Page 46 of Shifters Reckoning

Not again. Never again. I’d vowed.

I stopped fighting the flood and aimed the rush away. Anywhere but into my shifters. I opened my hands and let the overflow of power tear out of me in a column of harmless color, a soundless firework that lit the underside of the canopy in every shade my hair had ever been. The pressure screamed through me, burst out, and disappeared as I came back to myself in the crook of an oak as a human, gasping, trying to remember which lungs I was currently using.

Below me, the clearing had gone silent. A ring of frost around my tree had melted to steaming grass.

At the edge, Marcus sat with his blind face tipped up toward the last of my light show, and he asked no one in particular, “What did it look like?”

“Aurora,” Della said quietly.

“Shame,” Marcus murmured, and for once, he didn’t make it a snide comment or turn it into a joke.

I climbed down the tree on legs that mostly worked. Nobody had been hurt. Nobody had been knocked down. Twelve bears and four exchange warriors watched me with the cocktail I was learning to live with: one part concern, one part calculation. Everyone was probably quietly deciding whether what they’d just seen was a weapon they were glad to have or a disaster they were standing too close to. That’s what I’d have been thinking right about now.

“We’re all improving our skills. That means keep going,” I commanded.

We took a water break afterward, and it was almost peaceful. The bears hauled out more cornbread and a jug of honey the size of a badger. Bears didn’t believe in snacks, only in provisions.

My stomach roared loud enough to turn heads. I shot a sheepish look at Torbin. “Multiple shifts in an hour will do that.”

Silently, Otis cut me a chunk of cornbread. Levi sat on the stump beside him, narrating the young bear’s footwork flaws between bites, and Otis bore it with the heavy patience of a glacier being lectured by a sparkler.

Progress. It didn’t look like much. It never did.

Torbin lowered himself to the ground beside me. For a while, the old bear said nothing. “The linking,” he said finally. Not a question.

“You felt it.”

“All of Bear Trees felt it, Multimorph. I suspect the worms felt it.” He tugged once on his beaded beard. “You almost lost control.”

“I know. I saw the steaming grass.” I turned the cornbread over in my hands.

“No one was harmed,” he said. “This time, you bent the flood instead of breaking beneath it. That is new.” Under all that white hair, his gaze found mine. “Almost is a good teacher, Emma. A kind one. It lets you keep both the lesson and the students.”

“And when it stops being almost?”

“Then you will be glad you trained beside bears,” he rumbled, “who are sturdy and difficult to break, whether they drop their left paw or not.”

I doubled over and laughed hard, and it came out rawer than I had expected.

Above us, the breeze shook the leaves in the canopy, and for one borrowed hour, the war felt far away.

Afour-wheeler came up the trail at dusk, its engine noise scattering birds, and my heart did the stupid hopeful thing it always did before my head could remind it that Logan was in the west, holding the bigger part of the mess together.

It was Phil, grinning, wind-chapped, on a four-wheeler and towing a small trailer with my bags on it. He rolled to a stop in front of Torbin’s den. The bears had gone to scavenge and hunt, and I had been discussing the day’s training with Torbin and Marcus.

“You’re a week late,” I called to Phil, cupping my hands around my mouth so he could hear me over the engine.

“I’m aware, Multimorph.” He killed the engine and swung off. “In my defense, every time I loaded the truck, your mate found something more urgent for it to carry. Tiny-house supplies. Lumber. More tiny-house supplies. I brought the four-wheeler as soon as I got it out of the shop.” He handed my duffel to me. “Want a ride back to Six-Mile?”

“I’ve ridden bitch on your four-wheeler before, Phil. Once was plenty. Besides, I’m needed here.”

“You were also naked that time,” he said serenely, “so we can only improve.”

He’d brought more than bags. While the bears drifted home through the dark-trunked trees, we sat on Torbin’s porch mound as Phil made his report the way he did everything, thoroughly and in order, while Marcus listened from the doorway and Torbin loomed politely.

The exchange program was working. Mostly. Sort of.

“Over fifty warriors at Six-Mile and more arriving every day,” Phil said. “Training runs seven a.m., rain or shine. The ravens and the raccoons got into it over bunk assignments two nights ago. Feathers and fur all the way to the mess hall. Olivia broke it up.” He paused, choosing diplomacy. “Loudly. And two of the clans sent three warriors instead of six, so somebody’s testing whether you count.”