Page 24 of Bear My Heart

"A grizzly. You wouldn't want me to shift in here." Particularly since he was still standing in the doorway and would very possibly get stuck in it.

Shanti's voice shot up. "A grizzly? Are you kidding? Of course you're kidding⁠—"

Abby made an apologetic gesture toward Peter and shifted into an enormous pale blonde tabby cat with very faintly red markings. Shanti shrieked and her knees cut out, sending her to the floor with a thump. Pete jolted a couple of steps toward her, but she thrust a hand up, palm out, stopping him. Abby prowled forward until she could peer around the edge of the check-out desk at Shanti, who, save for trembling slightly, sat very still as she stared at the cat blinking at her.

After an exchange of glances, the other two redheads also shifted, Hannah into an equally large, very orange tabby with distinct white striping, and Zim into an absolutely huge almost-black cat whose fur glinted with red in the undercoat. Pete blurted, "Oh, wow, you're actually house cats," and all three of them turned gold-and-green-eyed glares at him.

His bear, cautiously, said, If we swat them now they can't be scary, and despite the considerable tension in the bookstore, Pete chuckled.

We're not swatting them at all.

His bear mumbled about cats puffing up and hissing and generally being alarming, but it didn't argue with him. Which was good, because Hannah's expression in particular invited him to try it. After a moment, though, she followed Abby around the check-out desk, and then so did Zim, so Shanti could see all three of them clearly.

Sabrina, sitting almost directly across from Shanti on the other side of the bookstore, next to the door, said, "I didn't believe it either," apologetically. "Luke's a bunny."

The cats all swiveled their heads to give Sabrina scolding looks, but then returned their attention to Shanti, whose dark eyes were huge as they darted from the cats to Peter, to Sabrina, back to the cats over and over, as if she was trying to process what she'd seen. After a minute she waved her fingers in a feeble circle at the cats. Abby shifted back to human, still sitting on the floor beside her sisters.

Shanti shrieked again, pulling her knees up and stomping her feet against the floor.

"Fair," Abby said. "I know it's a little weird. And I wouldn't usually have done that, but I really didn't want a grizzly bear in the shop and I don't think you're going to tell anybody anyway."

"Who would even believe me?"

"Yes," Abby said. "There's that, too."

"You're all—" Shanti's gaze was now bouncing between Abby and her two still-cat-shaped sisters. "You're all huge. But also not big enough?"

"It's the magic," Abby said. "Something about the mass conversion. Almost all shifter animals are bigger than their true counterparts, which is another reason I don't want a grizzly shifting in the shop. Are you okay?"

Shanti jerked her attention to Pete, who smiled nervously at her, then winced as she said, "This is what you were talking about! With the moose!"

"It is. I actually thought for a minute, right at the beginning, that you knew about shifters."

She stared at him, clearly running through their conversations, then bared her teeth in a much more aggressive expression than he'd ever seen from her, though he thought it was really more exasperation than aggression. "When I said about the deer and the car wreck. You said something like, oh so you know, but then I didn't and this is what you meant!"

"It is," Pete said a bit shamefacedly. "But I couldn't explain it then, either."

"Because I'd never believe it without seeing it." Shanti slid her fingers into her hair and tugged at it, leaving tufts of short curls standing every which way. "How many…wait, where's Luke?"

Sabrina bounced to her feet. "I'll go get him." She scurried out the door, and the rest of them just…waited. Pete had no idea what to say, and couldn't shift in the shop without making a mess of everything. The two women who were still cats obviously couldn't say anything, and Abby appeared content to wait while Shanti's gaze roved from one to another of them. It felt like a long time, although it probably wasn't more than a minute or two, before Sabrina returned, a befuddled Luke in tow.

"Sabrina said it was an emergency? Oh, jeez! Shanti! Are you okay?"

"Are you a bunny?" Shanti was still on the floor, but she lifted both hands this time, palms out again. "No, wait, are you the bunny? The one who does the Easter stuff in the square?"

"Uh." Luke blinked a couple of times. "Um, yes, I'm a bunny, but no, not usually. That's usually my sister. You." His gaze darted to Pete and his eyebrows went up. "Oh I see."

"You see what?" Shanti demanded. "No, wait, never mind, first tell me how many people we went to high school with could turn into bunnies!"

"Hardly any of us? Just my family. But about a quarter of our class were shifters, if that's what you're really asking?"

Shanti said, "Oh my God," and put her face in her hands. "How did I not know this?"

"Well, we don't really advertise it…"

"No, I know, I just…" Shanti fell silent and Pete had to fight the urge to hurry over and scoop her up protectively. This was not how he'd imagined explaining he was a shifter. Not that he'd had a clear plan, but this definitely was not it. All he wanted was to keep her safe and happy, and maybe to apologize until the end of time for handling this badly, but she was obviously still processing and he wasn't sure it would help to try to be a hero of some kind right now. Hannah, in cat form, leaped gracefully up onto the checkout counter, then shifted to human still sitting there. Zim rolled her eyes and stalked to the back of the bookshop, disappearing through a door. Apparently she'd had enough drama for the moment.

"Okay," Shanti finally said into her palms, and looked up again. "Okay, you see what? You said, 'oh I see.'"