“You’re kidding me.”

They were joking, right? That wasn’t possible. Humans were humans, and that was that. They could be turned into vampires, they could even learn to use magic if they had a drop of witch blood… but they couldn’t be turned into a shifter.

Pop culture had shown plenty of humans changed after a werewolf bite, but when they’d come out of the shadows thirty years ago, shifters had laughed at it. Since, they had seen plenty of proof that it was nothing but a myth, when stupid humans who’d provoked shifters into a fight had ended up with bite marks that hadn’t changed anything about them.

“Do you really think any of us would joke about that?” Ace asked softly.

She got up from the sofa with some difficulty, and walked to her; Clari moved to reluctantly give Zack back, but she shook her head.

“It’s not like a second bite would make any difference. He either is a Turner, or he isn’t. Let me just have a look.” Her hand touched her neck, and retreated just as quickly. “It’s not very deep, but he broke the skin.”

Most members of the pride cursed at that.

“A Turner?” Clari repeated the unfamiliar term, trying to wrap her head around what was happening.

The tension was palpable and she could almost feel everyone exchanging glances, murmuring around her. Shit. Okay, so, maybe they weren’t kidding. Maybe it was possible. That meant she needed to ask questions - a fair bunch of them. Like, what sort of odds were they talking about? What would happen to her if she did, in fact, turn, would she be accepted in their pride? Clari knew just how selective they were - they’d spent the last few months reviewing applications and didn’t seem any closer to including even one new member. From what she’d learned about it from Ace, she knew she didn’t want to be a loner; Ace had survived it, but Clari had no clue how to do the shifter thing.

Suddenly, she froze, one resounding question muting everything else. She’d never heard of a human turned by a shifter. Ever. That meant…

“That’s a secret, right? The fact that you can turn us. You keep it secret.”

Rye was the one who answered.

“Yes. The Shifter Council has unanimously opted to keep the matter under wraps. One of the only things every race has agreed on.”

She bit her lip, pretty certain they hadn’t just done a pinky swear.

“What’s going to happen to me?”

It came out as something close to a whisper, and she hated it. She didn’t think she’d ever sounded as weak, or frightened.

Rye and Ace looked at her with pity, and she could guess what the silence meant.

“Oh god. I’m going to die. You’re going to have to kill me.”

All of a sudden, she remembered a funny thing; almost ten years back, she and her cousin had been on holiday at the beach. They’d met a few shifters, and she could hear Lana’s voice saying, “One day you’ll get yourself in trouble if you don’t stop mingling with their kind, Clarissa.”

Funny how she’d felt like her cousin was just a silly privileged girl, at the time. Someone who never had to work for acceptance, and refused to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who wasn’t exactly like her.

She could almost hear Lana laughing at her now.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” a deep voice interrupted her inner pity party, and when she lifted her eyes, Daunte was just in front of her, invading her personal space. “None of us - not one of us - will lay a hand on you. You got it?”

His amber eyes had changed to a gold shade, as Ace’s did when she was pissed. She’d never seen his shift that way, though. Clari gulped and bobbed her head.

“And you’re not the only one the law would condemn,” he added, pointing towards the baby now sleeping in her arms.

Her eyes bulged. They’d hurt a kid? No way. They couldn’t.

“Hopefully, nothing will come of it. Turners are extremely rare.”

“But what if he is one? What then?” she insisted. She couldn’t just let it go, even if the probability was minimal. She needed to know, if only to prepare herself.

Rye was the one who replied.

“If he is one, and you turn, your body and mind will suddenly be forced to become something else. You’ll change in every way. You may hate it. You may love it. You won’t understand it. But we’ll be here to guide you. If you shift, you’ll be a Wyvern.”

There were nods of assent all around.

She didn’t know just how tense she had been until her shoulders sagged in relief. She wasn’t going to be expected to deal with all that alone. Of course not. She felt a little silly for even thinking of it.

“But, the law…”

“No one will think to test Zack for years. As long as we’re careful - which means never letting him out of sight, never letting him close to a human being - they’ll never know what happened. When the council sends someone to see him… well, we know a few witches. I’m sure we’ll find a workaround.”

That sounded good, right?

“As for you- that could get complicated. Your friends, family- everyone will need to carry on thinking that you’re what you’ve always been until now. That would take a lot of self-control on your part. Never showing your true nature. But with training, there’s no reason why you won’t manage.”

Clari had smiled. Okay, that didn’t sound all that bad, did it? In fact, if she was entirely honest, if only to herself, she didn’t mind the idea of shifting.

Not at all.

“In the meantime, you’re going to have to stay here, under observation for the rest of the week. The first shift is always the worst. We can close the bakery; with Zack’s birth, no one will question it.”