“I did,” he said. “In fact, most feral shifters become feral because they were removed from their pack. Exiled or cast out for some kind of crime, or mental health stuff caused them to leave on their own. Or sometimes the smaller packs collapse or splinter, leaving one or two shifters with nothing. Either way, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a lone wolf either goes mad or finds a new pack to take them in.”
“What about the one percent?” I asked.
He glanced over at me, tossing the leaf away. “That’s me.”
“Is it difficult to live in a pack?” I asked, trying to figure out why he hadn’t joined one.
“Not really, honestly. There’s a lot of camaraderie and support in packs. It’s like a family. Each member is dedicated to the other.” He stared at me intently. “And that dedication is to the death. You fuck with one, you fuck with them all. But they also provide certain amounts of financial support—scholarships and stuff. They’ve got enforcers that act like security or a police force. Everything is handled internally. Judiciary, punishments, everything.”
Something he’d said earlier came back to me, tickling the back of my mind.
“Back before we started jogging, you said one of the two greatest fears a shifter had was becoming feral, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you never said what thesecondgreatest fear was.”
“That, if you can believe it, is an even bigger fear than going feral. The thing we’re scared of, more than anything else, is the human race finding out about us. If any shifter does anything toexpose us, they are dealt with.” He picked up a stick and snapped it in half. “Severely.”
“Why, though?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to live your lives if the whole world knew about you?”
“The Salem witch trials,” Nate replied.
“What?” I asked, blinking in confusion. Was he jumping to another story? Was he gonna tell me witches were real even though vampires weren’t?
“The witch trials happened because a few powerful people took the word of some misguided townsfolk. Their lies about other humans who possessed no magical ability incited fear and led them to look past reason. Can you imagine the terror if people realized there were magical shapeshifters on earth? Living right beside them? Indistinguishable from a human? Could you imagine the backlash? The panic? There’d be dead shifters on every continent.”
The idea made me queasy. Would humanity really revert to that? Lashing out at people who were different from them for no reason?
The answer was a resounding yes. Of course they would. Nate and the other shifters might know us better than we knew ourselves.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” I said. “If packs aren’t difficult to live in and they provide so much, why aren’t you in one?”
“Personal reasons.”
From his tone, I knew it would be useless to pursue it further. One of the first things I’d learned as a reporter was not to pry too hard when looking for answers.
We sat in silence for a few moments, enjoying the warm breeze. Through the trees, we saw a family walking by—a man and woman, and a boy and girl. The kids were skipping down the path. That prompted another question.
“Will I need to leave my family? Mom and Gael?” The thought made me want to vomit.
“No,” Nate said quickly. “You won’t need to. Shifters with human families are remarkably common.”
“Really? There are people walking around with no idea their spouse is?—”
“A shifter? Basically. It’s not a big deal. Like I said, the fear of exposure runs deep. We won’t reveal it even to the people we love the most. Mostly because we know they’d be in danger, too. You’ll be fine. The Toronto-Ottawa pack will take you in, which means you won’t have to move or anything.”
“So, I’d have to hide the truth from them?”
I didn’t like the thought of keeping such a huge, life-altering secret. It felt a bit like betrayal, like how Rick had kept his true nature hidden from me. I couldn’t imagine doing the same to someone else.
Yet, if it was something ingrained in shifters from early on in life, maybe Rick didn’t think of it as a betrayal. Who was I to judge the wholly different society these shifters had?
“For their safety, you’ll have to.” Nate gave me a pointed look. “Remember, as long as they don’t know, they’ll be safe. Keep that in mind, and it’ll be easier.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I admitted.
But I didn’t feel any better about Rick keeping such a big secret from me. I was used to keeping secrets; I’d done it my whole life. Lying to Mom about how many extra shifts I worked at side jobs to help her pay the bills, how late I stayed up to studyafterworking extra shifts—a dozen other little secrets and lies here and there. All to make sure Mom and Gael never knew how bad things really were. If I could do that for their peace of mind, I was sure I could keep an even bigger secret to keep them safe. As long as I could remain myself otherwise, it would be fairly easy.
