Page 47 of Moon Tamed

My mother laughed. “Lucky has been charming the Dasslins, our refugee family, quite well. I’ve promised a pair of healthy birds for them once the chicks hatch.”

“Wait, chicks?” I blurted.

“The hen has a clutch of six eggs she’s brooding over, and we are fairly confident Lucky has done his work well, so we’re hopeful we’ll have some babies soon. I’m not sure our back yard is going to be big enough for our flock of peacocks, but we’ll see.”

I gave the best yet worst presents. “I can’t even take credit for this. It sounds like you bred them on purpose.”

“We did,” my father confirmed. “The Dasslins are quite taken with Lucky, so we’ll give them a same gender pair unless we can find someone else with hatchlings. They were too shocked to adopt anything from the initial wave, and they enjoy taking care of the birds.”

“I’ll look for a chick from a different set of parents,” Calden promised. “If the family wants peacocks, then we can get them peacocks. We’ve got plenty of birds from different lines, although we may have to do some DNA testing to confirm it. It’s a bit of a mess right now. We’ll talk about it later. I owe Coraline dinner, as I foolishly wagered against her and underestimated the competition.”

My father chuckled. “She’s sneaky like that. Don’t wager against her. You might lose your shirt and everything you own.”

Hm. I’d never considered wagering for a man’s clothes before. “Dad, since when have I ever targeted someone’s clothes?”

“You haven’t, and your mother and I feel that’s a problem. On that happy note, we’ll let you go. We just wanted to make sure Allasandro wasn’t working you to death.”

“I’m not being worked to death,” I promised. I hugged both my parents once on the street outside of the faction’s headquarters. “I’d hide from that banshee, though. She might try to scream your souls away or something.”

“That’s not quite how the legend goes, but close enough,” my mother replied, kissing my cheek. “Don’t worry about Miss Fletcher. She’s a harpy, but she’s easy enough to manage.”

“Easy for you to say,” Calden muttered, soft enough I doubted he meant for anyone to hear him.

My parents left, and I regarded Calden with interest. “That’s the woman you caught the rabbit for?”

“Unfortunately.”

Huh. In a way, I understood how he could be tricked. I became an entirely different person at work, earning my keep and doing my best to remain professional. Outside of work?

I’d met nicer wasps when irritated, and I had no scruples about dealing with annoyances like Calden’s ex. I should have waited to get outside of the building before letting her know I snarled back if pressed, however. Trouble would come calling at some point.

Women like Sarai didn’t allow insults to stand, especially not when the insult had been witnessed by someone higher up the food chain. In the Hunters of Moonriver, there was only one man higher than Calden: Calden’s father.

“Don’t worry about Sarai. She’s all talk. She likes putting herself up on display to try to interest new men during the hunts, so she wants to stack the cards in her favor. It never works, but she keeps trying. She wants prestige and fame, and she hasn’t figured out that most Hunters aren’t going to be interested in a woman who isn’t willing to fairly earn her way. She’s good at negotiations and cutting through bureaucratic red tape, but she has an inflated opinion of herself.”

I could understand how that would get on Calden’s last nerve. “Still, I’m sorry. I should have held my temper.”

“You’re not a member of the faction, so she doesn’t have any grounds against you, especially as we view our ground floor lobby as neutral territory. A lot of people take their disagreements to the ground level. There are some rules faction members have to abide by, but you’re not in the faction. She’s actually at higher risk of disciplinary action because you’re not in our faction. My father does not like when we’re given a bad name through displays of general rudeness, and if she told you off for approaching your own parents in our lobby, that counts.”

“Just wait until she finds out we both like rabbit and hunt them because we want good food to eat.”

“Wait until she finds out you’ve been sleeping at my place. She is not a shapeshifter.”

“Why isn’t she?”

“It usually takes a bond with a shifter and a non-shifter to transfer the required genetics, and those can be difficult to form, especially if people aren’t directly compatible. My mother died as a result of her first shift. Her immune system completely failed. It’s rare, but it happens. As a result, let’s just say I’m quite careful with those I form relationships with.”

Oh. “I’m so sorry.”

“I am, too. After my mother died, my father had her DNA examined to figure out what caused the problem. With the help of several factions, he discovered which gene combinations cause the immune system failure. The Hunters kept blood samples of all shifters who suffered from the syndrome. Now? We don’t allow anyone with the faulty genes into the faction because the risk of death is too high. While rare, exposure to us can be enough to waken someone’s latent shapeshifting abilities.” Calden wrinkled his nose and headed in the direction of our homes. “It took me a while to accept and understand there wasn’t anything my father could have done to prevent it. And that it wasn’t his fault. Anyone who wants to join the Hunters is now tested, and all members were tested. We have two men who have the faulty gene, but they signed waivers and opted to accept the risk associated with contracting the shapeshifting magic.”

“And the shapeshifting element is contagious?”

“Yes and no. Becoming an active shapeshifter typically takes a great deal of interaction with other shapeshifters and time. My father shapeshifted around me a lot as a child, before we realized my mother had the faulty gene. I’ve been tested, and I don’t have the gene, and the doctors don’t think it’s transmitted from mother to child. It’s more of a genetic mutation. But the babies of Hunters are being tested for the gene since we’re more likely to become shifters without having a shifting partner.”

“Still, I’m sorry. That must have been difficult for you.”

“It was. Sarai wants to be a shifter, but she doesn’t tend to form the right kind of relationship to activate her latent genetics. Most Hunters have fairly dominant shapeshifting genes to the point some spontaneously shift after being in the faction for a while.” Calden shook his head. “The problem is, I don’t think she’s really inclined to be a wolf, and she keeps trying to target wolf shifters for her general ploys. She’s more of a cat than anything else.”

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