by Zoe Chant
“That sounds fantastic.” Teri let herself imagine it: relaxing in a deck chair with a cold drink, Zach manning the grill, maybe a few friends over, some neighbor kids running around...
Then she caught herself. Wow, she was building fantasies a bit too quickly, there. She was going on one date with Zach, and she was already picturing them living together in his house? Time to slow down.
“Sounds like you and Joel are going to be inviting the neighbors over a lot, then,” she said, emphasizing Joel the tiniest bit, to remind herself who was actually going to be hanging out on the deck.
Zach glanced over at her, looking almost shy. “I hope so. We’ve never had a—a big community like there is here. It’s always just been the two of us. So it would be great if we could have people over regularly, get to know everyone that works at the Park a little better.”
“You guys don’t have any other family?”
Zach shook his head. “Just us.”
Teri connected that with Zach saying that he’d taken care of Joel before he was eighteen, and came up with a picture of Zach’s past that made her heart ache. “It’s really impressive that you’ve done all this,” she said quietly. “Put you and Joel through school, gotten jobs in the same place, and now you’ve got a house and you’re thinking about building a deck...”
She hadn’t expected him to laugh at that. But it was a good-natured laugh, not like he was making fun of her. “Neither did I! I never thought we’d have something as solid as this. But don’t think it was all me. Joel worked his butt off to save money, same as I did. He worked all through high school, even though I told him he should let me be the moneymaker and focus on school. But he always kept his grades up—better than I did, and I had it a lot easier than he did when I was the same age.” Zach had a fond look on his face. “He’s a great kid.”
Teri tried to picture Lillian talking about her with the same amount of pride in her voice, and drew a total blank.
Oh, well. Families were different, right? Teri’s family just wasn’t...expressive, like Zach was.
And what was she doing, feeling sorry for herself? She was sure now that Zach and Joel had lost their parents at a young age, which must have been horrible. Teri was lucky.
“Sounds like you guys are a great team,” she said firmly. “Is he going to help you with the deck?”
Zach laughed again—such a big, happy sound, it filled the car. “No way. Joel is totally uninterested in carpentry. He’d much rather be out in nature. He spends half his free time out in the Park, even though he’s there all through the work day, too.”
“Sounds wonderful to me.” Teri knew she sounded wistful, but she couldn’t help herself. Her brief venture into the Park today had woken up the longing for the outdoors that had always lived inside her.
She probably wouldn’t want to be outside all the time, like it sounded like Joel did. But she missed hiking so fiercely. It had started to feel like all the time she’d spent trapped inside was a weight on her back, holding her down.
They pulled into Oliver’s. It was a weeknight, so not too busy, but there were still plenty of cars in the lot. Everyone in town was going to know who she’d been out with, which meant that her family would know she was dating a shifter.
Teri had mostly avoided thinking about it so far. After all, she’d only had it as gossip from Lillian, and Lillian might have heard wrong. But if Zach really was a shapeshifter...
Well, she hadn’t seen any evidence of animalistic behavior so far. He seemed like a perfectly nice guy with a totally normal amount of self-control. More than the average guy, even, the way he was so thoughtful and courteous with her.
She’d keep an eye out for any dangerous instincts coming to the surface, but she’d already long suspected that her family had misrepresented shifter natures to her when she was a kid, and so far Zach was just confirming that.
If he was a shifter. Would she have a chance to find out whether Lillian had been right?
They went inside the restaurant, got seated and handed menus, and Zach looked to Teri. “What’s good here? I’ve been here once, but I just got a burger and fries, nothing fancy.”
“They don’t have much fancy. I might get a burger and fries.” Teri hadn’t eaten out in a long, long time, and just the idea of a juicy burger and golden fries was making her mouth water. Her mother was always on her about her weight, and even more so since she’d been stuck in bed for a couple of months—though of course she wasn’t going to let Teri out to exercise!—so food like this never made it inside the house.
Zach frowned at the selection, and eventually went with the fish, which Teri assured him was always good—freshwater fish caught locally. She made a note to herself: no extra-rare steak in sight. Another checkmark against terrifying shifter instincts.
Although she guessed she didn’t know what kind of shifter he was. Maybe his kind of animal naturally ate fish. An otter? A pelican?
She smiled to herself behind the menu. She somehow couldn’t imagine powerful, strong Zach as a pelican. But the guessing game was fun.
“So,” Zach said after they’d placed their orders, “was coming to the Park worth it, today? I hope you didn’t catch too much hell.”
“Totally worth it,” she assured him. “My mom was furious, but I’d do it again in a second. I probably will do it again. I miss the Park so much.”
“So you used to spend a lot of time there?”
She nodded. “I was sort of an...awkward kid, so I spent a lot of time outside, growing up. As soon as I was old enough to go by myself, I went to the Park all the time. Out on the trails, there wasn’t anyone else to worry about, just me and the trees and the animals. I loved it.”
“Wow,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine you being awkward.”
“Really?” Teri’s eyebrows flew up. “I haven’t been awkward enough? Getting dragged off by my sister after we met like I was a little kid? Getting dragged off by my mom this morning like I was a little kid?”
“That’s your family,” Zach said. “The circumstances. Not you. You’re...cheerful. Fun. It seems like anyone would be happy to be around you.”
Teri blushed hard—her face probably looked like a tomato. No one would’ve called her cheerful in the last few months. But she’d been so happy to be out, she could maybe see how Zach had gotten that impression.
“Okay, enough about me,” she said. “What about you? Were you an outdoorsy kid?”
“Sort of,” he said, allowing her the subject change with a smile. “I guess I was. Compared to my brother, I feel like a homebody, but I guess compared to most people, yes. And I was always running off after Joel when he was real little, because he wanted to be way out in the middle of nowhere but he wasn’t old enough to be by himself in the woods. So I spent a lot of time outside.”
Teri pictured two little boys, chasing each other through the trees, playing make-believe games together, climbing up on rocks. It sounded nice.
“We were also...kind of different from the other kids,” Zach continued. “So we spent a lot of time together.”
Teri was sure she knew what he was talking about. This was her opening. Would she take it? Was she too nervous to bring it up?
She’d felt braver today than she had in a long time, and it had made her feel good. She wasn’t going to stop now: she took the plunge. “I heard you were shifters.”
“That’s right.” Zach seemed to tense up at that. “Is that a problem? Does it bother you?”
“No!” Teri said immediately, and found that she wasn’t lying at all. Now that Zach had confirmed it, she was sure her family was wrong. This man couldn’t be dangerous. This man wasn’t having to fight to restrain his instincts. She knew it, somehow, was absolutely rock-solid certain of it.
“No,” she repeated. “My family...doesn’t like shifters very much. But I always wanted to know more. I think they’re making up half the things they say. But I was never allowed to be friends with the shifter kids in s
chool, so I never learned anything.”
Zach raised his eyebrows, looking skeptical. “You stayed away when your parents told you to?”
Teri smiled, a little ruefully. “I was a lot more obedient then. By the time I got to high school, I didn’t believe it anymore. I tried to talk to some of the shifter kids, but they knew why I’d avoided them as a kid and they stayed away.” She sighed. “And I don’t blame them. I’m sure their parents taught them that it wasn’t safe to be around people who thought shifters were dangerous.”
“Is that what your parents think?”
Teri nodded. “They’re convinced shifters are a step away from tearing people limb from limb. Which is dumb, because there are a ton of shifters living around Glacier and I’ve never heard of any horrible murders in town. So even if they all secretly want to eat people, they must be pretty good at keeping it under control.”
“We don’t secretly want to eat people.” Zach looked a little offended.
“Sorry,” Teri said immediately. “I didn’t mean to imply that I thought that was true. I really don’t, I promise.”
The waitress appeared with their food, then, and Teri fell silent, hoping that Zach wasn’t upset. It had been a dumb thing to say, she admonished herself.
When they were alone in the booth, she apologized again. “I shouldn’t even have joked about it.”
“It’s okay.” Zach stared down at his fish, a faraway look on his face. “It’s just—Joel and I grew up in the city, not in a community full of shifters like this one. No one except our parents knew we were shapeshifters.”
“Were they shifters too?”
“Yep.” Zach looked up and met her eyes; she could see a deep pain there that made her chest ache. “They’d moved away from their homes because my dad was a wolf and my mom was a snow leopard, and their families had hated each other—almost violently, sometimes. So they got out and went to the city to have a life where they could love each other in peace.”
“Good for them,” Teri said quietly. And then, even more quietly, because she knew the answer was going to be painful, “What happened to them?”
“My mom got sick. Shifters don’t get sick often, but when they do...there’s not much that can be done. There aren’t a lot of shifter doctors, and we don’t have the same kind of physiology as normal humans. And she got worse fast, faster than my dad thought was possible.”
“I’m sorry.” Teri couldn’t imagine it.
“Afterward...my dad couldn’t take it. They were mates, which is a—a shifter thing.”
Teri frowned. “A shifter thing?”
Zach waved a hand, clearly trying and failing to come up with the right words. “A...mystical connection, I guess. That sounds hokey, but it’s true.”
It did sound hokey, a little. Was it supposed to be magic?
“Once you’re mated, it’s for life. And you know once you’re together. You can tell that you’re meant for each other, that you’ll never be apart. I’m not explaining this very well.” Zach looked frustrated.
“So far, it just sounds like love to me,” Teri confessed. Real, true, love, of the kind she’d never been sure quite existed. Love like it was described in books and movies.
“I’ve never felt it, just heard my parents describe it, so I guess I can’t do it justice.” Zach shrugged, although it didn’t look cavalier. More...sad. Teri wanted to reach out, comfort him somehow, but he kept talking before she could decide what to do.
“Anyway, losing his mate was too much for my dad to take, I think. He was a welder, and he died in an accident at work a few months later. They said it was his own fault, and I’ve never been sure if it was just carelessness, because he just couldn’t focus as well after, or...something more deliberate.”
“God, that’s terrible,” Teri said. “And then you had to raise your brother on your own. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
Zach picked up his fork, looking a little sheepish. “Thanks. It’s kind of heavy stuff for a first date, though. I didn’t mean to just lay it all on you like that.”
“No,” said Teri. “I’m happy to know. Really.” She found that she meant it. She wanted to know everything about Zach, even the bad stuff.
That was surprising. Teri didn’t usually want to learn anyone’s deeper feelings and secrets right away. It was similar to how she usually wasn’t mouth-dropping-open, panties-on-fire attracted to men like she was to Zach. She also usually wanted to take it slow, spend time getting to know a guy on a friendly, casual basis before they got too heavy—physically or emotionally.
Zach was different. Looking into his silvery eyes, seeing the way his mouth set when he remembered something painful...it felt special.
“Anyway,” Zach was saying, “my point was that I grew up far away from any other shifters. My parents were the only ones we knew, and none of us ever told anyone else what we were. I always thought it was a complete secret from every non-shifter, everywhere...and then Joel and I moved here.”
Teri leaned forward, intrigued. “How did you and Joel find out it was different here?”
Zach grinned. “We got called into our boss’s office for a very serious, confidential discussion about how Glacier was a little different and some of our coworkers had unusual abilities. We about lost our minds.”
“I can only imagine.”
“And it turns out that Glacier is home to most of the snow leopard shifters in the US. That’s what Joel and I are, snow leopards, and we just happened to be posted here?” Zach shook his head. “It’s almost enough to make me believe in fate.”
“I thought you did,” Teri pointed out. “What with the destined mates, and all that.”
Zach looked thoughtful. “Huh. I never thought about this being related to that. Maybe it is. Maybe shifters just get drawn to their rightful place, eventually, whether that’s where they live, or who they’re with.”
Teri was still a bit skeptical about the mystical destiny idea, but she kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t going to argue with the soft, happy look on Zach’s face.
And if fate had brought him and his brother here, after the hard life that they’d had, well, more power to fate.
***
Zach was a little embarrassed.
He hadn’t meant to spill almost his entire life’s story to Teri before they even started eating. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t go on a date with a woman and start out, Hi, my parents died tragically when I was a teenager and left me all alone to raise my little brother! Not only was it a surefire way to kill any chances of another date, it just wasn’t his habit to talk about private things like that so easily.
He and Joel had had to undergo some questioning from Cal and the other ranger shifters when it came out that they were snow leopard shifters, also. The shifter community was pretty small and tight-knit, especially around Glacier, and most of the guys had a hard time conceiving of shifters who had grown up in a big city, far away from any others of their kind.
Cal had eventually ordered everyone to get back to work and stop shoving your noses into other people’s business! and the curiosity had quieted down a bit. But it still hummed around in the background.
It made work a little awkward, sometimes, knowing that people were dying to know his private history. Especially since Zach and Joel, as the two new guys, mostly weren’t assigned to work together. Zach had found that he preferred working with Grey, who was quiet and minded his own business out of habit, or Jeff Hart, who was cheerfully good-natured and wouldn’t dream of asking any questions that might make someone else uncomfortable. Tyson was another quiet one, although Zach got the sense that he never asked any questions because he was too wrapped up in his own tensions to want to take on anyone else’s problems.
Zach had appreciated the respect for his and Joel’s privacy, even as he tried to make friends. It seemed like basic courtesy, after all.
And now he’d gone and told most of the story to a woman he’d just met without thinking twice. What was go
ing on with him?
The conversation had paused while they both paid some attention to their food. Zach’s fish was delicious, and Teri was attacking her burger and fries with gusto. Zach wondered when the last time was she’d had a chance to come out to a restaurant, if her mother never let her leave.
Well, hopefully this wouldn’t be the last time he took her out, and she’d have a lot more chances to enjoy restaurant food in the near future. Watching her eat with such enthusiasm was extremely satisfying—she deserved to enjoy life more than she’d been able to recently.
When conversation started up again, they stuck to lighter topics. Teri had read a ton of books while stuck in bed, and had watched as many classic movies as she could find, and Zach found himself intensely interested in what she had to say about them. He’d never had the time to watch many movies, and he’d definitely never been a big reader, but hearing her talk made him want to go check them out.
In return, Zach told her about what it was like working at the Park. “Cal’s a great boss,” he said. “He’s definitely a man of few words, and he can be abrupt, but that’s just because he’s focused on getting the job done. He has confidence in us, but he still checks in regularly to make sure we’re doing a good job, and that we’re satisfied with the job we’re doing.”
Teri’s brows went up. “Wow. That’s not like any job I’ve ever had.”
“Me, neither,” Zach said fervently. “I’ve worked at places that claimed that their company was ‘like a family,’ but that usually just means that they expect you to work overtime without getting paid extra. Cal would never say that the rangers were a family”—the idea of terse, businesslike Cal saying anything of the kind was a little ridiculous—“but I’m starting to think that’s what it is.”
“Good thing you brought your actual family there with you, then,” Teri said with a soft smile.
Zach decided he would never, ever get enough of Teri’s smiles. “Good thing,” he agreed. “The other guys are good people too, though. Grey doesn’t talk much, but he’s utterly dependable. He’ll have your back no matter what. Jeff is like—I don’t know, he’s such a cheerful guy. Always happy, always thinking the best of people, always ready to say something kind. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that positive before, like, really and truly positive, not faking it.”
