Pierce

A soft meow, followed by the rough scratchiness of a cat’s tongue on his cheek woke Pierce.

“Okay kitty,” he said, reaching up to stroke the cat—what was her name? Right, Ellie—on the head, his strong fingers trailing down across her spine, eliciting a stretching arch from the animal.

“We were asleep for quite a while, weren’t we?” he purred at her questioningly.

The cat only looked at him and then slammed her body into his face, loud purrs erupting from her throat.

“I see, I enjoyed it too,” he sputtered, picking cat hairs off his tongue even as he smiled.

Ellie just sashayed past him and toward the stairs, where she sat down and looked expectantly at him.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, sitting up and doing his own version of a cat stretch, arms raised high over his head. Muscles and joints popped and twisted as he did, leaving him with a sense of relief as he relaxed, stood up, and repeated the process with his legs by bending at the waist.

“Okay,” he announced a moment later to the cat, who still waiting patiently for him. “Let’s go find Mila, shall we?”

Meow.

“Yeah, I agree. She is pretty awesome,” he said absentmindedly, his attention focused on the stairs as he climbed them slowly.

The closer he got to the closed door at the top, the more the tension in his shoulders grew, tightening the just-relaxed muscles.

“This is ridiculous Ellie. I’m a grown shifter. I have nothing to fear from the city.”

Meow. Meow.

He glanced at the animal as she threaded her way through his legs on her way to the door.

“You’re probably just telling me to shut up and open the door, ‘cause you’re hungry, aren’t you?”

Meow.

Pierce snorted in laughter and pushed the door open. Ellie gave him one last look, flicked her tail, and then disappeared out into the house. Pierce took a lot longer, standing on the last step as he regarded the taupe-colored wall in front of him. It was just about all he could see of the upstairs from there. The door blocked his view to the right, and the wall extended far enough to the left that he couldn’t see past it.

“Pierce,” he said aloud. “You get your pansy ass up those stairs and you walk around the house. You don’t have to go outside, but you will explore her house without having a nervous breakdown. Got it?”

Having called himself out audibly, Pierce took the last step and emerged onto the first floor of Mila’s house.

He closed the door behind him, and decided to familiarize himself with the layout. The front door was off at a right angle to his left from the basement door. He remembered that, and if he kept curling around to the left he would find the stairway and also a bathroom. Following the wall in front of him, he spied an opening before it reached the front of the house.

“Well isn’t this pretty,” he muttered. The opening in the wall was her sitting room, living room, whatever one wanted to call it, he figured. Several white couches—no leather he noticed—a beautiful set of what appeared to be reclaimed wood furniture stained a light gray, a large TV mounted to the wall, and a few knickknacks scattered around on shelves mounted to the wall and on end tables near the couches.

It looked perfectly normal and yet…odd. Something was off about it. Frowning, Pierce turned to his right. The back wall of the living room was completely open and led right into what appeared to be a formal dining area. The antique-looking wooden table had a beautiful shine to it, and the formal dinnerware sitting in front of each of the six chairs was immaculate.

And yet somehow…wrong.

There was another doorway-sized opening along the same side of the wall he’d used to enter the living room, and he followed that into the kitchen, seeing the basement doorway on his right. The kitchen was…also perfectly clean, with fruit sitting in a basket on the countertop.

Pierce reached forward to snag an apple, but pulled his hand back as he encountered it.

Plastic.

Moving further into the kitchen, he hung a left, heading toward the back of the house now. There was a table and chairs, a more day-to-day type of eating area he figured.

The longer he was up there, the more he felt the press of the outside world. He looked through various windows, seeing nearby houses, and in the distance the tall, imposing skyscrapers that towered above everything else near them. His bear was fully awake now, and starting to get more riled up as it agreed with him that something wasn’t right about the house. It looked nice, and he liked a lot of the aged décor coupled with modern style furniture. It…worked.

But it was out of place, almost as if…

Almost as if it’s here for show, and not for use.

The lock in the front door twisted and he spun, slamming his back up against the wall as he summoned his bear, bringing the animal right to the surface of his mind, ready to unleash it in a heartbeat against the unknown intruder.

This was Mila’s house, and he wasn’t going to let them have her.

“Pierce?” a voice called as the door opened.

He sagged to the ground as Mila called his name, hitting the floor with a dull thud. Of course it was her coming home! Who the hell else would use the lock on the door and enter without attempting any sort of secrecy? Pierce glared at himself. The cat came out of nowhere and swatted idly at his foot, giving him a low meow before prancing off elsewhere into the house.

Yeah, got it kitty. I’m being dumb.

“Hey,” he called as she headed for the kitchen, not wanting to scare her.

“Oh!” she said, almost upon him by the time he spoke. “You’re up.”

“Yeah. Ellie decided it was time,” he joked, rising to his feet as he realized she was holding several large brown paper bags.

“She must have been hungry,” Mila said, echoing his earlier thoughts.

“Here,” he said, snagging the bags from her. “I’ve got this.”

“No it’s…okay,” she said, giving up. “I had them though.”

“Let me do my part,” he said, smiling. “Where do you want them?”

Mila pointed at the counter three feet to his left. “Right there.”

He looked at her, then the bags, then the short distance to the counter.

“Oh,” he said, feeling silly. “I just made more work by taking them from you, didn’t I?”

Mila laughed. “Pretty much, but it’s okay. Now you can deal with unpacking them.”

Not arguing, he shuffled to the side and set the bags down, picking through them as he began to set items on the counter. Bacon. Eggs. More bacon. Hamburgers. Buns. Condiments. Steaks. Potatoes. More whiskey. A whole chicken.

“We having company?” he asked, mildly shocked by the amount of food.

“Nope,” she said. “I just needed to restock.”

Because you were out? Or because there was no food here to begin with?

“Mila,” he said, turning around, putting his butt against the countertop as he leaned, trying not to look threatening or angry.

“Yes?”

“Why does your house look so unlived in?” he asked calmly.

She looked up, pulling her head from in the refrigerator where she’d been putting things away and reorganizing what was already in there. A quick glance told him that it wasn’t much.

Her mocha eyes didn’t avoid his questioning look, and he saw no hint that she was searching for a lie. Mila sagged. “Because I don’t really live here. I mean, upstairs, the bedroom and bathroom are a mess. But down here? I’m rarely here.” She leaned back against a floor-to-ceiling set of cupboards. “I work too much,” she admitted. “I eat there, I often sleep there.”

She pointed at Ellie. “I’ve got an automated feeder for her, so that I don’t accidentally kill her by missing out on being here,” she said sadly. “It’s bad.”

Pierce watched the muscles in her face as she spoke, as well as the pupils of her eyes, searching for any sort of deception or lie, or even misdirection. But there was none. She wasn’t telling him everything, he knew that much—she was holding something back—but she wasn’t lying to him either.

Maybe it had to do with what her mysteriously embarrassing line of work was. Something that she couldn’t have a proper home life because of? Was she into something with the adult industry? Did she travel looking for adult models to make movies, or something like that? That would fit the vague description of “Acquisitions” that she’d given him, he supposed.

Pierce wanted to find out, but he didn’t want to push her. She’d not given him any reason to mistrust her just yet, so he just shrugged. “Well, thanks. These are all my favorite foods. How did you know?”

She blushed and shook her head.

“No come on, you have to tell me,” he protested.

Mila went an even brighter shade of red. She was wearing a different top now, and he could see the red as it flowed down her neck and across the top of her chest in a beautiful pattern.

“I may have Googled what shifters like to eat,” she said, looking away from him as she said it.

Pierce didn’t even try to hold it back. He burst into laughter, spurred both by her reaction, but also by his joy at the fact that she’d actually gone and searched to see if she should be getting him anything special. That was more than a lot of people might have done, and the knowledge that she’d done it for him filled his heart.

“You are certainly one interesting woman,” he said as he got himself back under control.

Unfortunately, as soon as he did, the pressing nature of the city surged back in, weighing down upon him.

“I just didn’t want to make you angry. I know how hangry I get without eating often enough or what I’m craving,” she said. “The last thing I need right now is you getting like that.”

“Hangry?” he asked, not getting the reference.

“Yeah, hangry. You know, when you get irritated when you haven’t eaten in too long? You get angry. So you’re hungry and angry. Or hangry?”

He laughed again. “Never heard that one, sorry.”

Mila looked at him in disbelief. “You shifters sure are weird. Can’t handle the city, never use the word hangry. You’re missing out!” She paused. “Speaking of that, how are you doing? I notice you’re up here now.”

Grimacing, Pierce returned to unpacking the bags and started passing her items to put into the fridge. “Not good,” he said at last. “I was doing okay downstairs, but as soon as I came up here, with the windows and such, it started again. For me it’s…tough, but I think I can manage it. But my bear is not having a good time at all,” he admitted.

Mila’s eyebrows pushed together at his wording. “Your…bear?”

He nodded, but she just shook her head, not understanding.

“Right,” he said, standing upright. “I guess you wouldn’t know.”

“Know what?” she asked, moving to stand closer to him.

The pressure on his mind eased just a little bit.

“So, there’s a bear living in my head.”

“Uh, what?”

He smiled. “Exactly. Not the physical bear itself, obviously. That’s…” he paused. “Well, we don’t exactly know where that goes. But in my head lives the entity of a bear. Its mind, I guess you might say, though it’s bit more than that. Like…like an avatar of it, almost, if you’re nerdy enough to know what I mean.”

“A representation of all of its aspects and personality?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” he confirmed, smiling as she picked up on what he meant. We shifters don’t know everything about human society, but I for one lovvee your sci-fi movies!

“So that thing is…is in you?” she asked, trying to understand.

“Yes. It sort of, um, manifests, I guess you might say, around puberty. It’s a tough time for us. We have to deal with all kinds of changes, just like you do, but we also have to learn to live with this thing inside of us. A thing that wants to get out. So we learn to contain it, to build a prison, for lack of better words, inside of our heads. A prison only we hold the key to.”

Mila was nodding now. “And when you let it out, that’s when you transform?”

“Exactly, we let it out, leashed, I suppose you could say, but bringing it to the front of our mind allows us to shift into our animal form.”

“How do you maintain control when you do that?” she asked.

“Good question. The human mind is much more complex than that of a bear. It’s more advanced, stronger, capable of intelligence. That makes it a very powerful thing indeed. A bear’s mind in comparison is relatively weak, easily tricked or distracted. So we let it out, but we still control it.” He shrugged. “It’s hard to explain it any more than that, unless you actually live it.”

Mila looked thoughtful. “I think I get the basics though. So being here is not too bad on your human mind, but it’s driving your bear wild, which is making it harder for you to concentrate as more of it leaks through?”

“Basically,” he rumbled.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Pierce froze.