Chapter 16

16

Dizziness threatened to take hold of her once again. Stacey raced through the back door, longing for the safe confines of her home before she tripped. She stumbled through the door and shut it firmly behind her. The walk back from Dylan's patio had left her breathless, even though it hadn't been very long.

"What's the matter with you?" Carol stood in front of the open fridge door, holding a plate of cheese. "You look like you've just seen a ghost."

"I wish." Stacey frowned. She wasn't the only one living next to a group of shifters. Her entire household did. That included her mother as well as her children. Dylan had urged her to tell them and mentioned they were just as much a part of this as she was. Stacey understood to a degree, but none of it made enough sense for her to put it into any logical order in her brain.

"What's that mean?" Carol demanded. She closed the fridge and came closer, peering into Stacey's eyes. "You're not usually one for drama."

Stacey pushed herself off the door and moved to the breakfast bar, gesturing wildly as she went. "No. No, I'm not. I don't do wild things like move my whole family out to the beach. I do things like get up at the same time every morning, go to work, and make sure all the bills are set up to be paid automatically. I don't frolic around on the shore or feed the kids ice cream for dinner, and I sure don't…" She cut herself off short as she leaned her weight into a barstool, knowing that she couldn't really finish that sentence.

"Sure don't what?" Carol pressed, following her. A deep crease of concern had formed on her forehead, something Stacey hadn't seen very often.

"I sure don't have sex with man-bears on the beach." As soon as she heard the words, a snort of laughter escaped her. Stacey's brain was already so tired from trying to understand, and she'd hit the tipping point. Every word of that sentence was true, but it was also absolutely ridiculous.

Carol straightened, turning her head slightly to the side so she could glare appropriately at her daughter. "What the hell are you talking about? Are you drunk?"

"Not yet. Where are the kids?"

"Upstairs watching a movie."

"Good." Stacey gave up her barstool and staggered to the fridge. She wasn't drunk; she hadn't even had a drop of alcohol—yet. It certainly wouldn't help the dizziness that made her wobble as she walked, and it wouldn't clear the fog in her head, but she was going to try it anyway. Reaching into the back of the fridge, she pulled out the bottle of pinot noir she'd picked up on her last run to the grocery store. At that moment, Stacey had thought it sounded like a nice treat to unwind with at the end of the day. This was not the night she'd imagined for it, but she certainly needed it. "What I have to say isn't anything for their ears yet. You have to promise me you won't say anything to them, Mom."

"All right." Carol pulled down two wine glasses and put them on the bar. "From the way you're talking, I guess I'd better fortify myself against the news. Pour. "

Stacey popped the cork with a surprising amount of ease, considering how hard her hands were shaking. She looked down into the dark red liquid. "I think I must've hit my head even harder than I realized back at the old house. I honestly think I'm losing my shit." Lifting her hand, she reached under her hair and ran her fingers along her scalp until she found the jagged scar and the spiky section of hair that hadn't yet grown back all the way.

Her mother smacked her hand against the edge of the counter. "For Pete's sake! Tell me. At this point, I doubt any reality can be worse than what you're making me imagine!"

"All right. I'm sorry. It's just hard." Stacey took a deep sip and began. There was no good place to start, so she just charged forward. "I just had a long talk with Dylan."

"Mmm." Carol wagged her eyebrows again.

"No, not like that." She traced the subtle pattern of the laminate countertop as she explained what she'd seen on Will's boat. "I knew it was crazy. Bears on boats? That's like some cheap B movie. But I figured there had to be some reasonable explanation, so I talked to Dylan about it. He told me that I really did see bears—and that he was one of them. He's a shifter, just like his whole family. I don't understand it, but I saw it. Apparently, they're not the only ones, either. He said there are shifters all over the place."

She devolved into a ramble as she tried remembering everything Dylan had told her. Stacey was fully aware that she was regurgitating it in bits and pieces without much organization, but it couldn't be helped. She talked about Will and Elijah and how everything her son had thought he'd seen had been real. She told Carol about how they had to keep their secret because there was no telling how the population at large might react, although the reaction was fairly guaranteed to be a bad one.

"Either I'm going crazy, or Dylan is, or there's some mass hallucination caused by something in the water." Stacey paused to catch her breath, and as she did, she realized something was wrong beyond the fact that bears were living next door.

Carol sat next to her on a barstool. Her wine glass rested on the counter as it had ever since Stacey had filled it. She'd propped her chin on her hand and was listening thoughtfully as Stacey spoke. It was just what someone might expect from their mother, but it wasn't what Stacey had come to expect from her mother. "What's the matter? "

"What do you mean?" Carol asked softly.

"This isn't you," Stacey explained. A spark of fear had lived inside her ever since Dylan had confirmed that her delirium was reality. "You're quirky and quick-witted, and you usually interject with something you think is funny even if it's not appropriate. But you're not saying anything."

"First of all, thank you for the compliment." Carol smiled and crossed her legs. She removed her hand from her chin and delicately lifted her wine glass to her lips.

"You think I've lost my mind," Stacey concluded. It was expected, really. Dylan was so worried about her keeping his secret, but what he didn't understand was that no one would believe her anyway.

"No." Carol shook her head. "I don't think either you or Dylan are losing your minds. As a matter of fact, I dated a shifter in my younger days."

Stacey's mouth fell open.

"Really," her mother urged.

"Okay. We've all lost our minds, then."

"He was sexy and fun and a bit wild. It was just a fling at first, but what I thought might be a bit of amusement for a weekend turned into a week, and then a month, and then a few months. It wasn't until we started to get a lot more serious that he revealed his true self to me, a regal lion."

Stacey took a gulp of wine. And then another.

Carol smiled and slapped the counter. "Let me tell you, I already knew he was an animal in bed, but then I found out why! It's not just any woman who gets a chance to be with a man like that. Whew! What hot nights those were!"

"How come you never told me this?" Stacey felt so many emotions rushing through her that she could barely untangle them. Was this all actually happening, or was it a very complex and very real nightmare?

"It's not like you would've believed me," Carol replied casually. "You would've told me I was nuts, just as you expected me to tell you now. Besides, you already know they can't reveal their identity to just anyone."

Stacey pressed a hand against her forehead. "This is wild. How could I not know this?"

"These folks have become masterful at hiding in plain sight. They've had to in order to survive. You've probably passed dozens of them on the street and not even known it."

Considering that she lived right next door to one and didn't even know it, Stacey figured this was probably true. "So what happened with you and the lion guy? From what you're saying, you must've meant a lot to each other if he told you."

Her mother smiled. "It was a wonderful relationship, but it simply wasn't meant to be. Thomas met his fated mate. Did Dylan happen to say anything about those when he let you in on all this?"

"No. What do you mean?" There was even more to this shifter world than she'd imagined, and her mother, of all people, was more educated than she was!

She took another sip of wine. "Let's see if I can get it right. I haven't thought about this in a long time. Basically, shifters believe that there's one special person in the world for them. This is who they're destined to be with, and sometimes, it can take a long time to find their other half. And I mean that literally. Their fated mate is the other half of their soul, and the attraction is something much deeper than you or I can ever imagine. It's more of a need than a want, a spiritual demand instead of just lust."

Stacey's head was starting to hurt. "So he just met some other woman and left you? "

"Not some other woman, but the right woman. He would've been absolutely miserable if he'd stayed with me. I was crazy about him, and Thomas and I were both hurt at having to break up, but I understood just how significant this was for him. How could he not go with his mate?" She shrugged. "Last I knew, they were living happily together with a litter of kids and grandkids, so I sure can't be mad."

"Holy shit." Stacey drained the last of her wine and reached for the bottle to refill. "I don't know what to make of any of this."

"You'll get used to it. It's strange to know that the way you've been thinking about the world your entire life isn't exactly correct, but it'll be okay." Carol patted her hand. "They're different, but that doesn't make them bad. In fact, I think it says an awful lot about you that Dylan chose to tell you."

"That's only because I saw him," she grumbled, unable to get the image of the big furry creatures on the fishing trawler out of her head.

"I don't think so. He would've come up with something. I don't know what, but Dylan is no dummy." Carol swirled her wine thoughtfully.

"I just don't know why it had to be me," Stacey whispered. Her mind raced back to meeting him on the beach when he drove up on his ATV. An embarrassing day, but it'd led to him coming over and helping her move furniture, which had, in turn, led to lunch at his house and subsequent dates. She could see some significance in that if she tried, but none of it would've happened at all if she hadn't fallen off that ladder and cracked her head open.

"Hold on a second." Stacey pressed her hands on the counter, feeling the coolness under her palms. "I told you what I saw when I hit my head."

The unflappable Carol leaned back a bit. "Yes. Of course."

"Dad was there." Stacey knew she'd repeated the story several times, but she was looking at it from a different perspective now. "He told me I had to come back because people still needed me. At the time, I figured he meant you and the kids."

"Sure. Your kids will always need you," Carol said with a smile.

"What's extra weird is that he had this little statue of a bear in his hand. It wasn't anything I recognized, so I figured it had to be symbolic of something. But Mom, Dylan has that exact same bear on his mantel. And it's not just something he picked up in a gift shop. His daughter made it." Considering where it led, this train of thought was hard to follow, but for the first time, she felt like all the pieces were fitting together. "Is there a chance that I could be Dylan's, um, mate? Is he the one Dad was referring to?"

"Hm." Carol tipped her head back and squinted at the upper kitchen cabinets. "I can't say for sure, but it's one hell of a coincidence."