Page 41 of Alpha Rising (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

“Ah. Well, the term cousin was just a human approximation.”

“Tell me about him,” she said, still semi-sleeping. Though I couldn’t see her eyes, I knew they were closed. No eyelashes fluttered against my skin.

I coiled a lock of her hair around my finger. “What do you want to know?”

Her shoulders flinched as if trying to shrug, but her body was wedged too tightly against mine. “Just…more about your family. I always wanted a big extended family. I like knowing it’s not you and your siblings against the world.”

I didn’t really want to talk about this—I figured I’d given her enough of the supernatural world to process in the last several days—but since she was asking, and given all she’d been through…

“The person I was talking about last night is named Cormac MacConall.”

“Another shifter?”

“Yes, but not a mountain lion. He’s a hell hound. He’sfae, which is why I referred to him as a distant cousin.”

Sarah raised her head off my shoulder to look at me. “You’re a…fae?”

I scrunched my nose. “Not exactly.”

“It seems like a yes or no kind of thing.”

I continued to look at her with what was probably an expression of complete bafflement. I couldn’t get used to how easily she accepted information that would have made the average human scoff.

Or run.

I reached across my body and laced my fingers with hers. Then I rolled to face her, holding our joined hands in prayer position between our chests.

“There are dozens, maybehundredsof races of fae: seelies, succubi, banshees, dryads, kelpies, mermaids…”

She raised her eyebrows at that last one, and I smiled as I continued on. “And hell hounds, also known as fae hounds or—in Gaelic—cú sídhe. They shift back and forth from a human appearance to looking like enormous wolflike dogs with red eyes.”

Sarah shivered, and I pulled the blankets up over her shoulder.

“There was also a race of fae known as fae cats, orcat sí. ‘Cat’ is the same in English and Irish.

“As my father explained it to me, thecat síwere the first race of fae to escape Ireland—centuries ago—after being mercilessly hunted by a group of fae hunters.

“When they arrived here, they were so traumatized by what they’d experienced back home, they stopped shifting altogether and lived totally in their feline states. Over time, they assimilated with the native mountain lion populations, until evolution brought us to where we are now…mountain lion shifters.

“Our similarities to actual mountain lions are mostly anatomical. We retained most of our social and politicalcat-sítraits. For example, true mountain lions don’t live in packs, or have alphas. Most of them are solitary.”

It was quite a lot of information, so I wasn’t surprised when Sarah didn’t say anything right away.

But after a minute, I grew restless from not knowing what she was thinking, especially when I realized her body had gone unnaturally still. “Sarah? You still with me?”

“The world is so different than I ever realized.”

I exhaled through my nose. “It’s safest for us all if humans remain clueless. Consider yourself now a member of a very exclusive club.”

“I’m honored.”

“Are you?” I hoped that sentiment was genuine. I wanted her to love this life. I wanted her to stay.

“Of course.”

Relieved, I gave her more. “The reason I brought up MacConall last night is that he’s a talented tracker. I thought if I could get the scent of your attackers in his nose, he could help us learn who they were. Or…if they were fae hunters—or shifter hunters—and you were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, it might be a scent he already recognized from his own tracking missions.”

“You think those guys were afteryou, and not me?” She sounded more alarmed than relieved by the prospect—a reaction I’d have to unpack later.

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