Page 40 of Stolen Mate

“You can’t just overwrite someone’s DNA. I mean you can do it to an egg, but once a person’s born, that’s it. Your DNA is your DNA, and it can’t be changed. There are people trying to figure out how to do it, but so far, they haven’t been successful. And I’m not sure that’s a slippery slope I want to go down.”

“What if I told you it was possible?” she said, shaking her sister’s hands in hers. “What if?”

“Did you watch some weird movie on the plane while you were half asleep? Remember that time you dozed through some Michael Crichton thriller and thought it was all real? You called me up in the middle of the night…”

“It’s not a movie—at least not one that I know of—and I’m not crazy. But it is something you’ve read.”

“No, I don’t like science fiction or thrillers. I like romance books.”

“Yes, but paranormal romance books, specifically those that deal with human-animal hybrids or shifters.”

Lara sat back, watching her sister’s face closely. “But those aren’t real. They have all these shifters existing alongside humans and the humans are clueless that they even exist. There’s no way.”

“What if there was?” Tess implored, knowing if she could just get Lara to accept the possibility, there was a chance she could make her understand.

“Are you drunk? I know you’re not high.”

Tess laughed. “I promise, I am stone-cold sober.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“That animal-shifters exist and that I am one. More than that, you can be one, too.”

Lara’s face froze in horror, and then she started to laugh. “Ha! Ha! Very funny. I know you hate those books, but I think they are fun escapist fantasies.”

Tess said nothing and just looked at her sister, slowly shaking her head.

Lara stopped laughing and shook her head. “That… that can’t be right. Even if shifters existed, which they don’t, I would know if you were one. I’ve known you all my life.”

“In your books, what’s something that can be used to keep a shifter from shifting?”

“Depends on the animal, but the kind of universal thing is iron. It can’t kill them, like if they’re collared with it, but it interferes in the process somehow, and the person or animal can’t shift.”

“What was the one piece of jewelry I never took off? What was the one thing Mom made me promise I would always wear?”

“That Celtic knot thing.”

“Which was made of?” Tess asked, raising her eyebrows at her sister.

“Iron.” Realization dawned as the color drained from Lara’s face. So many little things suddenly slipped into place—their mother only taking Tess to certain doctors or hospitals; never wanting Tess to go to the Woodland Park Zoo, and several others. “Holy shit.”

Tess nodded. “Holy shit indeed.”

“You aren’t bullshitting me, are you? Please tell me you are.”

“Why?”

“Because if you aren’t and someone finds out… oh fuck, that’s why you made me promise not to tell.” Lara batted at her sister. “I would never tell anyone. That could put you in danger. Everything else aside, if the government found out…”

“Precisely.”

“You can really shift between two forms? What kind of animal are you?”

“What has always been my spirit animal?”

“You’re a polar bear-shifter? For real?” Lara’s eyes had lost their horror and now shined with a joyful glee.

“Yep. The first time I shifted I got to swim in the Gulf of Alaska, and I wasn’t even cold. It was amazing.”

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