1. One Month Ago

This was always a bad night for Benji. Birthdays were supposed to be happy, but his were always traumatic. Benji was only seven when his neighbors reported them to the Coalition. That was a different time when the Coalition had a lot more power. We were essentially immortal unless you knew how to kill us.

The Coalition didn’t want to kill us, though. I was the oldest out of Pax, Benji, and me. I was seventeen years old when the angels came down to gaslight humans into hurting us. Which none of us even understood because they were exactly the same as us. They appeared to various religious leaders and told them all about us, but they lied.

It was good old Satanic Panic. We were their neighbors and friends, but we were possessed by demons and we needed their help to be cured. Except that wasn’t true. We were all born this way. Even the demons were born this way and they got a bad rap. They’d tried exorcisms, baptisms, and various amounts of torture trying to remove our demons.

Fifty years ago, things started changing. We started getting groups together to tell people we weren’t possessed by evil spirits. We couldn’t help this any more than they could help their eye color, and we didn’t want to hurt them.

The saner people listened. Many of the people I’d helped when they escaped started telling their stories. There were people like me all over the world. People were truly seeing the horrors they did to us. Several countries banned the Coalition. Entire churches were fragmenting into the decent people and the zealots.

There were just as many priests, nuns, pastors, and preachers that actually helped my kind as there were zealots running facilities and torturing us.

Pax met me outside Benji’s bedroom door. Pax never wore his dark glasses inside the house because he knew we didn’t give a shit about his milky white, scarred eyes. The Coalition blinded him, trying to purge the demon out of him. I found him stumbling on the side of the road in filthy clothes with bloody feet looking like they barely fed him.

But Pax wasn’t totally blind. He was still a warlock. He could see auras. He knew I was a polar bear shifter, and that I was there to help before I even said anything. I scooped him up, carried him to my truck, and drove him back to my village in the woods humans hadn’t discovered yet. Our healer tried to do something with his eyes, but she couldn’t save them.

I didn’t bring everyone I rescued or saved to my home. We had a safe house in the village for that. There was something about Pax, and he needed extra care. I fed and cared for Pax while he healed, and then I realized he was my pack.

Benji came later and Benji was a handful. Benji was the son of an American werewolf and a Korean shadow demon. He was absolutely beautiful, but a shifter demon hybrid was a lot.

And the Coalition absolutely salivated to get their hands on a hybrid. They thought that meant he was extra possessed or some shit. The Coalition snatched his whole family when they were coming home from Benji’s seventh birthday. He never saw his parents again, but they focused a lot of attention on that kid because they thought if they could get the demons out, he could live a normal life.

Benji told us they tried an exorcism first while he kept screaming he was born this way. They were using silver crucifixes on him. It wasn’t the crucifix, it was the silver he was reacting to. When that didn’t work, they tried baptizing him.

Benji came up from the water and bit the priest’s nose off. Someone else took over and plunged him under the water again until he nearly drowned. To this day, Benji has been terrified of water.

Benji always claimed he wanted to be alone on his birthday and Pax and I always ignored it because he had a bad time. We pretty much avoided doing anything involving the Coalition for this entire month, so we didn’t set him off. If someone called, we’d give them the name of another group that could help them. We wanted to help all Coalition victims, but we also needed to care for Benji.

Benji hadn’t exactly figured out what we were doing until several decades later. Most people who called us called me. Pax and Benji worked with me, but I didn’t exactly go giving their names and numbers out because I didn’t know how much the Coalition kept on them. It had been decades and anyone who had hurt either of them was long dead. They both said they were given numbers instead of their names, but I didn’t trust those fuckers and I didn’t want them to come looking for my pack who got away from them.

But someone called Benji about a job, which immediately set my bear on edge. Benji was my boyfriend and pack, not my child. I didn’t try to control him. He very well could have put feelers out for more people to hire us. And if Benji wanted to take this job, I wasn’t going to tell him what he wanted, either.

But Pax and I shared a look from outside his bedroom door when the thumping started. Benji was a werewolf shadow demon hybrid. After Pax and I found him, we fed him, comforted him, and then worked with him on control. Benji could turn into this pretty badass shadow wolf when he was in control, but Pax and I were the only people who could handle him when he wasn’t.

“Think we should have agreed to take that job?” Pax asked.

“Benji has come a long way in the last seventy years. He doesn’t lie to us about what he needs anymore. He also knows himself pretty well. Benji would know better than we do if he could handle a job dealing with the Coalition around his birthday.”

“Yeah, but we both know how he gets when he can’t handle shit.”

I shrugged.

“It’s been decades since he’s lost control like that.”

There was a loud crash and a whimper from the other side of Benji’s door. Pax and I could stand out here and try to discuss what we thought Benji needed all night, but what Benji really needed was us in there, making sure his demon side didn’t accidentally poof him somewhere the Coalition might try to take him again. Benji would die before he went back there.

I tried the doorknob, even though I knew damned well Benji locked the door. The first time we did this dance, I kicked the door down and traumatized Benji even further. Pax told me I was a dumbass and reminded me he was a Smith. He could just transfigure the doorknob. Replacing Benji’s doorknob was cheaper and less labor-intensive than replacing the whole door and had the added bonus of not startling a pretty dangerous hybrid.

Benji knew we could get in and he was eventually grateful for it, but he still locked the fucking door every year. I stepped aside.

“This is all you. I’ve already bought a new doorknob.”

“That doorknob is my bitch,” Pax said, cracking his neck.

Pax could mostly see auras and outlines, but he knew his way around this house. Pax could transfigure anything, and I really hoped he didn’t get messy this time. One time, he tried to change the doorknob to strawberry Jell-O to cheer Benji up, and it was really nasty cleaning that up to replace the knob.

Thankfully, Pax just turned the doorknob to sand this time. I gently pushed the door open and peeked my head inside. Benji had dragged his bean bag to the corner and was cowering and shaking.

I was only a polar bear shifter, and I’d be full bear in this situation, but Benji was a hybrid and right now, his body was scared and confused. It didn’t know if the wolf or the demon would save him, so both were fighting for control. His horns were out, but he had a wolf tail. Benji was also surrounded by shadows.

“They’re going to find me,” he whimpered.

“Not here. You’re safe, Benji. We’re far away from any Coalition facility. No one knows we’ve got a whole functioning village in the mountains and the humans in town are pretty great,” I cooed.

“The sheriff hasn’t even arrested you yet. You filled his entire car with Spam and bragged about it to anyone who would listen. He knows it was you, Benji,” Pax said.

Benji let out this deranged giggle as his demon came a little more to the surface.

“I hid some of the Spam deep under the seats, so even when he thought it was clean, it wasn’t. Pop, six, he had it coming.”

Sheriff Riddle was very much human and all he’d ever done to Benji was give him a warning once about parking his motorcycle in a loading zone. Benji knew damned well he wasn’t supposed to park there, but he was hunting Pokémon and said it was an emergency. Benji had been pranking him since and Riddle was basically a saint because he hadn’t thrown Benji in jail once.

Reminding Benji of all the times he got away with sticking it to the Sheriff would distract him long enough for us to coax him out of the corner.

“Why don’t you come get in bed and tell us all about the times you got Sheriff Riddle that you haven’t told us about?” I said.

Because I knew there were other pranks Benji was keeping a secret. He wasn’t telling us, even though he wanted to, because if Riddle found out about it, Benji would end up in jail that time.

“Can I have Bepo?”

I sighed. My polar bear was a fierce, magnificent creature. I could kill a man with one swipe of my paws. Benji got obsessed with this anime with a polar bear and started calling my bear by the same name. I should fucking hate it, but my bear preened every time Benji uttered that name. And he was definitely doing it now that Benji needed him.

This wasn’t an odd request. Benji asked to cuddle with my bear when he was upset because it made him feel safe. Pax was already making a nest on the floor with blankets and pillows to soothe his wolf. There was just enough room on Benji’s floor for Pax and Benji to snuggle with a polar bear, and honestly, I liked it, too.

I pulled my clothes off and folded them neatly in the corner. I let the shift take me. We had arranged Benji’s room, so we had the space to do this since he needed it a lot when we first found him. Benji was now a complete badass and could take care of himself. It was just this one night, or if there was the possibility of him going in deep water, that he got like this.

I shifted and arranged myself on the nest of blankets and pillows on the floor. Benji snuggled into my side and then Pax spooned Benji. I could tell Benji was starting to calm. He usually did if we could get him out of the corner and snuggle him.

“Okay, so don’t be mad…”