Page 32 of Shifters Reckoning

Torbin waited.

“Can you send word to Marcus?”

“The Ville Platte alpha?”

“Yes, I need to meet with him.”

He tugged on his beaded beard. “For what purpose?”

“My business is my own,” I said, adopting a tone harsher than I felt. “I am the multimorph, Torbin, and I wish to speak with Marcus. All consequences with Logan will be mine and mine alone.”

Explaining to Torbin that Marcus was probably my uncle and had been blinded by his sister, maybe my birth mother, was a whole can of baggage worms I wasn’t willing to open right now.

After a long silence, Torbin finally acceded with a reverberating sigh. “It is a dangerous game you play, Multimorph, but I will do as you ask.”

Later, a young bear runner presented himself, scrubbed and solemn and visibly, trembly aware he’d been entrusted with Multimorph Business.

“Torbin sent me,” he said. “He said you had a message to deliver to an alpha.”

“This goes straight to Six-Mile,” I told him. “To the Six-Mile alpha or his beta, nobody else. These exact words. Ready?”

He nodded so hard his teeth clicked.

“The multimorph is well. Training began at first light this morning, and she worked the warriors until the sun quit.” I ticked the items off on my fingers. “She is settled in the alpha’s own hollow, and the warding is strong. The alpha of Ville Platte arrived at midday at the multimorph’s summons.”

The boy’s eyes went wide.

I kept going before he could think about how Logan was going to take that. “The Ville Platte alpha brought word that Acheron’s trail runs south past his territory, and the multimorph asks that Jace turn his drones that way. And…” I grinned, and God help me, it felt good. “Tell him this next part exactly. ‘All consequences with Logan are mine and mine alone. Four little words, love. Look them up. I am the multimorph.’”

The runner’s mouth opened and closed.

“What’s wrong?”

“He’s going to make a face,” he said faintly.

I chuckled. “He is going to make a magnificent face. When he does, you tell him I said so.” I patted his massive young shoulder. “Repeat it all back again.”

He repeated it twice perfectly, clearly dying inside, and then he shifted in a burst of wind and color and ran west into the dark. I continued to stand at the edge of the clearing as the young bear disappeared in the distance.

Logan would rage and scare the shit out of the young bear shifter. Then the alpha would pace, and he’d growl at Olivia and go do something useful because that was what he did with feelings when I wasn’t around. And then he would choose to trust me because that was also what my mate did. It was the whole reason I could stand out here in the cold and do any of this at all.

The last arrival of the day came up the eastern track at full dark, moving through the canopy in a way that was less like travel and more like a burst of chittery static electricity. A small, furry figure dropped onto the domed roof of Torbin’s home mound and leaped to the ground in front of the entrance. The small figure morphed into a human with an expression of disappointment.

“Boss,” Levi said. “I’ve been sent to live with the bears.”

“Levi.” The knot of grief and gladness that hit me at the sight of him—mouthy, undersized, alive—nearly embarrassed us both. East Nuttal had lost Salali, their treacherous alpha, to a headsman’s blade and their good name to her treason, and when the exchange assignments went out, they’d answered by sending their sharpest tongue and best climber to Torbin’s clan. It was a squirrel-clan apology from them to the alpha who had been tasked with intrusively delving their alpha, and to the multimorph who had been betrayed.

“Bear Trees is lucky to have you,” I said.

“Bear Trees doesn’t have a single branch rated for my personality.” He looked past me at the hollow, at the doilies probably visible through the doorway, and his voice dropped its armor for exactly one sentence. “Our clan wants you to have our best, you know, so here I am.”

“Here you are,” I agreed and let all else remain unsaid. “Don’t let the twins hear you talk like that.”

He snorted.

“There’s cornbread if the bears left any, and training’s at first light. Fair warning: there’s a new drill tomorrow, and you’re about to be very popular.”

“Story of my life,” Levi said, and he went to raid the cornbread stock.