shove out of sight before it was seen. His mother grabbed it from his hand, and stared at it with wonder, before her eyes lifted to his. “You shifted!”

“What? No, I didn’t.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Then you’restartingto shift. Why else would there be feathers in your clothes?”

“Mom, please. You promised you weren’t going to bring it up,” Jacob said. It was literally the only thing he’d asked, and it had taken less than an hour.

It was like standing under a spotlight. Everyone’s attention was on him, but it no longer felt happy and fun. It had become… anticipatory. But it was only going to end in disappointment again.

“Honey, I know, but this is different. You just arrived, where else would the feather have come from? It’s obviously freshly shed.”

Jacob shook his head. “I’m twenty years too old to be shifting for the first time, Mom. You know that.”

“But—”

“I can’t deal with this. I’m going to take a walk.” They meant well but it was too much.

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