Page 5 of Her Pastry Shifters

I stumble back. “This isn’t happening. It’s a dream. A very weird, very delicious dream where hot men turn into desserts.” I pinch myself and gasp. It hurts. “Did I accidentally eat a special brownie?”

Suddenly, the croissant disappears. Rune reappears, looking exactly the same… almost like he’d always been there. “It’s not a dream, and you’re not hallucinating,” he says. “We’re Bayans.”

Mac reappears next to him.

“And we shift into p—” Rune disappears again.

Then Mac disappears, but the croissant and eclair are back. And there’s still no sign of Bax, just the delicious-looking cannoli.

This is normal. Everything is normal.

I pinch myself again. Still hurts. I’ve definitely lost it.

“Bayans,” I repeat as I process everything I just saw. “Are you saying you’re… pastryshifters? Like wolf and bear and dragon shifters, butpastries?”

“Exactly,” Rune says when he reappears. He doesn’t explain further. He just nods.

“You know about shifters?” Mac asks as he reappears next to him.

“From books.” My cheeks flush, because I like my books dirty—and I want to see these shifters hard and very, very naked. “Wait, are you saying wolf shifters are real? And bears?”

“And dragons.” Mac nods, turning my entire world upside down. “We’re a little different, though. We’re from a small town called Shifter Bay, where everyone shifts into objects—like pastries, but other things too. Like, a block of ice, a rubber duckie, a donut, a paperback novel, you name it.”

I’d think he was messing with me if I hadn’t seen it for myself.

“We also can’t always control when we shift. Rune shifts if he says too much all at once—so he tends to stay quiet. Though he was a man of few words before he became a shifter, too.”

“So you weren’t always a shifter?” I ask Rune.

He shakes his head.

“I’m a sympathetic shifter,” Mac says. “If Rune shifts, I’ll shift too. So it’s better if I talk for him. At least for now.”

“What about Bax?” I ask, even though I feel like I’m in some alternate reality where guys shift into my favorite thing in the whole wide world: baked goods.

“He shifts when he’s anxious.” Mac says as Bax reappears next to him. “What else would you like to know?”

I have so many questions I don’t even know where to start. But at the top of my list is whether I’m high.

Chapter 8

Bax

Thingsseemtobegoing relatively well.

Jessy isn’t running out of the kitchen screaming. She’s not freaking out on us, either. And she reads books about shifters. That has to be a good sign. Not that anyone knows about us Bayans.

“Jessy…” Fuck. I think I’m going to spend the rest of my life just saying her name. “I know how weird this must be. When I first found out Mac was a pastry shifter… Let’s just say you’re handling this a lot better than I did.”

“He thought I’d drugged him.” Mac grins. “And when Rune found out, he didn’t speak to me for two days. Then he came up to me and said ‘okay.’”

“Okay?” Jessy gives him an amused smile I wish was aimed at me.

Rune shrugs.

“I’d think I was drugged, too, but all I had was that brownie on the flight.” Jessy turns to me. “I’m still half-convinced I’m dreaming. I mean, pastry shifters?”

“I know it’s not as glamorous as a wolf or bear shifter or whatever.” I rub the back of my neck. “But it has its perks.”

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