She hadn’t seen Corey in so long that she almost hadn’t remembered how close they had always been growing up. Even though Corey was ten years older than her, and he was the good kid that everybody looked up to, he was still her big brother.
She loved him, and she wished that she could tell him the truth. Every day that she came to learn at the Bright Institute, every time she saw Corey walking down one of the hallways or talking to an administrator, every time Willow invited her over for dinner at the couple’s big house that looked out over the lake, Zoe felt a sinking sense of dread and guilt eating away at the pit of her stomach.
Corey was a genius and the people who knew him well knew he was also an exceptionally skilled computer hacker. If anyone could help Zoe with her predicament, it was her brother Corey. But she couldn’t tell him. The shame of what she had done burned bright and her heart. She couldn’t tell her perfect brother, the guy who had won a full ride scholarship to college from the Great Shifter Counsel, that she had fallen in with the Russian mafia and had become a jewel thief.
Every time she thought about telling him, all she could see was the disappointed look on his face that he always gave her when she screwed up or didn’t live up to his expectations. He’d given her that look when she had created a less than perfect end table on her first attempt at woodworking. She couldn’t even imagine how he would look at her if she told him the truth.
No, telling Corey just wasn’t an option no matter how much she wanted to get it off her chest. All she could do was hope that her last heist would be worth enough to pay off Dima once and for all, and she would finally be free of him. She hadn’t expected to love Fate Mountain or woodworking as much as she did. But now that she was here and she had learned a new skill, all she wanted was to stay and explore her newfound passion.
Zoe continued to press her cutter into the table leg, creating an intricately tapered spindle that she could be proud of. Zoe’s skill had advanced exponentially since she’d first started taking classes in the Bright Institute woodshop. Even Corey’s crewmate Angus, who was an expert woodworker himself, had commented on her ability. Zoe hoped that after her graduation, that Angus would take her on as an apprentice. But she still hadn’t worked up the courage to ask.
Life on Fate Mountain was the exact opposite of the life Zoe had been living up until now. Everyone knew everyone else and they were all like family, for the most part. There were still some human/shifter tensions among the Fate Mountain community. But all of the shifters that she knew were some of the warmest people she’d ever met on earth.
Zoe had been welcomed into Corey’s clan. Her brother served as a volunteer Search and Rescue technician with his crew from his days as a Navy SEAL. The guys called themselves the Rescue Bears. All of them, including her brother Corey, who had sworn he’d never find a mate, had settled down with human women they’d met on Mate.com. Most of them now had cubs and homes of their own. It was a stark contrast to the way things had been when she and Corey grew up.
Back when they were kids, in the years right after the Great Shifter Council had first revealed the existence of shifters to the world, there had been an intense backlash from humans. Violence and persecution rose up all around the country and the world. Shifters were heavily segregated and entire neighborhoods turned on those who had once been friends, simply because they were shifters.
Since shifters had played such a critical role in ending the war, the government had passed the Shifter Equality Act and compensated all of the drafted shifters with generous VA packages.
Now, the world was totally different. Humans and shifters were openly mating and people like the men on her brother Corey’s crew owned businesses and held important positions in the community. Before the war, police brutality against shifters was common. Now, seven years later, the majority of the cops on the Fate Mountain Police Department where shifters. It was definitely a new world.
That was part of what gave Zoe hope that she could have a real future if she was ever released from Dima’s grasp. The thought of gaining her freedom and living a peaceful life on Fate Mountain made a tear well up in the corner of her eye. Zoe sniffled from her growing emotion and the sawdust that rose from the lathe.
She turned off the machine and released her table leg. It was a perfectly beautiful, beveled spindle, and she couldn’t be more proud of her handiwork. For a girl who had spent four years traveling the world to go to dance parties and another three years as the girlfriend of a dangerous mafia boss, something as simple as making a table leg gave her a tremendous thrill that she couldn’t quite explain.