The lucky one.

That’s what Tenlee, aka Genie named by Colt, had been called since her first shift. You’re the lucky one. Only everyone was wrong. Being different from every other shifter on the planet wasn’t lucky. Being caught between animal and human wasn’t lucky. Never fitting into either culture wasn’t lucky. What they really meant when they said you’re the lucky one is you’re the freak.

And she was.

It was four in the morning, the witching hour for a shifter like her. In the big cabin, Hairpin Trigger slept soundly, curled around his newly Turned polar bear mate, Ava. Genie knew because she always checked on everyone at the ranch before she gave her skin to the weak human part of her. In the cattleman’s cabin, her best friend Colt, the Warmaker, slept with one leg hanging off the mattress and his new mate Karis sleeping soundly with her cheek on his chest.

And here Genie stood, staring at a red door at the back of the barn, because this was where it almost, almost, felt like she had a heart again.

Her chest was empty, but that’s what happened to girls with broken hearts. The pieces eventually disintegrated and left nothing but a gaping hole.

Before Two Claws Ranch had gone to hell, there had been laughter in this barn, especially in the small apartment behind the red door. She’d never been inside, but she’d imagined it a hundred times. A man used to live there. A man and his son. A man who confused her and a boy who called to her protective instincts like Colt did.

She would’ve killed for that man, and the boy, but they’d gone away. And now Genie was left to turn into her human self, the self she hated the most, and stare at the red door and wish she could go back to the day they’d left. Every morning at four o’clock, this was her routine. This was what she did.

She was special, but what did special get her? Attention that she didn’t want, and no attention when she needed it.

Kurt was really gone, and she would never get the chance to tell Gunner she would keep him safe for always.

In the stall behind her, Norman, Ava’s little pet reindeer, moved around. He didn’t like being alone, and sometimes Genie slept in his stall to keep him company. She knew how he felt. She didn’t have parents either. They had both been squirrels, but she barely remembered them. That, and she scared normal animals. Not the ranch animals, because they were stubborn and mean spirited, but in the wild? No one would even look at her. She was a pariah to animals, but she hated her human side, so she was stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck.

And Karis was going to have a baby.

She took one step toward the red door.

Karis was going to have a baby, and Genie wouldn’t be around to stare at him for hours like she had with Gunner. Sounded creepy, but she just loved Kurt’s cub, that’s all. Her love wasn’t normal, but a long, long time ago, she’d accepted that nothing about her was.

Kurt was gone, and she’d never got to tell him she was like him. And now she would never hear his laugh again or watch him teach Gunner homeschool lessons. She would never watch him sit and get quiet in his thinking place deep in the woods. He was broken, too. She recognized that about him right away. He smelled heartsick, and before he’d left, he had smelled body-sick, too. He was hurt and wasn’t healing, and now he was out there in the world without anyone looking after him.

Genie took another step toward the red door. She could go in there now since he was long gone. She could see where he and Gunner had spent their nights, and it would make her insides feel better…right?

But just before she reached the door handle, she caught her reflection in the stained-glass mirror someone had leaned up against a stall. She paused and forced herself not to look away this time. The lights in the barn were dim, but she could see herself just fine. She had plain brown hair, the same shade as her fur, and brown eyes, the same as her eyes when she was in animal form. Her nose was small, her lips thin, and she was tiny. She wasn’t beautiful and curvy like Karis was, and she wasn’t fit and strong like Ava. She was a mouse. Thin to the point her ribs stuck out, thanks to her fast metabolism, and her breasts were small. She looked frail, but on the inside, she wasn’t. On the inside, she carried enough anger for this entire ranch, and that gave her a strange sense of strength. Her hair was mussed and had leaves in it, and for a moment, she wished her human side was pretty, like Karis and Ava. Maybe then she would like being in this skin more. But she wasn’t pretty. She was just…her.

Genie closed her eyes and let the animal, her favorite, favorite part of herself, have the body again. And when she opened her eyes and looked at her reflection in that speckled, flawed mirror glass that reminded her so much of her human side, she thought herself acceptable again.

What did it matter now if she had any human in her?

The crows would never stop their attack on this ranch until Ramsey had claimed her, Colt and Trigger would never understand why she was the way she was, Karis and Ava would always be friends with no room for a fucked-up shifter who was ninety percent animal, and Kurt…

If she could cry in this form, she would, just at the thought of him…

Kurt was gone, and her boy…no…his boy…was gone, too.

And Genie-Tenlee-Genie-Tenlee…she was on the fast track to a short life, so what did pining over a man matter?

She backed away from the red door.

Nothing was gonna fill the hole in her chest. Nothing ever had and nothing ever would.

That was the curse of being an Origin.