The fact that I was about to begin raising his children sometimes bothered me, as well. Since I had begun working as a children’s counselor, I had become more and more convinced that much of what we are is encoded in our DNA.
But I was also living proof that DNA can be overcome by the right combination of love and training.
My serpent side was perfectly content with the way things had worked out. It also remained unworried about the lamia children.
But it wasn’t my snake-self that wanted to talk to Kade, either.
I shook my head and worked to pull my mind back around to the idea that both the snake and the human were part of the larger “me.”
Many of the shifters I know easily talk about their animal forms as if they’re somehow separate. They say things like, “That really made my inner cat sit up and meow,” or “I had to push my raccoon back down inside.” Like the animal is a whole other entity, waiting to come out. And maybe for some of them, it is.
I can’t afford that kind of separation between my inner snake-self and my inner human-self. If I did, it would be far too easy to give in, to separate myself from the actions my serpentine nature often urges me to take—to do heinous things and then disavow my responsibility for them.
Maybe if I’d grown up around other shifters, it would be different. Maybe I would have no trouble truly separating my human self from my shifter animal.
But that doesn’t work for me.
And if I had my way, it wouldn’t work for the lamia children I helped raise, either.
Chapter 15
I WAS BEGINNING TO wish I hadn’t promised Jeremiah and Shadow not to tell anyone that they were here. Or at least, I was beginning to regret not making an exception of Kade in that.
This was the first time I’d kept anything from him since we began dating. Granted, it had not been that long in the overall scheme of things, but we had been through some pretty serious events in our short relationship. I wasn’t used to not being able to ask for his advice. As I pulled up in front of his house that evening, I considered what it might mean to me to break that trust—and then I even had to think about what I meant by those words. Whose trust was I breaking? Kade’s, as my boyfriend? Or Jeremiah’s and Shadow’s, as two people who were not quite my clients?
It had been an even longer time since I’d had to consider how to deal with an ethical conundrum like this. Supposedly, the only exceptions to confidentiality were if the clients were going to hurt themselves or someone else, or in the case of a court order.
I shook my head. None of that applied.
I pulled in a deep breath and picked my purse up off the seat beside me. When I sat up straight again, a flash of something caught my attention outside the passenger side window—something moving close to a neighbor’s house.
When I peered out with my human eyes, I couldn’t see anything. Shifting might help with that. Rumors of snakes’ poor eyesight were only partially true—it depended on the snake species. As a weresnake with access to a variety of serpent forms in any combination, my eyesight as a snake was not bad, by any means. However, it wasn’t attuned to the same kinds of things as human vision.
Carefully trying to look unconcerned, I stepped out of the car. But I spent that moment focusing intently on shifting only those parts of me that allowed me additional sensory input: my eyes, nose, tongue, Jacobson’s organs, and viper pits.
I moved slowly, turning around to duck back into the car as if I had forgotten something, giving myself enough time to scan the area around the neighboring house with my serpent vision, particularly effective in low light.
There.
In the shadows between the two houses, the vague outline of something large and darker than the shadows around it. At the same moment, I flicked out my tongue to gather air molecules and pulled them in over my Jacobson’s organs even as I used my heat sensors in my viper pits.
The heat sensors translated to something like infrared, and the hulking shadow lit up with mammal heat. But that didn’t give me anything more than a vague shape, either.
It was the air that told me the most. Individual scent molecules lingered from passersby during the day. In that cross between taste and smell, I sensed the sharp copper of somebody’s injury—on the sidewalk, under the faint smell of the child’s sweat. Maybe a skinned knee? Not what I was looking for. In any case, I tasted the day’s joy, and fear, and anxiety—all of that human.
But from the direction of the intruder next door, one scent was much stronger. Mammal, furred, and predatory. I tasted the oils on its skin and smelled the meat on its breath.
Werewolf.
The memory of Shadow telling me what her werewolf opponent had said came rushing back. They planned to wipe us all out.
The spell of the predator seemed to encircle me, heightening every one of my serpent senses. Without my volition, my fangs snapped into place, and I felt myself sliding into my more reptilian nature. I fought off the shift, however, keeping it only partial. Moving all my carried items to my left hand, I cut my right free, prepared to fight if necessary. If this wolf were local, he would already know that I had been training with a Shifter Shield mentor, Eduardo, a werecoyote who had been training me in hand-to-hand combat, both in my human form and in my serpent form.
So I guess that would be hand-to-no-hands.
I expected the werewolf to come toward me, to attack as I walked up the sidewalk to Kade’s front door. I kept my viper pit sensors trained on him, but he didn’t come toward me. Instead, he slowly moved deeper into the shadows.
If I had been entirely human and had caught a glimpse of him, I suspect I would’ve said he melted away. However, between my infrared style vision and my heightened sense of smell, I was able to tell exactly what he did—back away slowly, then turn and leap over a fence, cut through the backyard until he reached an alleyway in the back. I breathed out a sigh, though I wasn’t sure if it was of relief or disappointment that I hadn’t actually gotten to use my newfound skills. In either case, I let my serpent self go and then pushed the shift away entirely.
I’d need to shift sometime soon—otherwise, I would lose control over it entirely at some point. That would be bad for a number of reasons.
Not least of all because shifting in the middle of a counseling session would be likely to cause a client no end of trauma.
The thought made me snicker, and the return of my sense of humor let me know that I was completely human again—or at least, as completely human as I ever got.
KADE HAD GIVEN ME A key to his place, but our relationship was still new enough that I wasn’t entirely comfortable using it. Therefore, I rang the doorbell even as I opened the door, as I always did.
Kade stuck his head out from the kitchen and waved me toward him, then pointed at the phone in his hand as he continued speaking into it.
I nodded and moved toward the coffee machine, where Kade had a pot of decaf going.
I dropped my purse onto the kitchen table, poured myself a cup of coffee, then settled in to read texts on my own phone and listen in, in case it was Council business. I knew he’d take the call to another room if it were private.
“Back up,” he was saying. “How did he get hooked up with her?” Pause. “I get that, but how does a hyena shifter end up paired up with a Hunter?” If I’d had a mammal predator’s ears, they would have pricked up at the question. As it was, I simply found myself pulling more air molecules into my mouth and over my half-shifted Jacobson’s organ.