16
GOLDIE
Did Robert say that? I don’t feel like I can ask him to repeat it without sounding stupid.
I slide out of bed and pad across the warm carpet until I’m in front of him. I touch his arm, needing to reassure myself that he is as I remember him: solid, warm, and real. I touch the scruff on his chin. “You sure feel real and human to me,” I say softly.
“See a coin from one side, and you only understand half the picture.”
“And what’s the other half?”
“I think you know.” He looks out into the forest, resting his hand on the window’s cool glass. As I following his gaze, his arm begins to shake.
I stare because it looks like he’s about to have a fit of some sort, but instead, before my eyes, his skin darkens until it is dark-furred and wide, and in the place of his hand is a paw with long sharp claws. He doesn’t move, but I do, stepping back until I hit the edge of the desk.
The bears.
His arm is the same color as the bears in the woods, and it gradually spreads higher, taking over his bicep, stretching his shirt as his shoulder becomes bulkier. Before my eyes, it slowly morphs back into his human arm, and my fingers grip the hardwood as it happens.
The other side of the coin. Not human.
Not a werewolf. A changeling.
I’ve read fantasy books about creatures that can blend from one form into another at will, but I never thought they really existed.
My eyes must be deceiving me. They must be.
This can’t be real.
“I won’t hurt you,” Robert says softly. “In either form. Unless it’s in a way you like.” He grins, his eyes full of shame and hope, and I must look like a startled rabbit because his face falls.
“You’re… you’re—”
“A bear,” he says softly. “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” I shake my head, the reality of what I’ve seen still not sinking in. “How?”
“That’s a good question. It’s just how it is. How it’s always been.”
“You mean like a genetic thing?”
Robert nods and turns from the window, his hand now completely human again. He reaches out to touch my face, and I flinch. His expression falls, and he buries his hands in his pockets. “Our family, for as long as we can trace, could change form.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Many,” he says but doesn’t elaborate. I must be dreaming. Am I still asleep in the bed in the sex room? I look around, and everything looks too crisp to be a dream. I pinch the skin on my arm, and it hurts. Not a dream.
The world is nothing like I thought it was. If Robert can really change himself into a bear, what other creatures from children’s storybooks are real? Werewolves? Goblins? Dragons? Fae?
“You look shaken,” he says. I put my hand up, and he stops immediately.
“Are you surprised?” I hold out my trembling hand, looking at it as though it belongs to someone else. “It’s not something I see every day, Robert.”
“It’s not something that I reveal every day. In fact, you’re the only outsider who I’ve ever told. I’ve put us at risk by showing you, but I had to because—”
I push away from the desk and pace to the other side of the room, my mind whirring. It’s not a good thing that he’s told me the truth about himself. How is he going to trust me to leave? I could tell the sheriff. Robert and his brothers could be arrested and locked up. They won’t risk it, will they?
“You’re not going to let me leave, are you?” I say. “Now you’ve shown me this.”
Robert focuses on the ground, avoiding my gaze, confirming my fears.
“I didn’t want you to show me that. I didn’t want you to tell me your secret,” I hiss. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because you’re destined to be with us, Goldie. It’s not something I’ve chosen. It’s something that has chosen you.”
“I’m not destined for anything!” I shout. “My life is ordered and ordinary, and that’s how I like it.”
Robert shakes his head. “I don’t believe you. If you felt that way, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t risk everything.”
I stop in my tracks, his words provocative but hitting me in the gut with their truth. I did take a risk tonight, a risk that proves I’m not content with my life as it is. I came here seeking something more, but not this. Not a weird, fated coupling with three strange men.
Three.
There are three of them, and I’m supposed to be their destiny. How the hell would that work?
“Do you realize how crazy this sounds to me? How crazy this looks?”
“Of course. It’s why our family has lived here for generations, on the outskirts of normal human life.” His voice is low and quiet, and his shoulders slump. I experience an overwhelming sense of sadness for him and for his brothers. What must it be like to live amongst people but never be yourself with them? To carry around such a massive secret for your whole life and not be able to confide in a soul?
A soul until me. I guess I understand because I’ve hidden so much about myself from my family and friends. Only Robert has seen that part of who I am.
“Why me?” I ask softly.
Robert shrugs. “I don’t know. It just works this way for us. The planets aligned on the day you were born. Our instinct tells us you’re a match for us because of your genetic makeup.”
“Genetic makeup. Why would that be a factor?”
A flush spreads high on Robert’s cheekbones. This man has done things to me that no other man has ever had the privilege of doing, but talking makes him blush.
“All of this must be hard to comprehend. Even as I say things, I hear how strange they sound. And I wouldn’t be here with you, telling you these things if it wasn’t imperative. You’re in danger at home.”
“Danger from who?”
“Men like us. Men who are wolves.”
“Wolves? Like werewolves.”
“Yes, but they don’t just change on the full moon. They’re like us. Hybrid creatures who can shift at will.”
“And they want to hurt me?”
“They want to hurt us. You’re just collateral damage.”
I shake my head, trying to clear the confusion and disbelief from the facts and truths. “Why do they want to hurt you?”
“It’s the way it’s always been. In the beginning, it was a fight for territory. The more that human settlements expanded, the fewer wild areas there were for us. We need to be able to live part of the time in our animal form or we feel caged. The forests have been destroyed and what’s left isn’t enough for us to live side by side without conflict. Apex predators don’t mix.”
“So you fight?”
“Yes.”
“And what happens? You defend your territory?”
“Yes.”
“And what if you get injured?”
“We do.”
I pause, studying him, trying to decide if I want to know the answer to the next question.
“Seriously? Like, could you die? ”
“Yes.”
I recoil. The thought of this other violent world that exists beneath the veneer of normal human society is so alien, I struggle to process its reality.
“We can keep you safe here. My brothers and I will protect you. And, if in the process of you staying here, you find that you want to stay—”
“And if I don’t?” I can’t think about the connection he believes we have. Not now. Not after he’s bombarded me with everything else.
“Let’s not talk about that right now, okay?”
“Brushing things under the carpet doesn’t make them go away. Locking things behind doors doesn’t make them disappear.”
Robert nods, removes his hands from his pockets, and walks slowly closer to me. This time, I don’t stop him. His hand cups my jaw, tipping my face up to his.
“For whatever reason, you’re made for us, Goldie. And I know it doesn’t make sense to you right now, but that’s okay. In time, I have every confidence that it will. And when it happens, we won’t need to worry about the things we’ve brushed under the carpet or locked behind a door. Will you trust me?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He takes a deep breath and exhales. “Not really, but let’s pretend you do. Let’s pretend that this is a date that’s gone really well. A date that we don’t want to end.”
“I don’t have to pretend that,” I say, and I’m not lying. I would have wanted to stay with Robert had he not intended me to leave. I’m incomprehensibly comfortable with him, which I now wonder has something to do with what he’s told me. If we’re destined to be together, is that why my body calls to him when we’re close? Is that why I’m not screaming and running when he’s touching me with his human hand that’s sometimes clawed and fury?
“So we go to bed, and you get to hang out with me and my brothers in the morning. We find out what happened at your store, we make you something good for breakfast, and we show you exactly why staying here will make you endlessly happy.”
I shake my head, but I can’t help but smile. “That’s a lot to achieve in one morning.”
Robert leans in to kiss my lips softly, his hands grazing my upper arms over my elbows until they reach to hold my hands. Instinctively, I tug my hands away, the memory of his bear paw still fresh. Touching him now feels different from before. I’m no longer confident what I’ll find; skin or fur? What changes him from human to bear and back again? I’ve seen that he can force a change, but are there circumstances that bring out his conversion?
“It’s okay. I’m just me. The human me,” he whispers. His expression breaks my heart.
“You won’t change while we’re sleeping?”
Robert shakes his head. “It’s something I can control,” he says. “Unless there’s danger.”
I should be screaming and clawing at the window to get out, I should be panicking and trembling and terrified, but inside I’m strangely calm as if this destiny is already working its magic on me. I should be pushing back, resisting the ease with which I’m facing the unbelievable, but I can’t seem to find the will.
This feels like such a significant moment. Can I really fall asleep next to this man? This bear?
For all the confusion and uncertainty, there's one thing that I’m sure of.
Robert won’t hurt me.
But I can’t be so sure about his brothers or the creatures that lurk outside in the forest, waiting for me.