Chapter 12 Jace
JACE
He had the briefest thought—very brief—of lying about it. But as he had already gathered, you didn’t lie to this man.
Jace peeled off his gloves and tucked them into his pocket.
His hands were even worse than before, the fingers shortened and slightly bent.
He had noticed, now and then, items trying to slip out of his fingers when he was working on the omelets.
Now he could see why. His right hand was slightly better off.
His left was hardly a hand at all, curled and gnarled, halfway to a paw.
The Colonel held out one of his big, mitt-like hands. Jace hesitated and then held out his own, and for the second time, his hand was engulfed in the Colonel’s bigger one. The first time, it had been a friendly handshake. Now it was something else. He had the feeling he was being inspected.
He didn’t want to look down at his malformed hand, so he looked at the Colonel’s face in this rare opportunity to observe the man when Jace didn’t have to meet his eyes.
For the first time Jace noticed there were scars on his face, just above his left ear, visible through the short-cropped hair and running up the side of his face near his cheekbone.
Parallel scars, looking like they had been inflicted by claws.
“You have trouble controlling your shift,” the Colonel said. It was matter-of-fact, not a question.
“Yes, sir,” Jace replied quietly.
“Is it always this bad?”
The big hand released his. Jace pulled his hand away quickly, and stuck both of them in his pockets, where he could feel the claws pricking at the fabric.
“No,” he said, staring down at the snow.
“It comes and goes. I—I’ve always had a little trouble, even back in the group home when I was a kid, but I kept it under control.
” That was also when he’d learned to hide the signs, speaking with his lips closed over his teeth when his fangs were showing, tucking a hand into his pocket or under the table at dinner.
“You ever hurt anyone?” the Colonel asked, his voice very low and very serious.
Instantly a flush of shame and guilt filled him. Holly’s little flinch and gasp. The way her taste had flooded his mouth, sweet and fresh and overwhelming.
“Yes,” he gasped. It came out sharp and broken. “I—I lost control and bit someone. Once.”
He waited for the blow to fall.
“Did you hurt them?” The same calm voice. Implacable. “Badly?”
“I—”
He wanted to stay yes. He had to have hurt her. And yet, Holly didn’t act hurt. She didn’t act like she found him scary to be around.
Her soft smiles. Holly sleeping on the other side of the wall from him. The way she had felt against him, warm and trusting.
“I don’t think so,” he said, almost to himself. “It was just a little nip. Sh—she didn’t act like it hurt that much.”
He forced himself to raise his eyes to the Colonel’s face. It was grim, but not condemning.
“Sir, does it hurt humans to be bitten by a shifter? Like—like in a werewolf movie, I mean.”
“No. Doesn’t work like that. After you bit—her?” he said, and Jace gave a jerky nod. “What did you do?”
“I ran,” Jace said softly. “As far away as I could get.” Until fate, it seemed, had brought them back together.
The Colonel nodded. He undid his coat, took it off, and slung it over the fence rail.
“Uh ...” Jace began, as the Colonel undid his belt buckle. “Are you going to—shift, sir?”
The Colonel didn’t bother to answer. He stripped systematically, hanging his clothes on the fence, breath steaming in the cold air. Being in the military meant Jace was used to nudity around other guys, but he glanced away to give him some degree of privacy.
When he looked back, it was just in time to see the Colonel shift into a bear.
Jace had never seen a bear that big in his life. He hadn’t even known bears came that big. This was a creature straight out of the Ice Age, shaggy and massive, the great humped knot of muscle on his shoulder nearly level with Jace’s head.
His fur, as a bear, was similar to the color of his hair in human form, white tinged with yellowish gray.
Jace didn’t know bears, but he was pretty sure this guy was a polar bear.
Whatever kind of bear he was, the Colonel looked fully at home in this snow-covered field, with the pine forest behind him.
Something wild and predatory. Dangerous.
And scarred.
The scars were more visible on him as a bear. In fact, the ear on the scarred side was chewed up, which Jace hadn’t noticed on him as a human. And there were other scars, visible because the hair hadn’t fully grown back on his shoulder. It looked like he’d been in some kind of massive fight.
Jace took a slow, shaky breath. If it had been hard to meet the Colonel’s eyes when he was a human, looking into the bear’s eyes felt like facing down an oncoming freight train.
He had never felt so acutely his lack of experience with other shifters.
He didn’t know the right thing to do, and especially wasn’t sure if looking another shifter directly in the eyes would be taken as a challenge or not.
He had to go on instinct, and instinct said that looking away would be a mistake.
He stared into that hot golden gaze as long as he could stand it, then lowered his eyes slowly.
The bear adjusted its weight and lifted a paw off the ground.
Its paws were as huge as the rest of it, bigger than a dinner plate, with claws curved like scimitars.
Jace braced himself to—he didn’t know what, to run, to fight, to stand his ground.
He wasn’t exactly afraid, but he was tense; his breath came in small sharp gasps, little puffs of steam in the cold morning air.
The bear’s breath steamed like the smoke of a chimney.
It tapped him lightly with that huge paw. Just the pressure of it drove Jace to his knees in the snow. Gasping, he raised a hand automatically, pushing back on it.
He couldn’t help thinking, suddenly and strangely, of Holly.
Whatever was happening here, whether it was a test or some kind of ritual or ordeal, Holly was on the other side of it.
Holly, with her beautiful face and her graceful hands and her prickly intensity.
He was sure of that. And because of that, he refused to back down from—whatever this was, even if that massive paw tried to knock his head off.
And then the Colonel shifted back with the smooth seamlessness of long practice. He still had his hand on Jace’s shoulder. Where it had felt like a terrible weight when he was in bear form, now it was a light pressure. He withdrew it and reached for his clothes.
Jace stood up again, eyeing the Colonel as the man got dressed. For an older guy, the Colonel was fit and trim. The scars that had been visible in his bear form could be briefly glimpsed before they vanished beneath his outwear once more.
“You’ve got guts,” the Colonel said. He pulled on his coat. “What’s your wolf say about all of this?”
“I don’t know.” Jace’s breath came in short, hard gasps. He felt almost as if he’d run a marathon. His hands were shaking.
And—human.
He stared down at them, turned them over, flexed the fingers.
“If you’re a shifter, once you start running, it’s hard to stop,” the Colonel said in a conversational tone, doing up the buttons of his coat with fingers so deft it was hard to believe they had been a bear’s clumsy paws just moments ago.
“Especially if you’re running from yourself.
You do that, and your shift animal will leak out all over the place.
If you want to lose control, son, the way to do that is to try to hide from it.
You can’t. Your animal knows it. Now you do too. ”
Jace stared down at his human-once-more hands. “What can I do about it? How can I stay like this, and not like—the other thing?”
“Shift,” the Colonel said immediately. “All the way. Can you still do that?”
Just the idea made him recoil in horror. If he felt this out of control when he was only partway shifted, how could he dare to give in to his wolf with Holly around?
He could feel his fingers curling again. With a force of will, he managed to fight it down. It was a little easier this time, as if the Colonel’s presence was helping, somehow.
Maybe it was. He dimly recalled being able to control his animal better around his childhood shifter friends.
We really aren’t meant to be alone.
“I ... I’m not sure, sir,” he said. “Can you help me?”
“I don’t know,” the Colonel said simply.
He put his gloves back on. “Can’t do everything in one day.
You can work on it here. It’s not good for shifters not to shift, and that’s part of what this ranch is for.
Somewhere you can go, a city shifter like you.
A lone wolf. If you want to come out here, shift, run, whatever, feel free.
You can use any part of the ranch you like, as long as you don’t let the tree farm customers get a look at you. ”
“I think I can .... try.” Jace had no idea what to say. “I don’t know if I will be able to. But thank you, sir.”
The Colonel finished pulling on his gloves and turned to face Jace. “I have one more question for you, son, and it’s the most important one I’ll ever ask.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Do you feel that you are a danger to my daughter?”
Jace’s brain whited out for a moment.
Yes. I don’t dare be near her, not with my wolf coming out of me in unpredictable ways.
No. She’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I want to thrill and delight her, I want to kiss her again, and feel the way she opened up to me that one time—
Yes. I hurt her once. I’ll hurt her again.
No. I want to make her happy for the rest of her life ...
He had been silent too long, he knew, and the Colonel’s craggy face had grown grim.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The smallest of nods. “Well. That’s honest, at least.”
“I can leave, if you want me to.”
“I’m not gonna ask that. But until that animal of yours is under control, all the way, I need to trust you to keep yourself on a leash around Holly. You know what I’m telling you, son?”
“Yes, sir.” It came out on a breath.
He hadn’t yet lied to the Colonel. But now, he could feel the glimmerings of a true lie curling inside him. Because he couldn’t keep his distance, not fully, not if he was going to keep her safe from her ex.
Who he couldn’t tell the Colonel about without breaking Holly’s trust in him.
Abruptly he found himself caught between two different truths, Holly’s and the Colonel’s. He would have done anything to keep Holly safe. Even if that meant lying to her dad.
Because, if he had to keep faith with just one of them, Holly was the one.
“Promise me,” the Colonel said, quiet and serious.
“I promise,” Jace said.
He must have been convincing, because the Colonel jerked his chin in a small nod of acknowledgement.
They walked back to the barn side by side. It felt different than it had on the walk out into the field, and not just because Jace was no longer fearing what might happen to him. It felt as if he had been given a test, and he had passed it.
Only Jace alone knew that he hadn’t. Not really.