Page 65 of Shifter's Dream

Reed leaned over the Receiving Desk at the Serenity Police Station, giving the old sergeant her best, get-your-ass-in-gear look, just to remind him she was serious. He held up a finger, then put down the radio, and when he spoke to her this time, there was new respect in his voice, which was more like it.

“Lieutenant Burbank is not available, but I’ve got the next best thing coming to see you.”

Reed hmphed inside her head and gave him another look. She would be the one to decide that.

Someone called her name. There was a door behind the desk and it was partially open. A woman was holding it open with her foot. She had thick black hair and a baby in each arm.Ella. Trevor’s mate. The desk sergeant motioned that way. “See, the next best thing. You can go on back.”

Reed walked that way slowly, nervous and shy, but determined to follow through. In her head, she heard Troy’s voice saying the word, “sister.”

Ella’s smile was wide and warm and she was bouncing on the balls of her feet, excitedly. When Reed went through the door, Ella handed her one of the babies, just so she had a free arm for a hug. “I’m Ella. I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “Troy loves you so much.”

Reed shook her head, glad for the cool wall behind her, shocked by the warm, heavy baby in her arms. She leaned into the wall, needing its support, eying the baby in her arms, recognizing him at once from the pictures Troy had showed her.Track.He grinned at her, a slobbery, mostly toothless baby grin, then without warning, hechangedinto a little black puppy wearing a diaper and a onesie. Reed did not drop him, but it was a close thing. She gaped, mouth open, mind reeling.

“Track!” Ella cried. “No, not here.” She spoke to Reed. “Sorry, they’re just little, they don’t know they aren’t supposed to do it yet, and we aren’t even sure if they are restricted from doing it around humans like thewolfenare. Normally we don’t take them out, but today…”

Reed held the puppy straight out and could not speak, or stop staring.

The little black puppy wriggled until she had to pull him close or drop him. He scrambled to Reed’s chest, then put his little paws up, and stretched its long neck, licking her on the face and lips and even inside her mouth, then he jumped out of her arms to the floor and ran down the empty hallway.

“Track!” Ella called. “Here, hold Treena, I have to catch him.” She transferred the child, then ran after him.

Reed found herself with another pudgy baby in her arms. A pretty little girl who looked enough like Troy to win her over immediately. The baby tilted her head this way and that, babbled like a perfectly ordinary baby girl. “Hi,” Reed whispered at her, feeling so out of her comfort zone that she was going to start hyperventilating soon.

Before Ella reached the end of the hallway, a police officer came around the corner, holding the puppy by the scruff of the neck, stiffly, out in front of his body, like he was a bag of dog poop. “This belong to you?” he said.

“Thank you,” Ella said stiffly, shooting him a dirty look at the way he was holding her son. She grabbed the puppy from the officer and curled him into her arms like a baby. “You are in so much trouble, mister,” she said. She motioned to Reed. “Let’s get down with the others until Trevor gets here. He says he needs you in the forest.” She stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned to face Reed. “Can you really control the forest?”

Control the forest?No. “I don’t think so. I think I just… talk to...” Her voice died off. She didn’t know.

“How do the trees move around?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her cheeks heating. The baby reached up and grabbed a handful of her curls and yanked, hard. Reed’s eyes watered.

Ella eyed her, the expression on her face saying she knew exactly what Reed was going through. The words she spoke confirmed it. “I remember feeling like that,” she said. “It’s ok, you’ll get through it. Soon it will seem normal.”

Reed’s head was swimming and her thoughts were spinning. Did she really want this all to seem normal?

Ella started walking again, then stopped in front of a box on the wall. She looked at a red dot, a light scanned her eye, and a hidden door in the wall opened up. “Everyone is in Eventine’s office. We’ve got cots set up in the great hall, in case this lasts all night, or for a few days, which happens sometimes.”

They stepped inside quickly, Ella heading down a ramp into what looked like tunnels. Tunnels underneath the police station. Reed had never even heard a whisper of such a thing. The corridor was narrow and the lights were not strong enough to make her feel comfortable, but Ella seemed confident enough that they were safe.

Reed examined everything closely, still trying to decide how freaked out she was.Pretty freaked out, but functioning ok, she decided. Look, she had a baby in her arms and everything. “Troy’s niece,” she whispered, touching the soft dark hair on Treena’s head.

“Your niece, too,” Ella told her.

Reed smiled at that, examining Ella more closely, finally deciding this was not a mass hallucination. She did belong here, Troy wasn’t crazy, and she really was… half… angel, and Ella really was… her half-sister. She could believe it, she really could.

A tunnel branched off to the right and Reed couldn’t help but follow it, pulled through the cramped, damp corridor, by something she could not name, past each dim wall light, following the tunnel that sloped downward.

Ella grabbed her around the elbow and pulled her back the other way. “Not that tunnel,” she said. “That’s where Rhen’s body is. There’s guards and they aren’twolven.”

“Rhen’s body?”

“Troy never mentioned her?”

“No,” Reed said, biting back the words,We don’t talk much when we’re together.

They passed another tunnel and a blast of heat came out of it, like a sauna. Ella pointed that way. “Graeme is down that way with Kendra. She’s younger than Track and Treena and not able to control her body temperature yet.” She gave Reed a look. “She’s your niece, too.”

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