Chapter 9
Fern learns the facts.
Olivia sighed and grabbed Fern’s hands, scooching a little closer on their shared rock. “Sorry, lovey. This is weird for me. I’ve never done this before… You know how we only let tourists in two months a year?”
“For the animals and nature, yeah.” She nodded rapidly, coaxing Liv to get on with it.
“Right. So… we’re the animals. We need our privacy.” Olivia looked over Fern’s shoulder, and someone snorted.
Bewildered, Fern asked, “Is that some special terminology? Are you guys a cult? A big polycule or something?”
“What does that mean?” Adam asked from the water.
“Nothing,” Liv replied before Fern could explain. “No, we’re literally animals, that’s what I’m telling you. Ben and I are the alphas. We have two betas, and—”
Her jaw hung open as she swung her head around to study everyone in turn. No fucking way. “Oh my god. It’s real? Why aren’t you an omega?” she whispered her last question to Liv.
Liv pinched her brows together.
“How do you know about omegas?” Noa asked, climbing out of the water to head their way.
“Are you an omega?”
“I’m an enforcer,” Noa said.
Fern took in Adam’s, Noa’s, and Ben’s perplexed expressions. Elliott was back to avoiding eye contact. Maybe this wasn’t what she thought. “I’m confused. Do you guys not have, like, glands and slick and knotting and stuff?”
“The fuck are you talking about?” Adam had crossed his arms on the rocks and rested his chin on them, totally engrossed in her confusion as he kicked slowly to stay afloat.
“Knotting? Like a copulatory tie?” Ben asked, aghast. “Who taught you about shifters? What do you think we are?”
“Fern, it’s not the omegaverse,” Olivia explained, realizing where Fern’s mind had gone.
“What’s omegaverse? Is that a graphic novel?” Ben stepped closer to the conversation.
“I fucking wish.” This she could handle. Whatever else was going on was churning her brain at the moment. “Have you ever seen Supernatural?”
“Oh my god, no Fern. It’s not like that.”
“Well then, explain what it is like, Liv, please. I’m so confused right now, I’m about to go steal your freaking car and run away.” Shutting down her MPreg train of thought, Fern tried to drag her mind from her books to whatever strange reality she was living in.
Some distance away, pacing in the grass, Elliott huffed, clearly listening in even if he wouldn’t look at her.
Olivia got serious, taking back Fern’s escaped hands. “We can turn into animals. Everyone in Beckett Falls can, and we’re all part of a pack that Ben and I lead.”
“A pack?” Back on her books, Fern’s mind whirled through the thousands of plots she’d read over the years. “I have so many questions right now.”
“I know it’s difficult to believe—” Noa began, coming to sit on Fern’s right.
“Oh, no. I believe it.”
“You do?” Adam looked baffled.
“Liv’s my bestie, I can tell when she’s lying, and she’s not. I just have a lot of questions.”
“Shoot,” he said, climbing out to join them on dry ground. “We’re all ears.”
“Can you show me? Who wants to show me? Can you be any animal you want? Are you all wolves? Are any of you wolves? I feel like wolves are most common, at least in what I’ve read.”
“What have you read?” Noa checked.
Fern met her gaze, face heating. “Nothing.”
Noa’s eyes narrowed as she smirked.
“Ben will show you first,” Olivia offered.
The women rotated to face the grass, and Fern watched, awed, as Ben fizzled before her like he stood behind a curtain of static.
His body stretched, and he dropped to the ground.
His human limbs turned hazy, his face elongated into a snout, and his T-shirt and shorts were replaced with fur—so much fur.
She stared at a wolf. Gigantic, black and gray, he blinked at her through amber eyes.
Having risen to her feet when he shifted, Fern gaped at wolf-Ben and frantically reached for Liv’s hand but found a puff of curls instead.
She had believed Olivia, but holy freaking fuck, it was unreal to see in person.
“Don’t touch my hair.” Liv swatted her hand away, then stood. “Ben, come here.” She tutted at the wolf like she was calling a pet.
“Sorry, Liv. So many questions,” Fern breathed, rendered speechless—for her. “Is he still Ben?”
“Ben’s consciousness is in there, but in the back seat. We have to be closely in tune with our animals because we are two different beings,” Noa explained. “If we don’t stay in their good graces, they can get difficult.”
“Can I pet him?” Fern stuck out her palm, then yanked it back. “Oh my god. No. Is that a weird thing to ask?”
Adam snorted, but she looked past him, searching for Elliott. He’d positioned himself in a patch of shade by the side of the house, leaning against the yellow siding to watch from afar. Could she pet him? Was he a wolf too?
“Go ahead,” Liv said through a chuckle as she buried her hands in Ben’s fur. “He’s a good boy, he won’t bite.”
Fern ran a hand down the soft fur covering his spine and found herself laughing, letting loose a confusing jumble of feelings.
She’d read all about shifters, omegaverse—which they were not—aliens, normal humans, ancient humans, fae, monsters, portals to different realms, magic.
.. Not once had she expected to encounter it in real life.
Her mind spun, but Ben’s fur—Ben’s wolf’s fur? —calmed her.
With a huff, Elliott pushed off the siding and drifted around the house, out of sight.
“Are you all wolves?” Fern blurted. Elliott didn’t seem like a wolf.
“Nope,” Liv answered. “I’m a bobcat, Noa’s a fox.”
“I’m a bear,” Adam announced proudly.
“Holy freaking fuck,” she breathed as the dam blocking her shittily restrained questions shuddered, cracked, and burst. “Liv, how are you an animal? How do you become this? Are you all born this way? Does it hurt when you shift? Do you have to eat raw meat while you’re in animal form?
Is anyone a horse? What about a worm? Are there shifter lobsters?
Can you come back whenever you want? Is this a full moon thing?
Is it even the full moon? I wanted to be a cat when I was a kid.
Can I be a cat—like a housecat? I like Maine Coons.
Do you pick your animal? Can someone please say something so I can stop talking? ”
Adam and Noa cracked up, and when Fern looked to Liv, hoping for some answers, she found her wheezing with silent laughter, tears leaking from her eyes.
“Ben, shift back,” Olivia demanded as Elliott came back around the side of the house.
The wolf blurred before shrinking in some spots and elongating in others, then Ben stood before her, in the flesh... all flesh. Fern shrieked, getting an eyeful of her best friend’s boyfriend’s dick before she could avert her gaze.
Elliott’s distant growl slipped through the others’ laughter, and while Fern wanted to look for him again, she stared resolutely at the grass until Liv whispered it was safe to look up.
“When we shift, our clothes travel with us, but they come back next to us,” Noa explained.
“Why?”
“That’s a great question, really. No clue,” Adam said.
“This is insane. You guys know that, right?”
“It’s not insane, it's our life.” Noa grinned. “Want to meet my fox?”
“I want to meet all of your animals. Please?” she tacked on.
“Food’s ready,” Elliott announced gruffly, sidling up to the rest of them.
“Shifting demonstration for Fern, then we can go eat,” Ben said, and everyone nodded.
As hungry as she was for lunch, she was desperate to see their alternate forms first. Dealing with a brand new side of a world she thought she understood for nearly three decades took precedence over a hamburger.
Noa and Liv shifted together, and Olivia’s bobcat hopped up onto Fern’s cross-legged lap for pets while Noa’s fox headbutted her hand, in need of scratches.
“This is unreal,” Fern giggled as Adam morphed into an enormous grizzly—if she wasn’t mistaken.
Uninterested in their human activities, Adam’s bear wandered to the far side of the pond and started scratching his back against a tree.
Noa and Olivia changed back to human, and expecting the nudity, Fern studied a crack in the bedrock while they got dressed.
“Do I get to see your animal?” She braved Elliott’s gruffness, too curious to keep her mouth shut. “And no one ever explained how you healed so quickly.”
“It’s a shifter thing,” Ben said. “Fitz, are you good with shifting?”
With a grunt and a look to his alpha, he nodded, and Fern frowned. Maybe he was pissed she’d busted his lip. She thought they’d gotten past him thinking she talked too much, but maybe they’d been going opposite directions, her believing they’d made headway while his annoyance turned to hatred.
Without another word, Elliott changed forms, remaining on two legs as he became an eight-foot-tall grizzly, towering over the lot of them. She should have known he was a bear.
“Get down, man,” Ben scolded.
Elliott’s bear sniffed the air, then dropped down on all fours, facing Fern, and panting loudly.
“Shit,” she breathed, goosebumps erupting on her arms. Adam’s bear was the same size as this one, but he hadn’t looked at her like that.
Maybe it was the slightly darker patches around Elliott’s grizzly’s eyes, but he looked soulful, more intrigued by her.
With her palm out, Fern took a tentative step forward, and he did too.
He sniffed her open hand before his tongue lolled out, and he licked her from fingertip to the top of her shoulder.
“Ew!” Noa laughed.
Stunned, Fern stood there while he repeated the action to her other arm. His tongue was shockingly muscular and surprisingly slimy.
“Fitz, stop,” Ben demanded, and the bear sat back on his haunches, looking annoyed, as though compelled by some sort of force when he’d rather be licking her skin.
“Can I pet him?” Fern asked, oddly hopeful.
“Better not,” Olivia said quietly, earning a glance from Fern. “Sorry.”