Elijah couldn’t take his eyes off Valentina for more than a second. Her pouty lips were a pretty pink color, and when she blushed, it hit just the apples of her cheeks, making him want to bite them. The combination somehow highlighted the bright amber of her eyes, which occasionally flashed a golden yellow before reverting to the amber he was staring at now.

She swept a lock of her ebony hair over her shoulder, the gentle wave clinging to her ear as she exposed the regal line of her neck. “Do you remember any of what happened?” Valentina had asked the question quietly enough, but it still felt as though she had dropped a bomb. Something inside him wanted to snarl and lash out. Instead, he just shoved a forkful of the delicious lasagna into his mouth while he thought.

Her eyes watched him. He could feel them tracing lines over his face and down his chest. It made him want to sit a little straighter, flex a little when he moved even though he didn’t have to. She was bringing out the preening, swaggering side of him that he usually reserved for women he was trying to bed, but she wasn’t his usual type. He loved blondes, natural, not dyed. There was something about them that drew him in. Yet he was having the same reaction to Valentina, a woman who for all he knew had kidnapped him from his kidnappers and was keeping him there, wherever there was, against his will.

He sighed after he swallowed a mouthful of water, clearing the food from his mouth. “I remember fragments. Some of it seems to be coherent; other parts don’t make any sense at all.” He paused, having answered her question in as few words as possible, and asked, “How many people live here?”

“About ten, with room for growth.”

He nodded, thinking about the size of the place and all the people who knew about this world, this supposed ability he now had.

“What are the parts you remember that make sense?”

Elijah tried to speak about it objectively. “I was drugged or something while I was out for a drink with my coworkers. The next thing I know, a woman is shoving me into a van. I pass out. When I wake up, I’m being dragged down a hallway and shoved into a cage. There is something in a secondary part of the cage, but it’s hidden by a sheet. I get into a confrontation with the man and the woman holding me and the doctor-looking guy who was interrogating me. Then I’m being electrocuted or something and pass out again. When I wake up, it’s like my body was conscious before my mind, and I’m fighting off some big black animal. Are you all cats?” He didn’t even pause as he asked the question, having shared as much as he could.

“No, my pack is different. We’re a pack of misfits, some rogues, some true bloods, and a variety of animals, which is unusual for shifters. Everything from bears to wolves to cats, all kinds. What are the parts that don’t make sense?”

His throat thickened as he thought about the memories in his head that seemed jumbled. “I’m in a different cage, in pain, missing my family, which makes no sense.” He almost chuckled to himself. “The doctor there talks to me as if he knows me, but I hate him. It’s this visceral thing. I hate him so much, I want to tear his throat out with my teeth. Then I’m gone, everything is black, and when I wake up again, I’m standing over a puddle of blood. I don’t know if it’s mine or someone else’s, but the doctor is infuriatingly uninjured on the other side of the bars. What’s weird is when I see my arms, I know they aren’t really mine. They are covered in tattoos and huge, like twice the size of my arms. Then, something sharp hits my neck, I feel sleepy, and everything goes dark. When I wake up, I’m over more blood, but this time, it smells different.” He shook his head, trying to clear the memory, the confusion, from his mind.

The room was silent for a moment, and when he finally glanced back up, Valentina seemed worried. He wasn’t sure how he knew, since her face had the same blank but friendly expression, but there was something tense about her, nervous even. When he remembered it was his turn to ask the question, he wasn’t sure where to start anymore. “How do you change shape?” he asked after a while.

She seemed startled by his voice, as though she had been completely lost in her own thoughts. “Um, it’s hard to describe. Some people think about different things to shift, but for me, it’s like I can feel my jaguar within me, and I call her to the front.” She paused for a moment, allowing what she had said to fill the room, giving him a moment to think about it before she asked, “Do you remember how you got out?”

“No. Does shifting hurt?” he asked, eager to know more.

“No. Do you remember being outside or me finding you?”

“No. Is there someone who leads your pack?” he asked, using the same terminology she had used earlier.

“I do. I’m the alpha of Midnight, my pack. Is there anything else you remember? Even just a feeling could help.”

“I wish there was. Why do you want to investigate? Shouldn’t I tell the police or something?”

“Shifters handle their own business. We have our own society with our own rules. Of course, most of us try to abide by human laws as well, but it’s mainly so we don’t draw unnecessary attention.”

“Is your jaguar a separate being from you? I mean, do you remember what happens when you are in cat form?”

“Most of the time, yes, but we can give complete control over to our animal selves. There are some who don’t remember anything from the shift, but most remember at least something.”

Elijah thought for a second about everything she had told him about shifting and tried to look within himself to see what kind of animal was there, if there even was one. He wasn’t so sure there was, but what he did find was a fury he’d never felt before, one that made him grind his teeth, but when he tried to bite down, to hold the emotion in check, he found he couldn’t. It was as if there was something in his mouth, or as if his teeth had grown to twice their normal size. He looked up at Valentina and saw a carefully calm expression.

“It’s okay, Elijah, just breathe. Nothing is happening that you can’t control. If you want to become your animal, just relax and let the process take over, but if you don’t, focus on your human self. Think about yourself as a man standing tall on two legs.”

Pain ripped through him for a split second, and then he relaxed, letting the animal out to play. His vision changed back to the unfocused, muted colors from before. He was lower than he had been a moment ago, as though the world had shifted, and Valentina was looking down at him. When he looked up at her and saw her cat eyes staring back at him, something deep within him whispered mine.