Mason woke before sunrise. He could function on a few hours of sleep. Most days, he did. But last night… well. He wouldn’t call the tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling sleep. He’d been nervous. Today was the first day he’d introduce himself to the community as someone smart enough to be a teacher and it was going to be a disaster.

New town.

New job.

New people… shifters.

Shifters.

Who would have thought? When he had first been approached by Chuck for the position at Svelte Academy, it had seemed like the perfect opportunity. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He thought he would be teaching school. Math, English, history. Which was what he’d been trained for.

Teaching a room full of juvenile shapeshifters and paranormals? It kind of felt like he was going to teach at Hogwarts.

Field day had been his idea when he first arrived. It was spring. Normal schools would be letting out soon for summer. Svelte went year-round. In the public schools, back in DC, the school Mason had worked at always did a field day to let off some of the spring steam. Get outside, run off some energy, give out ribbons, then buckle down for the rest of the quarter.

Apparently at Svelte, the kids already had what Mason would consider a variation of a field day. On a weekly basis. Except, their excursions took the kids off into the woods to practice their shifting. That on its own was something Mason couldn’t wrap his head around.

The first time he’d shifted, he’d been arguing with his parents. Probably about a missed trip to a Smithsonian. They’d all been standing in the kitchen, and quills had just erupted right out of Mason’s back. They’d skewered his shirt, and he’d wiped a hand across his face without understanding what was happening or realizing that he was suddenly… spikey. He ended up with three quills stuck in his cheek.

That had been the first time he’d heard of shifters. His parents were both shifters, and they had been suppressing their spirits for more than a decade. In DC, they didn’t have a clan or a pack. They were loners, trying to live a normal life and make ends meet. They’d wanted Mason to do the same.

For the most part, he had. But once he’d discovered his connection to his spirit animal, he couldn’t let it go. He never shifted in front of his parents again. At first, he just ambled around his room. When he was shifted, his senses were heightened. Hearing, smell. His eyesight, already lacking, didn’t benefit from the shift because porcupines had bad eyesight to begin with, but his other senses did. Mason found himself shifting in darkened alleys, parks, woodlands. Anywhere he could shift secretly. Because living in DC as an African porcupine wasn’t exactly natural.

Which was why he had overestimated his abilities to teach at Svelte. Things in Troutdale weren’t what he’d expected them to be. And he’d already made of fool of himself on more than one occasion.

Like with Emma at the bakery. He still didn’t know what had happened with that. He knew better. Or at last he thought he did. But it just kind of happened. Like a freaking child, he had half shifted in public. She’d been right to reprimand him. He wasn’t quite as sure about being smacked in the face, though.

Mason flipped through the pages on his clipboard, checking off the events for the day.

Sack race

3-Legged race

Parachute Popcorn

Sprint

Long jump

Tug-O-war

Relay Race

High Jump

Something for everybody. He hoped.

“You’re here early,” a woman’s silky voice said, followed by the scent of lavender and spun sugar.

Mason jumped, and his clipboard clattered to the barn floor. The barn served as a type of gym… of sorts. The papers, only half clipped, scattered around his feet. He spun around to find himself inches away from Emma.

Her amber eyes lit up the entire room, her face framed in a halo of platinum blonde hair.

He swallowed, forcing his heart to start again. “Last minute touches, you know.” Mason dropped to the floor and gathered his papers. He had stared at her too long. Right? He totally had.

“Sorry I scared you.” She knelt and picked up a piece of paper near her foot.

He cleared his throat. He must really be nervous for her to scare him by saying hello. “I figured you’d be at the bakery.”

“I take Tuesdays and Fridays off. School duties.”

“Right.” Of course. She was a shifter. All the adults took turns working at the school. Which was weird. A neat kind of weird, but still weird.

Emma rose and stepped back, propping her hands on her hips. “Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot the other day.” She reached a hand out to him. “My name is Emma. Grizzly bear, kitchen wench extraordinaire.”

Mason cocked his head to the side, shoving his papers under the clip a bit haphazardly. “Kitchen wench?” She was the furthest thing from a wench he had ever lain eyes on.

Emma shrugged. “Running joke.”

Not a very good one. He took her hand and a feeling of… right swept over him. Not overwhelming. Just like he was at the right place at the right time kind of thing. It made him feel a smidge better. “Mason. Teacher. Mystery shifter. Fish out of water.”

“Oh, come on,” she said indignantly, rolling her eyes. “You’re still gonna make me guess what you are?

It hadn’t been his intention, but once the words were out of his mouth, he kind of wanted to see where she went. He was a porcupine. She was a grizzly bear. It was kind of the only thing he had. “Help me carry this?” He pointed to a rainbow parachute and a five-gallon bucket of whiffle balls.

“Fine.” Emma picked up the bucket and waited.

Mason tucked the clipboard under his arm and picked up the parachute. “You could have asked a dozen different people by now, if you really wanted to know.” Not that anyone really knew. In a place where shifting was normal, no one really seemed to care. And that… well, it kind of made it less exciting. He was where he should belong.

She sent him a smile, ducking her head. “Where’s the fun in that?”

He grinned. It was almost as if she got it.

She narrowed her eyes with a smile. “Give me a hint.”

“Nope.” Because this was enjoyable, and he was going to relish the freedom of talking about his spirit animal out loud and in public for as long as he could.

Emma sighed loudly behind him. “Mouse.”

Mason opened the door onto the field. That wasn’t the worst guess she could have had. “No.”

Svelte Academy wasn’t big. It didn’t even look like a school. It was a farmhouse, a barn, and several out-buildings. One of those buildings was a construction trailer and served as the science lab.

Mason hadn’t quite figured out how they pulled it off. Kept it a secret from the mundanes. Well, aside from the fact that they were so remote. They were almost literally in the middle of nowhere. Dexx hadn’t been very helpful when Mason had asked about it. He supposed he could ask Emma, but he wasn’t about to bring up shifter-mundane confidentiality. He’d already embarrassed himself enough for a while.

“My parents loved the cookies, by the way.”

Emma set the bucket down next to a pile of potato sacks and turned to him. “I’m glad. You’re going to have to explain this Oreo situation. I mean, I bake for a living and even I don’t think they’re the worst thing in the world.”

It wasn’t necessarily a whole situation. That made it sound like there was drama and high-speed choppers might be involved. It wasn’t Mission Impossible. It was just Oreos.

Emma adjusted her pony tail and pulled the blonde end of it over her shoulder, studying him. “Fox.”

“I half shifted and the best you can come up with is fox and mouse?” The words were out before he even thought about it. So much for avoiding that conversation. He was still embarrassed that he’d allowed himself to be tricked into a false sense of security, allowing himself to shift in public. Mason pulled up his clipboard and tapped the pen against his chin.

Emma raised an eyebrow, watching him as he studied his list. She’d had other things on her mind when he’d shifted in the bakery. Like, getting him to unshift. She’d decided right about the time she’d volunteered to help with the field day that she wasn’t going to hound him about it. So, she kept all comments to herself.

Mal.

Mmm?

Do you know what he is? Asking Mal wasn’t cheating, was it?

Do you really want the answer?

Dammit. No. She enjoyed the banter even though she shouldn’t.

A ripple coursed over her skin as Mal chuckled.

You are so not helpful.

“Emma?”

Mason peered over the clipboard at her.

A shiver trickled down her back. His voice was so… her name on his lips… That man was trouble. Since when did she have a thing for a man’s voice? “What?”

“You always a space case?” He tapped the clipboard once with the pen and turned back to the field.

“Depends.” On what? “Rat.”

“My parents are.”

Emma stopped. “And you aren’t?”

“Is that not normal?” Mason looked genuinely concerned.

Chuckling, Emma shrugged. “I suppose it’s normal enough. Maybe I’m the weird one.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Elliots have been bears for generations.”

He frowned at her quizzically. “I never really thought about it. We’ve just always been different, and I had no other shifters to talk to. I’m going to research this.”

Did he just write down a note? He was really going to research this? She chuckled.

Mason dropped the clipboard quickly to his side.

She speared him with her best alpha bear gaze. “Are you a nerd, Mason Covey?”

“Depends.” He gave her a forced grin.

There was just something about that man that drew her in. An ornery streak hit her. “Hippogriff.”

He looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but those delicious-looking lips rose. “No.”

She chuckled, enjoying his reaction. “Sphinx.”

“You’re not even guessing real things.” He rearranged the potato sacks.

“How the heck should I know what’s real? Dexx is a saber-toothed cat.”

“No, he’s not.”

“He totally is.”

“He said he was a tabby cat.”

She snorted. “You are so gullible. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Centaur.”

He snorted a laugh. “No.”

“Winged cat.”

His expression behind his black-rimmed glasses told her no.

She had one long giggle going on and now the game was to see what guess could get the best reaction. “Unicorn.”

“Uni—oh, my god.” He let the clipboard slap against his thigh. “Emma.”

She couldn’t stop chuckling. “Jackelope.”

“These are not real guesses.”

But she hadn’t felt this light in so long. She put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. “Harpy.”

Winner. The look he gave her was hilariously comical.

And sexy. How in the hell did he pull that off?

“Really?” His voice rose.

“What?” She played it off with an innocent shrug and wink because she was almost afraid he might be taking this seriously and she didn’t want that.

“You’re terrible at this.” Mason said, tying a ribbon around the center point of a long, heavy rope.

She hadn’t had this much comfortable fun in a long time. With Mason, there was nothing except the moment, and that was a rare thing. She couldn’t tell him that, though. “Just tell me.” Emma glanced over her shoulder.

Leslie Whiskey came up to them with part of her brood. Emma didn’t know all the kids. A tall blonde-haired girl with a ready smile. Another girl with brown hair and a snarly smile, if that was even a thing. It wasn’t that she was evil, just maybe naturally upset? And a boy who did more clowning around than helping. “Hey, guys,” Leslie said in her Texan drawl.

Emma waved at her and then leaned forward on a whim, whispering low and throaty to Mason. “Show me.”

“And get attacked again? I think not.”

Emma blinked, bewildered. With any other man, if she leaned in and whispered something naughty to him, he would have melted, but not Mason.

He disappeared behind his clipboard.

Emma shrugged and left Mason to go help Leslie at the snack table.

“You will not—don’t even make me repeat myself—” Leslie snapped her fingers in front of her son’s face. “—use your abilities to win any of the games.”

Emma stopped near the end of the table.

Leslie waved her over, her expression somewhere between exasperation and utter embarrassment.

It looked like she could use a little help. “Cheaters get locked up in the school basement with the ghoul, you know.”

The boy’s eyes widened.

“What she said.” Leslie shoved him gently away. “Tyler, please just behave yourself.”

“Yes, mom.” Tyler ran off towards the growing group of kids.

“It looks like you need a coffee.” Emma wasn’t quite sure what she was hoping to get out of talking to Leslie, but she was the only person who… didn’t have an ulterior opinion on her situation. “Unfortunately, all we have is water and sports drinks.”

“I have a flask of wine in my purse.”

“Seriously?”

“I never leave home without it anymore.” Leslie set the purse down under the table and worked to set up the snacks.

“Have you been having trouble with Tyler?” Emma looked back towards the group of kids. Tyler had disappeared into a small pod of three or four other kids and was laughing and talking like nothing had happened.

“Some of the parents’ prejudices about witches at school have boiled over to the kids.”

Emma cringed. One of those people was her mother.

“We’ve actually had Griff over at our place every night because of your mother.”

“That’s where he’s been?” Emma didn’t keep track of her cousin, but she had wondered because she hadn’t seen him in days.

Leslie released a frustrated breath. “Tyler’s started trying to sing his way into popularity by manipulating situations. I’ve had two notes home this week.”

“Oh. I see.” Why had Emma come over here?

Because everyone else would just judge her. Leslie wouldn’t.

“You alright, Emma? You seem out of sorts.”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just clan stuff.” She really sucked at talking about stuff.

“I’m happy to share my wine,” Leslie said with a wink.

Tempting.

“I overheard some of your clan talking. It sounds like a mess.”

That was one word for it. “I don’t think I want to know what you heard.”

“Okay, well, here’s what I’m gonna say. Take it or leave it.”

Emma braced herself.

“Do what you need to for you. Fuck the rest.” Leslie stepped away, then twisted around, pointing with her finger to make her point. “And fuck your fucking mother.”

That was what she needed to hear.

A whistle blew behind her, and Emma spun. Mason was starting field day. He had set it up in stations, splitting the kids up in groups by age and dispersing them accordingly.

Emma was in charge of the parachute game for the morning and tug-o-war in the afternoon. Well, she should probably get on that.

She crossed paths with Evan as she moved to the parachute, and he muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?”

Evan looked up at her, considered for a second, and then said quite clearly, “Slut.”

Emma froze, confused. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes. Where the hell had that come from? Evan turned his back on her and walked away.

“Are we suddenly back in high school again?” she snapped after him. “Screw you, Evan Scott.”

She turned to move back to the parachute, but then she noticed. Every one of her bears were looking at her or whispering to one another.

Emma’s heart raced. What had Cheryl done this time? Her phone buzzed in her pocket and her anxiety peaked. The message could be anything, and as much as she wanted it to be a coincidence, she knew, deep down, that it wasn’t.

Pulling out her phone, Emma’s chest twinged as Jordan’s name showed on the screen. She took a deep breath and swiped open the message. Cheryl broke the news. Blamed it on you. Said you were sleeping around. Where are you?

Son. Of. A. Bitch. Emma was going to kill that woman. She had spent years rebuilding all these relationships with her clan. Cheryl had just wiped it out with one rumor? Emma was going to have to rebuild everything all over again.

But it pissed her off more that everyone seemed so keen to just jump on board with it.

Emma, calm down.

I’m perfectly calm, Mal.

The screen of Emma’s phone cracked in her grip.

Really? The soothing blanket his voice normally provided felt more irritating than normal.

Mal didn’t retreat, settling in just beneath her skin. Not ready to pounce. No, he was shielding her. Protecting her. Keeping her from exploding right there in the middle of the field.

Emma was going to kill her mother.