Page 59 of Not Your Ordinary Shifter

He was glad to see most of the cars were gone by the time he returned to the house. He had questions and no patience for a bunch of relatives trying to give him advice on his failure to…

Jacob stopped short, with one foot on the bottom step.

Holy shit. He had shifted. He was never going to have to listen to their advice on ways to force the change again. No more cousins trying to scare him into bursting out in feathers. No more ‘have you tried …’ or ‘I’ve heard that…’ from every elder who thought they had the secret to his problem.

The discovery of Lizzy, a shifter he wasn’t related to, and his mate, had pushed that further down on the list of priorities. He took a moment to revel in the realization of what his first shift meant, and then regretfully, he set it aside.

The festive party had died down to scattered family members sitting and chatting. They all looked up when he came in, and he saw a few guilty expressions as they looked away again. They’d probably been discussing him. Normally he would have been annoyed, but things had changed.

His mother hurried to greet him. “I’m so sorry, Jacob.” Her eyes held a soft sheen of tears, and there was a red puffiness underneath them. “I-I warned everyone else not to bother you, and then I went and did it myself. I promise, it won’t come up again for the rest?—”

“Mom, stop. It’s okay. Listen…” He looked around and then lowered his voice. “I need to talk to you and Dad privately.”

She drew in a deep breath, composing herself as she nodded. “He’s out back at the firepit with your uncles. I’ll grab him. Um, your room is all made up. That should be private enough.”

It was a short wait, but it gave him time to collect his thoughts and decide how this was going to go. In theory. In reality, he was still scrambling when there was a soft rap on the half-open door.

His mother pushed it open and came in with his father trailing behind. There was a pinched nervous look on his mother’s face. Almost immediately she tried to apologize again. “Jacob, I’m sorry about earlier. It was?—”

Jacob laughed and stood up. He touched her arm, saying “Relax, Mom. That’s not what this is about.”

She stopped, head tilting. “Really? Then…”

The careful organization of his thoughts immediately scattered, and he found himself blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “I shifted at the lake.” The second the words were out of his mouth he added, “Don’t freak out!”

But it was too late. His mother screamed and then both hands flew up to cover her mouth belatedly. His father’s reaction was less vocal, but still exuberant. “Congratulations, son!” He thumped him on the back. “I knew it would happen eventually. How did it feel?”

“Um… sudden. Unexpected. Kind of painful.” He cleared his throat, one hand going up to rub the back of his neck. “By theway, I found my mate. She’s a swan.” It was blunter than he had planned.

Both parents went silent and stared. His mother sat down on the end of his bed without warning, as if the strength had gone out of her legs, “I think you better start at the beginning.” She looked pale.

Jacob pulled the chair from his old desk over, turned it around and sat on it. He crossed his arms over the back and waited as his father took a seat next to her. “You’re saying start at the beginning, but I think what you most want to know is whether she’s a close cousin, right?”

They exchanged looks. “Well…” his father began, “it has happened before, and these days cousins marrying is a lot more problematic.”

“Well, relax. I’ve never met her before. There was no feeling of family. I think she’s new to town actually.”

He could see the releasing of tension and he grinned. “So, you won’t have to worry about breaking the bond.” He hesitated, and then added, “Well, not because of that anyway. I’m not sure she’s really thrilled about any of this.”

Bonds could be broken. It was painful, especially when both were shifters, but sometimes it was necessary because mating bonds weren’t always a choice. Sometimes it followed love, and other times it just happened. The ‘magic’ of it didn’t seem to care if people were already in love, or married, or relatives.

‘Now, you really do need to start from the beginning,” his mother said.

So, he explained about the restaurant and how everything had gotten strange when he met her. The way she seemed to glow. The feathers. He was as succinct as possible, and he left out the lake sex.

Shifters had sex in both forms, but they didn’t talk about it, and he understood why now. It had felt so natural to matewhen he’d been shifted. Now, as a human, it just seemed… inappropriate. At any rate, it wasn’t something to tell your parents.

“You never told me the mating bond could be so powerful,” he said, as he finished. “I wasn’t expecting... It was a lot.”

“Well…” His father trailed off. Nate Brood was a man who took his time with his words. “It’s always more intense when both partners are shifters. It’s as if the effect echoes back on itself. We don’t see much of that anymore. Most mates are human to avoid too much intermarrying.”

“Your father and I were only distantly related… third cousins, I think?” She looked at him, and he nodded. Nate was a family historian.

“Third cousins, twice removed. Our mating bond also didn’t kick in until after we were married, so it was a choice.” Nate sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “I wonder if the fact that you had never shifted added to the intensity.”

“Or if the intensity of the bond caused him to shift for the first time,” his mother added. “He said he didn’t see any feathers until after they connected.”

“True. Jacob, can you describe what you felt when you ran into her at the lake?”

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