Chapter Seventeen

One of the nicest features of the library at school was the private cubicles where a student could settle in and study uninterrupted. In my continuing quest to prove I deserved a full scholarship, I took advantage of these spaces most afternoons. Many of the students seemed unimpressed with all the information we were given, but I soaked it up like a sponge. Poor Angie with her limited knowledge had done her best, and without her I'd be an illiterate person. Unfortunately, I was years behind everyone in my classes, and there would be tests coming up soon.

My solution to my ignorance was to take what I was being taught and delve deeper into it in the library where volumes contained all the knowledge I needed. At first, it had been rough because libraries were new to me too. Sometimes, I probably seemed like I had been raised under a rock somewhere instead of on the side of a mountain. But so far, my instructors and professors had shown great patience. I just didn't think it would be endless, and so I needed to catch up as quickly as possible.

And in doing so, I discovered something about myself. I loved to learn. Although at first, I was struggling to find things to enhance the classroom lectures, after a while, I was following rabbit trails on general interest as well.

So much of what I was learning clashed with what my father had proclaimed to be reality. He spoke of himself and of me as if we were unique in every way. And, more than unique, better than the rest. It was such a lie. My father wasn't even the only original shifter or even the oldest. There were some who were even known to be still hanging around and others who, while still alive, dwelled on other planes.

I didn't see a way to contact any of them—and I wasn't sure it would be a good idea. If Father was not welcome among them, perhaps neither was I. But I was curious, fascinated, and wanted to learn everything.

Also, I was hunting for evidence of others like me. Multi-natured. So far, every book I'd come across was about werewolves, which made sense on one level. It was the name of the school as well as the nature of most of the students and the largest percentage of the staff. But shouldn't an institution like this be prepared to help students expand their minds? Most of them grew up in packs or at least around other wolves, but my understanding of a college or academy or any kind of school was that it worked that way. Human students in books and on TV were learning about other countries and cultures and religions even. What the library showed me had me considering some of my classes.

Sure, they might call it "shifter history" or "shifter culture," but a look at the class synopsis reflected a singular emphasis on wolf shifters. Sure, there might be one lecture about all the rest, but how was that fair? Human schools had the whole world in their texts but not us. Were there academies just for all the other types of animals, and did they only learn about themselves?

When Father declared himself the original shifter, he did so knowing he had the ability to shift to any animal in this world and, for all I knew, others as well. I had never tried to change to anything without success, and I'd always assumed I was limited only by my awareness of the existence of an animal.

I assumed my sisters were only wolves, although I'd never asked. If I did, they'd wonder why. But I had begun to think the reason Father kept me was genetics. My similarity to him. For all we knew, he might have a dozen more children out there, just not in the registry.

The more I thought about these things, the more distracted I grew from my reading until I finally pushed the heavy volume entitled Shifters of the Past away from me. As with most of what I'd found, it was all about wolves with only a mention or two of others.

I blew out a breath of frustration.

"What's wrong, Cleo?" Pax's smooth voice rolled over me. "Don't you like the book?"

"It's not that. I just feel like this place is so much about wolves and forgets that there are other kinds of shifters."

"What? Why do you think that's the case?" He sat down next to me, though, and listened while I explained what I'd been observing. Really listened without interrupting or mansplaining or defending the school. At the end, he didn't deny my feelings or say I was jumping to conclusions. Just nodded and said, "I never noticed that." He tugged the book I'd been reading over and opened it to the table of contents. "Huh…"

"This is typical."

"Are you trying to find something about a particular animal? Your wolf is magnificent."

I didn't have a good response to that without revealing everything I wasn't ready to explain. Maybe Father wasn't the only original, but he and I might be the only ones who could shift to multiple animals. If I couldn't even learn a thing about a fox shifter, what were the odds of finding a pamphlet even about people like me?

"Cleo?"

"What? Oh, sorry. I'm just interested in all kinds of shifters, aren't you?"

"If not, I should be." He sat in the chair next to mine. "You're really something, thinking outside the box. Growing up, we didn't really get to know anyone outside our pack and for sure not outside the animal species. The few here who aren't 100 percent wolf are mostly staff, and they don't hang out with students.

"Are there schools for other animals or maybe even some who have two kinds of animals, I mean for parents?"

"Other animals yes, but I think mostly people go to the school for the type of other nature they actually inherited."

"Oh, so if they have a fox and lion, but they turn to a fox, they would go to a fox school?"

He shrugged. "If there was one…I really don't know. You're making me think."

It was a start.

He went on. "And speaking of animals, I actually tracked you down here for a reason."

"Yeah? To talk about animals." I could show him a few.

"Sort of. Jude and Miles and I are taking a little field trip on Saturday evening to a park with hiking trails not too far from here. Would you like to come?"