Page 2 of Psycho Shifters

Lucinda screamed louder and turned around. She pointed a finger gun at me and said, “Pow, pow.”

My body shook as I trembled from the force of fake bullet wounds, but I kept prowling forward and snapped my teeth at her like a beast.

The shifter realm had two classifications of people.

In the bottom tier were null shifters, who were unimpressive and made up the majority of the population. The realm had about fifty thousand people, and 99 percent of them were nulls.

That was us.

In contrast, the top tier consisted of ABOs.

Betas were the most common ABO. They were the realm’s soldiers. Stronger and faster than nulls, they had extended lifetimes but couldn’t shift. Dick was one of them.

Alphas were the coolest ABOs. They were the realm’s war generals, huge and immortal, and each one shifted into a unique beast of lore.

Finally, omegas were highly revered and immortal. They shifted into small, harmless creatures, but stories said they were physically perfect and alphas were obsessed with them.

But lately the lady on the news had been saying alphas were dying out because omegas were the only shifters who could birth ABOs and there were none left in the realm.

I didn’t understand how ABOs were disappearing when they were immortal, but I figured I must be too young to understand.

Most nulls got tested at the sacred lake when they turned twenty, to discover if they were an ABO. But ABOs were physically impressive even before they underwent their transition.

Even if I weren’t short and scrawny, it wouldn’t concern me.

Servants never got tested, because ABOs came from elite families with elite bloodlines. They weren’t scrawny, unwanted orphans left at a bar.

I shrugged it off; I was used to not being special.

In front of me, Lucinda jumped up and grabbed a tree branch. Her long blonde hair billowed behind her little gold body as she fearlessly climbed the branches.

I followed close behind, the cold bark digging into my palms. We jumped and leaped from branch to branch as we overcompensated for our small size.

I laughed with exhilaration.

As we climbed higher and higher up the massive coniferous tree, raccoons chittered, and we waved to the fluffy little guys.

One of them hissed aggressively, and Lucinda giggled, her red doe eyes large on her little face.

“It’s a fluffy bunny,” she said while laughing uncontrollably.

I nodded because I didn’t have the heart to correct her. Lucinda loved bunnies.

Finally, we made it to the very top branches of the massive pine tree. Snowcapped mountains towered around us, and everything as far as the eye could see was cold, white, and uninhabited.

The shifter realm was a cold, barren place.

It felt even colder and more miserable when you were two null servants under a beta’s thumb.

Up atop our perch, I wished for the billionth time that we could sprout wings, fly away to a portal, and travel to a different land. Somewhere, hidden in the snowy woods, there were a few portals to the fae realm and one portal to the human realm.

At least that was what I had read in a book. It had described them as swirling black vortexes that sucked a person in if they got close enough. No one ever spoke about them.

But it didn’t matter anyway. The portals weren’t safe.

Currently, shifters were at war with the fae queen—she sent monsters into the realm, and ABOs fought them back. Rumor was, she wanted the land for herself.

I tried to imagine a big beast roaring through the forest.

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