Page 36 of Shifters Unifying
“You’re a bunny!” The young man laughed uproariously.
She angrily shook her cotton tail at him. Then she twitched her nose and morphed back into her human self, redressing quickly.
John still laughed.
“Yeah, I’m a rabbit. I didn’t choose it, so bite me. Not everybody can be a cat, or a wolf,” she glared at John. She waved to the other guy. “At least Oliver doesn’t make fun of me for it.”
“If you could have chosen anything, what would you have picked?” the other young woman, a tall, baby-faced young woman with bright blue hair, asked.
“I would have picked alligator and moved to my grandma’s house in the bayou,” Izzie answered.
“What’re you, Blaze?” the other young man asked the blue-haired young woman.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I still only get the windy part.”
“Maybe we could make a club at school. There must be more like us out there. We can’t be the only ones, and I’ve never heard of anything like this in my family.”
“Uh, uh.”
“Nope.”
“Me, either,” Blaze said.
My mouth turned down. Were they not from shifter families? They should have someone teaching them about shifting. Since I’d been adopted, I hadn’t had that option, but these four… Could this a side effect of multimorph emergence?
Inactive or hidden genes triggered into activating by my primal energy, providing an influx of shifters to add to our ranks. Most of those would probably have no idea they had shifter blood can learn to shift. Or maybe the ability manifests later in life than the usual post-adolescent age for most. Was there a chance Logan’s cousin Sheila could eventually discover how to shift? She had always wanted to shift, and she’d be ecstatic to learn she might still learn how.
Perhaps there was an overlapping situation that linked all four of these new shifters. They could have been in the woods one of the times I’d used primal energy. Historically, accessing primal energy wasn’t something most shifters did. It was one of the occurrences that had earned Giselda’s faith in my status as the multimorph.
John took a long drink of his energy drink and then lit a cigarette. “When did you start shifting? Not long ago, right?”
“Yeah.” Izzie ran her fingers through her hair. “In the last few weeks. It happened one night. My bed shook, and it was like I suddenly had an ability I didn’t have before. Haven’t told anybody about it, at least until you three sensed me playing around with the magic, and you found me.”
“Same for me, too,” the other guy said.
“How long did it take you to start shifting,
If I left these newbies out here, or left them in Willow Creek, Acheron would discover them. Alone, they wouldn’t have any protection from the evil mage, and they would die when he consumed them. That left me with one choice.
I straightened and cleared my throat. “Hello, I’m Emma Carter, and I have a proposition for you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
emma
“Fuck!”
“Shit!”
All four of them jumped and chucked a variety of four-letter words at me, but none of them made any move to attack. Good for them. At least they hadn’t taken leave of their newbie senses.
“Who the hell are you?” Blaze, the blue-haired one, shrieked.
“And what kind of proposition do you have?” John interjected. With a wag of his eyebrows, he turned to Oliver. “I could think of something she could do.”
“Shut up,” Oliver snapped.
“I’ve seen you somewhere before.” Izzie’s expression turned thoughtful. Suddenly, her eyes went wide, and she gasped. “Oh! You’re the rainbow vet. I follow you on your socials. What are you doing out in these woods?”
