I pushed my hair behind my ears. “Until a few hours ago I had no idea you existed.” I pulled my gaze from her eerily familiar features. I kept wondering if I did the same little things that Mischa did, like chewing the corner of my bottom lip when I was upset, or wrinkling my nose to stop tears. “Why have you returned now? What did you do about shifting if you had no pack?”
Shifters could change at will, and only had a mild call from the full moon. But we still needed to free our animals regularly. If we didn’t, they would force the change on us.
She shrugged. “I’ve never shifted. I knew about you as my sister, but not as a shifter. Mom decided to wait until we were almost here to inform me that our new town was full of supernatural creatures.” A short laugh escaped her and she was doing that lip biting thing again. “And that I was a part-time wolf. Let’s just say I was a tad disbelieving … right up until we crossed that magical border.”
I leaned further back into the soft cushions. She had to have been spelled to prevent her shift. I opened my senses, allowed the wolf to rise to the surface a little. I knew my eyes had changed by the way she shrank back from me.
“Don’t move,” I warned her. “I won’t hurt you.”
With my increased senses I noticed the energy binding her body. It was heavy especially over her chest. I could scent no wolf on her, I’d have thought she was a regular human if she wasn’t coated in magical protection.
I tucked my wolf away again. “You’ve been spelled to suppress your wolf and hide your shifter energy. Is Dad … Jonathon … going to lift that from you?”
“I don’t know.” She dropped her head in her hand, her voice thin. “I’m not sure how to process all of this. I’m a shifter … what does that even mean? I don’t understand why we didn’t grow up together.” I could tell she was crying a little. Shit, I was terrible with sympathy. Shifters love touch, it’s comforting to us. I wondered if she’d received much over the years. I decided to treat her as I would a hurting pack member.
I leaned in close and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Dropping my head into the crook of her neck and shoulder, I breathed deeply, hoping she’d act on instinct and do the same. Instead she freaked out, shrieking and diving away from me. I landed on all fours on the floor, low growls rumbling in my chest. It took me a few moments to calm.
“What the hell were you doing?” She was still shrieking. I resisted the urge to punch her out and quiet that racket. I have sensitive hearing and her shrieking was grating. Lucky for her I didn’t act on my instincts. I simply picked myself up and sat back on the chair.
“Touch and scent are comforting between shifters,” I bit out through clenched teeth. “Especially wolves.” I massaged my temple. Not enough sleep and too much stress was giving me a headache. “I was trying to be nice.” Last goddamn time too.
She studied me for a few seconds, before tears pricked her eyes again. “I’m so sorry, you must think I’m a mess.” I kind of did, but knew better than to say anything. “I just have no idea of this world. I’m not sure I’m cut out for this life.” She slouched next to me, closer than last time.
Her reaction was the reason we didn’t interact with humans. They couldn’t handle the supernatural, they needed their world ordered, and we went against their laws of nature.
She was still talking. I forced myself to pay attention to her.
“So … you never leave this town?”
My head tilted to the side as I examined her. “Some do, the hunters who search for the criminals, others who take jobs in different communities, but most of us never leave.” I shrugged. “It’s not that bad. We have about four hundred hectares of forest that we use to run in and hide the–” I broke off. Was she supposed to know about the prison?
“Vanguard … the supernatural prison.” She nodded her head, as if pleased she finally knew something. “Mom hinted it was something about this jail that forced her to flee with me when we were babies.”
I got a strange punch-in-the-chest feeling whenever she mentioned our mother. I was so not ready to explore that emotion. I changed the subject. “What are humans like?”
I was curious. We had human studies twice a week, and I watched television. On paper I knew all about them, but had never met one. It struck me that despite her naivety to the supernatural world, she would be a hell of a lot more knowledgeable about the rest of America. She’d been out, traveling around, going to normal school. Sometimes I longed to spread my wings and fly – I know, weird analogy for a wolf shifter. Stratford for all its wonder was still a cage.
She scrunched her forehead like I’d asked the stupidest question ever, although the tears had at least stopped. “Well, humans are just … normal.”