There wasn't much to the inside of the shelter. A hollow in a red stone rock formation, its ceiling was low enough that even Harper had to duck as she hobbled inside the opening that made up nearly a whole side of the “room”. The floor was made of packed dirt and there was a fire pit in the center of the space that contained nothing but ashes. 

If Shan had planned on bringing her here, it didn't show. There were no food supplies that she could see, no chopped firewood, not even a fur for bedding. 

He sat down on the far side of the room, stretching his long legs and resting his back against the wall. Harper remained standing, her arms folded across her chest. Her ankle hurt like hell, but sitting down felt like relenting and she wasn't prepared to give in to this bullshit.

She did recognize that he had her at a massive disadvantage. She had no clue where they were and an ankle that was liable to give out before she got twenty paces in any direction. There was also the fact that even if she could walk, he could drag her back as many times as he wanted to, like she was a toddler being put on the time-out stool.

Her mind went back to their fight by the river, when she'd tried to slap him. It was a testament to how emotional she'd been, because she didn't usually lash out physically during a fight. She was both ashamed of herself and disconcerted by how easily he'd blocked her. His eyes hadn't broken contact with hers for a millisecond, and the speed at which he'd caught her wrist had been beyond anything she'd experienced. She wondered what it would be like to fight him in hand to hand combat and wished her body wasn't still so messed up. It might have been nice to land a punch or two on him, if such a thing was possible.

He was staring at her. She stared back, attempting to mirror his blank expression. She'd been around stoic men for most of her life. Both of her uncles could do frigid and aloof like nobody's business, and Ian's personality had always been hot and cold, with little in between. Usually, when confronted with impassivity, Harper gave as good as she got, but for some reason it was so much harder with Shan. 

When he stared at her without a hint of emotion, the fragile strings of her security were pulled taut and she could feel herself regressing back to an inferior form of herself. It was the version of her that still yearned for approval and would do anything for the tiniest scrap of affection. Although she still expected this whole shifting and mating thing to blow over, Harper couldn't deny that her feelings for Shan were more intense than anything she'd ever contended with. She wished that he would be mean, angry, or spiteful. All of those things, she could deal with, but she had no defense against his indifference. 

“Well? Are you going to do something?” she asked. She made a show of surveying the area again, if only so that she could break away from his stare. “Because if you're waiting for me to suddenly figure out how to shift, we really will be out here all winter, and then some.”

“Tell me about your upbringing.”

Harper's gaze snapped back to his. It was a big mistake, because she hadn't been looking away long enough to emotionally prepare herself to meet his eyes again. Nothing in his stare had changed and she felt an ominous stinging sensation at the corners of her eyes.

“Why?” 

She spoke through gritted teeth, mainly because she didn't trust her chin not to wobble.

“Because you feel like a stranger to me now and I'd like to get to know the real you.”

That hurt.

“You're not going to get to know me by finding out about my childhood. Who I was then has nothing to do with who I am now.”

Shan closed his eyes and exhaled loudly. “Humor me.”

Without his eyes on her, it was easier for her to sink down into a sitting position. She kept her arms wrapped around herself, mostly because it was getting late and the air was chilly.

“I'm not a stranger to you,” she said softly. “The things I told you about myself were true. I just left some stuff out—which I know is still lying, but...you do know me.”

When his eyes opened, she saw that her tender tone had done little to soften him. He did look kind of mad though, so she counted that as a minor victory.

“I also know your father.”

She looked away sheepishly. “I know. That's how I found out about you. How has he been?”

“You haven't been in contact with him? If you left when you were thirteen, how did you know about me?”

The man didn't miss a thing.

“I went back when I was fifteen. It was the last time I saw my father and his pack. I guess you had been there earlier in the year. You were all anyone would talk about.”

It had been during her rebellious phase, when she'd worn a lot of black and had gotten just tall enough to look down on everyone.

“What happened?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. It was good to see Alder again, but the trip out to the reservation was too risky to keep doing it, and he couldn't visit me. He had the twins, two adopted pups, and another one on the way. It would have been absurd for him to leave all that just to risk a few days of making awkward conversation with me about school and punk rock bands.” She smiled sadly. “We'd never had much in common, but after I'd been living with humans for a couple years, it was like we were from two different planets.”

“And you weren't close to begin with.”

She'd been rambling for so long that she'd expected him to redirect her and ask about her earlier childhood and life in the pack. That would have been vastly preferable to the route he'd decided to take. 

“What? I loved my father. He was everything a kid could ask for. Kind, attentive, caring...”

“Just not with you.”

She stared at the wall behind Shan for a moment, and then tilted her head slightly in a pseudo-nod. It was the closest she could come to admitting that her relationship with Alder had been at best, companionable. She didn't see how their relationship was any of Shan's business, but she wouldn't lie to him again, not if she could help it.

“You mentioned before that your uncle raised you?”

She rolled her shoulders, trying to restore blood flow to arms that were feeling cold and listless.

“Yeah. Alder was a teenager when I was born. He was a good dad to his other pups, at least from what I saw. But with me, I think he was just too young to know what to do. He tried, though. It wasn't like he just forgot about me. 

"I mean, yeah, he left me with Cain and Sarah when he formed Halcyon, but I was very close with them and with Caim. It would have been dumb to take me from them and bring me into a pack where there weren't any pups my own age. And then, like I said, once I started living with humans, it wasn't easy for him to visit me. He came once, the first year I was there, but it wasn't like he could just get an overnight flight. Visiting me meant being away from his mate and pups for weeks and risking exposure. And the last time I saw him, I was a real bitch and I said shitty things to him. It wasn't like he'd had much incentive to come try and work on our relationship.”

By the time she finished, she was no longer cold. A rush of heat had flooded her face and neck, both from anger and from embarrassment. 

She hadn't meant to say that much. She hadn't meant to say half that much. But once the subject had been breeched, she could barely contain herself. There were many things she still wanted to say, but they were all whiny and derivative.

Caim was the only person she'd ever spoken to about her relationship with her father, and that had been when she was a kid. Looking back at it now through the lens of adulthood, she felt stupid. She had worked so hard to justify Alder's absence in her life, had even gone so far as to shoulder the blame for it, when the truth was simple. He had not been a good father to her.

When Shan didn't respond right away, she dared a glance at him. She could see from his softened expression that her ranting had evoked pity in him. Normally, she would rail against anyone feeling bad for her, but at the moment she felt bad for herself and for the sad little girl that she used to be. She didn't know how she could dispel his feelings when she couldn't root them out of herself.

“I was very close with my father,” Shan told her. “It's common among shifters for sires to bond with their pups from birth. My father sometimes said that it's because unlike with human males, we know by scent that our offspring is our own. He always said it jokingly, but I think the idea has merit. In any case, it isn't unusual for us to bond with our pups more strongly than even their human mothers can.

“I've witnessed this many times. You know that the males in my pack are allowed to take mates and have pups of their own. The birth of each pup is cause for celebration, but there's nothing quite like seeing a male with his first pup. There's no word adequate to describe it, but reverence comes close. Conversely, the loss of a pup, firstborn or otherwise, is devastating. I've seen that as well, and it's one of the few things still capable of disturbing me.

“In any case, when a pup is born weak or sickly, as you were, it is very common for its sire to fail to bond with it. With swift intervention this can be mitigated, but without the proper support early on, typically within the first couple of weeks, it's usually permanent. That's not to say that the pup and its sire can't go on to have a relationship, but it will lack the depth of a proper bond.”

Harper was blinking back tears by the time he'd finished. In spite of her relationship with her father, she had always believed the relationship between shifter parents and pups was stronger than the human equivalent, but she hadn't known that the bond had logistics to it. She knew that Shan was telling her all of this to reassure her, to explain to her that it was nobody's fault that Alder hadn't bonded with her, but rather an unfortunate byproduct of his species. 

By rights, it should have made her feel better, except that ever since becoming Shan's mate seemed liked an actual, albeit slight, possibility she couldn't help but think about seeing her father again. It was likely that Halcyon was one of the packs Shan visited on his annual circuit and it wouldn't be unreasonable for her to tag along, visit her dad, and perhaps, over time, have the relationship with him that she had always craved. But if what Shan was saying was true, then that bond could be forever beyond her reach.

She searched for some way to refute him, and found something quickly. “Fawn. His second daughter. She almost died when she was born, and she was sick for weeks afterwards, but he didn't have any trouble bonding with her.”

Shan lifted a shoulder. “I'm not familiar enough with the circumstances to give you any clear answer. If I had to guess, I'd say that what he went through with you, having a sick pup and then seeing her recover and thrive, it might have prepared him for being back in that situation.”

“I guess so. How lucky for her, that I could be her canary down the mine.”

“Is that why you didn't return? You saw the two of them and resented their bond?”

“No,” she said, before remembering her resolution to stop lying to him. “I don't know. Maybe. Did we actually come here to teach me how to shift, or are you just going to sit there and play shrink?”

Shan looked unapologetic. “There's nothing to be done about it while you're awake. I've already told you, in order to complete your first shift, you have to cede control to your wolf. It's easiest to do that while you're asleep, at least for the first time. But if you want more pertinent questions, then fine. Tell me about the first time you had one of the nightmares.”

There was no quick or easy answer for that. She wanted to equivocate, or just flat out refuse to answer, if only to avoid dredging up subjects that she wasn't ready to explore. Talking about her father had already been draining enough.

The silence stretched on as she wrestled with where to start the story. After a moment, Shan stood and she looked up, opening her mouth to ask him not to leave. Instead her mouth snapped shut as he stepped over the fire pit and bent to lift her into his arms. When he sat back down, he situated her in his lap and wrapped his pelt around her. 

She was so grateful for his warmth and so glad for the physical contact with him that she forgot the reasons she was supposed to be mad at him. She knew it had something to do with him holding her prisoner in the wilderness, but as long as his warm skin was against hers, the prospect of spending the winter there seemed a little less daunting.

“I'd just turned thirteen. It had been about a month since...” She paused, sucking her tooth as she considered just how far back she'd have to go to paint a full picture of everything that had happened.

“About a month or two earlier, I caught my brother Caim running away. He couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen, but he was already really mature and he was having a tough time being around his dad's mate. I think something happened between them and it freaked him out. When I caught up to him, I suggested that instead of running away, we go and visit Halcyon. That way, if he changed his mind and decided to go home, it would be less awkward. Also, I was hoping I could convince him to come back.”

She'd been terrified at the prospect of Caim leaving Shaderunner. Not only had he been her best friend, but he'd also been her protector. When they'd been younger, he had always acted as a buffer between her and Lotus. Although Lotus was older than Caim by several years, Caim had gotten very big, very quickly and both Lotus and Sable knew better than to mess with him and, by proxy, his baby sister. 

As they'd grown into teenagers, Caim had become more lax in his role as her protector. He'd told her that it was because she needed to learn how to stand up for herself. The truth was more likely that Caim's judgement was compromised by the fact that Lotus and Sable were the only females in the pack that were around his age and weren't related to him. She hadn't needed a wolf's sense of smell to know that the three of them had begun sleeping together. 

The new dynamic hadn't been all bad, though. Obsessed as they were with her brother, Lotus and Sable had largely stopped fucking around with her and had even begun pretending that the three of them were good pals. However, she'd known that as soon as Caim left the pack, they'd turn on her with renewed intensity, probably even finding a reason to blame his absence on her.

“When we got to Halcyon, I found out that my father and my uncle Hale had taken a mate. The same mate. It was extra weird because they were all pretending that she was just Hale's mate, but I wasn't an idiot. I saw what was going on. I could also tell that my being there was inconvenient for everyone. They were expecting their first pups and I guess Alder hadn't told her that he already had a daughter.

“Anyway, I was spending time with Taylor when a neighboring pack attacked us. They incapacitated my brother and captured Taylor and me. Taylor's mates came to her rescue, but no one came for me.”

She paused, glad that her head was nestled in his neck so that he couldn't see her face. “I wasn't scared at first. That whole first night that I was tied up and left alone in the dark, I kept thinking that any minute, my dad would be there to save me. And then that night came and went. And then another. And then a week had gone by. There were moments when I was terrified, but for the most part, I was just mad. At one point I even fantasized about them killing me and returning my emaciated corpse to Alder, just to make him feel bad. It was hard not to be morbid, given the circumstances.”

She stopped to collect herself and to give Shan a chance to say something. As she'd been speaking, his pulse had accelerated and his arms had tightened around her.

“Why did they take you?” he asked.

Harper sighed. “A few reasons, but mostly because they were starving and Halcyon wouldn't let them hunt in the valley.”

“It was Whiteriver?”

For some reason, it hadn't occurred to her that Shan would be familiar with the Whiteriver pack. Grimly, she realized that he might even be allied with them, and what she was telling him could impact said alliance. 

“It wasn't all bad,” she told him. “Silas, their alpha, he treated me very well. I mean, they sure didn't feed me much, but it wasn't because they were being cruel. They just didn't have food. People do a lot of desperate things under those circumstances. I don't blame them for what they did.

“I don't remember exactly how long I was there, or how long it was before the nightmares started. I had a lot of nightmares around that time, but I do know that at least some of them were like the ones I have now.”

Memories came back to her, of waking up in a cold sweat and crying out for Sarah or Caim. Mostly, it had been Silas who came to her, holding her until tears subsided, stroking her back and murmuring apologies to her. 

“A couple months into my captivity the nightmares got worse, and then my monthly cycle started. It freaked everyone out, especially me because I had no idea that was even possible. I guess the good thing about it was that they had incentive to get me out of their pack as quickly as possible.”

It wasn't technically a lie. The Whiteriver wolves had wanted her gone by that point, most of them, anyway. She wasn't about to explain the intricacies of Stockholm Syndrome to Shan, that she thought she'd been in love with Silas, or that he had more or less taken her virginity. She liked to think that it didn't count if a boy stopped halfway through because you were crying too much.

“A couple days later, Whiteriver and Halcyon struck a deal and I was returned to my father.”

“And he didn't kill Silas?” Shan asked. It was clear from his tone that this was the only option he would have considered, and that made Harper both nervous for Silas and darkly pleased. 

“Silas was only a little older than me at the time and he had a starving pack depending on him. Believe me, Alder wasn't happy about letting him off the hook, but he recognized that if he killed Silas, it would only hurt both of their packs in the long run.”

Shan gave a grunt of acknowledgement, and she got the impression that he could have thought of at least a dozen viable options for handling the situation, all of them with Silas's head removed from his neck. Harper had thought of a few over the years as well, but she was still glad that Alder had taken mercy on Silas.

“I never told Alder about the nightmares. I wasn't around long enough. When they found out that I could get knocked up, it pretty much confirmed for them what they'd believed all along—that by some fluke of genetics, I'd come out human. I don't resent them for sending me away. Like I said before, my human life was better. Much better.”

Shan was quick to correct her. “Comparatively better. You mentioned earlier that you returned when you were fifteen. We must have missed each other by only a few months.”

His thumb was rubbing circles against her waist, sending soft ripples of warmth and pleasure through her body. Without thinking, her arms snaked up to loop around his neck.

“It's a good thing that we did. Imagine if we would have met then? Ugh. I would have had the biggest crush on you.”

She rubbed her nose against the crook of his neck, and when she didn't get a reaction, she began to doubt herself. They were barely back on cuddling terms and he'd yet to kiss her since their fight. It felt like she was pushing things too far, but she couldn't help herself. She had always been a tactile person, but with Shan, it felt like she couldn't get enough of touching him.

She looked up at him, prepared to pull back and apologize if she was met with a scowl. Instead, she found him looking somewhat bemused. 

When he noticed her staring, he said, “I would have known what you were. If I had known from the start that your father was a shifter, I would have known. I could have helped you to shift. After a few years, you could have become my mate. We could have been together all of these years.”

Harper put her head back down. “You seem awfully certain that I'm going to be able to shift. It's making me nervous.”

“You don't have to be afraid. Not of shifting, or anything that happens after. I know you're concerned about your career and your friends, but—”

“It's not just that,” she interjected. “It's complicated. I spent a good deal of my childhood wishing, hoping, and trying everything I possibly could to shift. And time after time, I failed. I disappointed everyone, especially myself. I don't want to go through all of that again. And this time, it's going to be a thousand times worse because I like you, a lot, and I know you really want this. So yeah, I'm terrified of shifting, but I also don't want to let you down.”

Shan said, “You will be able to shift, but only if you accept your wolf.”

“Well then it's going to be impossible, because I don't want to shift anymore.”

He rested his chin on the top of her head. “There's a difference between wanting something and accepting it.”