Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

A shley hadn't argued very much when Bill appeared at the pub and told her to bring Penny up into the mountains so her mate could practice shifting. She had said, "I'm not shirking my responsibilities," a little defensively, and her cousin had hauled her into what could only be described as a bear hug.

"You never would," he promised her. "I know that. But this is important, Ash. More important than the pub. Besides, you probably want your folks to meet her before the rest of the Torben crush, right? I said Gwen should go with you," he added, putting her back on her feet. "Mostly because they've known each other a long time and Penny could probably use the stability of having an old friend around. If you think that's a bad idea?—"

"No, it sounds smart," Ashley admitted. "How'd Gwen take it?"

"She's thrilled," Bill said happily. "Congrats, Ash. I'm really happy for you. Now get going. Gwen and Penny are waiting for you out in the car."

Ashley had gotten going, and a little to her amazement, had been entertained on the 45 minute drive out to her folks' house by an a cappella, two-woman Sixty Pix concert, broken up by Gwen's giggles over her own terrible puns, and occasionally by Penny's wail of despair at her partridge.

It'll be fine, right ? she asked her bear as she drove the last mile or so through the snowy woods out to the secluded house. Poor Penny will get used to it? Or Bill's right and her partridge will mature?

The bear, usually so reassuring and calm, gave a great languid shrug. Penny will be all right, but…prey animals. It gave another shrug, as if saying, 'what can you do?'

A moment later they were pulling up to her parents' house, so Ashley let it go as first her mom, then her dad, came out of the log cabin nestled up against the mountainside. Ashley couldn't help smiling as she waved a greeting, loving the way warm light glowed out the windows, making the house look like a welcoming beacon in the dark. "Ash?" her mom yelled. "Everything okay, baby?"

"It's fine, Mom, I've just got somebody for you to meet!"

Her mother said, "Oh my God, Jeff," to her dad. "She's finally met somebody."

"I'm twenty-eight," Ashley yelled. "That is not old to meet somebody!" More quietly, to Penny, she said, "I'm sorry in advance."

Penny, bundling out of the car, laughed. "It'll be fine, as long as they— no, they are not going to hunt you even if they are bears! They're bears, right?"

"They are. Both of them. I'm surprised they're awake, honestly. They keep threatening to go down for a nap in mid-December and not get up again until March. Mom says it's a great diet plan. Not only sleep through the holiday food extravaganza, but also burn off all the body fat she padded on during the rest of the year."

"That would be so amazingly unhealthy if they were human," Penny muttered. Ashley laughed an agreement, then walked her and Gwen up to the door to meet her parents.

"Mom, Dad, this is Penny and Gwen. Penny—" She hesitated, suddenly shy about revealing the truth, since Penny had been through so much in the past day.

Penny, though, offered a hand to her mom and said, "It turns out I'm Ashley's mate, which would be enough of a surprise, but yesterday I didn't even know I was a shifter, so we were hoping I could just sort of practice in your yard for a while."

Ashley's mom shrieked gleefully and threw her arms around Penny with such enthusiasm that it nearly knocked the drummer over. Ashley's bear gave a warning grumble, but Penny wasn't really in danger, just staggering a bit. "I'm Holly," Ashley's mom all but yelled in Penny's ear. "I'm so happy to meet you! This is Jeff! How could you not know you were a shifter? Come in, come in, tell us everything and have some dinner and then yes, of course, practice all you want. I'm Holly," she repeated to Gwen. "And you're Bill's mate, aren't you? He said you were striking."

Ashley's dad herded them inside with an apologetic glance at Gwen, who was beaming cheerfully. "Don't mind me," she told him. "I'm loving all of this. And I love your house."

"Thank you. Holly and I built it."

"No way!" Gwen's jaw dropped and she slowed down, exclaiming over the log wall exterior and the huge, triple-paned windows that let so much light glow onto the snow outside. The inside was just as cozy, with plastered walls and open-beamed ceilings, and wood floors littered with rugs. Ashley mostly didn't notice any of that anymore, but as kids, she and her brothers had loved hitting those rugs at a run, shifting as they did so, and skidding down the hallways while their mother yelled at them.

Her mom had tucked her arm through Penny's and was getting all the details, complete with dismayed cooing sounds as Penny explained her partridge's half-wittedness. Ashley drifted along in their wake, listening to Penny and her mom, and to Gwen and her dad, feeling an unbelievable sense of contentedness rising up inside herself. She had so many ambitions, but she thought of them as being centered around the pub, around making the business she'd taken over a success. It hadn't occurred to her that she had as-powerful ambitions to build a satisfactory life for herself, one with friends and lovers and family, but right now, in the midst of all that, she could recognize the ambition as beginning to be satisfied.

She might not even be annoyed at the last-minute family reunion, looking at it that way. The idea made her chuckle as her parents led them into the big, bright kitchen that was the heart of their home.

Ashley loved that space. The cabinetry was hand-built and wooden, with glass-fronted doors that made it easy to see what was where. It had extra-deep counters, giving her dad, who liked to bake, two feet of workspace plus the space needed to store canisters and crockery against the red-tile backsplash. Most of the appliances were red, making striking accents to the cream-colored counters and golden wood cabinets. There was a big island with a secondary sink in it, bar stools around it, and, at the moment, a gloriously fluffy-looking lemon meringue pie sitting smack in the middle of it.

Ashley laughed, seeing it. "You were about to each eat an entire half of a lemon meringue pie, weren't you?"

Her mother didn't even look guilty. "They're best the day they were made. You're lucky you didn't get here ten minutes later."

Penny, awed, said, "You made a lemon meringue pie? I don't even think I knew that could be done. I thought they only got made in restaurants, or something."

"Jeff made it," Ashley's mom said rather smugly. "You're in for a treat, if you've never had homemade before. How handy that the recipe suggests cutting it into five pieces."

"Instead of two," Ashley said, still laughing. Her mother stuck her tongue out and cut generous pieces of pie for everyone.

Penny oohed and aahed her way through hers, finally turning to Ashley. "Do you know how to make these?"

"Yes? It's not hard, just a little time consuming."

"I have the best mate in the world," Penny announced to Ashley's delight and the objection of everyone else in the room.

"Go practice your shifting," her dad said after a while. "I'll clean up in here and get the guest room ready. For Gwen," he clarified. "Ashley and Penny can sleep in Ash's room."

"Please don't judge me for my high school obsessions," Ashley muttered, but they went out to the back yard so Penny could practice her shifting. Fortunately, she remembered her clothes every time, probably because it was a few degrees below zero up there on the mountainside.

"It doesn't help," she eventually groaned. "The partridge is still distracted by everything, can't remember what happened two seconds ago, and flips out if it hears something it didn't expect, even if it was something I was just thinking or talking about! Can shifter animals just be… dumb ?"

"True animals can be," Ashley said, thinking of a spectacularly dumb, if sweet, cat they'd had when she was growing up. "I guess I don't know why shifter animals couldn't be, except usually they have enough of their human part in them to keep from being really stupid, I think."

Penny fell backward into a snow drift, making angel wings and then letting out a frustrated squawk as she shifted to partridge form and beat at the snow like it had offended her. She turned back to human, spluttered, "It thought the snow was attacking me!" and threw her hands in the air. " I'm not dumb, am I? Pretty drummer hit things hard, go 'urgh?'" She did a very credible caveman grunt at the end of that.

Gwen, watching from up on the cabin's back deck, laughed. "No. No, you're not dumb. Nobody who can handle social media the way you do is dumb. Or who comes through with flying organizational skills in an emergency. Or?—"

Penny sat up abruptly. "Does my partridge have ADHD?! No," she said before either Ashley or Gwen could answer. She collapsed back into the snow, looking disappointed. "No, it doesn't feel like that. Not what it feels like in my brain, anyway. It's not that it…well, maybe it is reacting before it thinks. Emotion before intellect. But it doesn't get distracted from its fixation…oh, maybe that too," she admitted. "The whole egg thing. It kept coming back to the eggs. Oh my God. Maybe my partridge does have ADHD." She lay there a minute, clearly thinking that over as she puffed steamy breath into the air, and finally added, "But it's also dumb. It thinks the air is on fire."

Ashley couldn't help giggling at that last. She went over to drop into the snow next to Penny and held her hand. "So how do you deal with ADHD?"

"How do I deal with it? Meds. How does a partridge deal with it? I have no idea." Penny sighed another steamy breath toward the sky. "I'm pretty sure 'dumb' is the bigger part of the problem here. 'Fire! Fire! Run away from the fire! It's too cold for fire! What's burning? Find a nest! Is the nest burning? What about the eggs?!'"

She was clearly quoting the partridge, its scatterbrained alarm fluctuating through the words. Ashley's bear rumbled, Calm, and put its paw over Penny's chest.

Actually put its paw over her chest, as Ashley shifted into bear form without intending to, and sat beside Penny in the snowbank, one massive paw pressed gently against Penny's torso. She inhaled a sharp squeak, then, audibly surprised in a different way, breathed, "Oh," and relaxed like she'd just gone into a sauna.

Calm, Ashley repeated. Now shift. She lifted her paw so Penny could shift without being crushed, although Penny obviously remembered what Ashley didn't, in the moment: that she could shift into a truly enormous partridge. Gwen, up above them, said, "Holy shit!" as Penny transformed into a bird roughly the same size as Ashley's grizzly, although nothing like in her weight class. Still, a bird some eight feet from nose to tail feathers was shockingly large, and when Penny spread her wings to adjust her balance, even Ashley, as a bear, took an awed breath. Penny's wingspan had to be a solid twenty feet across, and even if birds had lightweight bones, Ashley would not want to be smacked by one of those wings.

Or raked by one of those feet . They were long and spindly and had appalling-looking claws at the ends, visible as Penny lifted her feet and put them back down again, settling herself, then cocked her head to stare at Ashley.

Ashley, or her bear, murmured, Good, then leaned forward to gently bump her huge furry head against Penny's feathery one. The bird's neck retracted into a fluff of feathers at the weight of Ashley's head, and she tried to adjust to use less pressure. After a moment, Penny extended her neck again a little, looking more comfortable. Ashley said, Good, again. It's all right. You're safe. You're whole now. I know you've been hidden for a long time, but everything is okay now.

There was a silence, one that Ashley didn't know what to do with. Her bear, serene and mellow as always, was content to wait, and after a little while, to her complete astonishment, she heard Penny—or Penny's partridge—whisper, Ashley?

Yes, the bear said. Your mate.

Penny, as amazed as Ashley, said, I didn't know we could talk like this.

Ashley gave a big rumbling bear chuckle. The Ashley part of her said, Neither did I! and the bear, calm and confident, said, We don't, often. The human parts of us are so good at talking, it's easier to let them do it for us. But you've been hidden so long, it said gently. You need some time to breathe. Time to know who you are. Time to know you're not alone. So you need to hear me. Your mate, it said again, fondly.

The partridge didn't answer. Not in words, at least. She did press her head against Ashley's, clearly using a lot of partridge weight and strength, but the truth was, even an eight-foot-long bird couldn't budge a bear. Ashley's mind wandered a moment, wondering how much ostriches weighed, and whether they could press hard enough to move her, but she let the thought go. Partridges weren't built like ostriches, anyway.

After a long time, the partridge sighed and very quietly said, It's not safe.

It wasn't, Ashley's bear agreed. It is now. You're safe. I'll keep you safe.

She could feel that Penny trusted her. That the partridge trusted her. But she could also feel all the time the shifter part of her had been hidden and quiet, not trusting the world. It would take a long time, she thought, before the partridge really felt safe.

That's all right, the bear said, still gently. We have all the time we need. Your human is a good fierce protector. She kept you safe, even without knowing it. Now she has me, and you are, the bear said again, safe . No one will ever hurt my mate.

All at once, unexpectedly, Penny shifted back to human, her eyes soft and huge and grateful. She put both hands on Ashley's face, very small and soft in all the rough bear fur, and when Ashley shifted, too, Penny smiled and stole a kiss, whispering, "I'm awfully tired. I think it's time to go in now."

Ashley slipped her arm around Penny's shoulders and guided her back to the house, murmuring, "Of course. Anything for you, Penny. Anything for you."