The Skin She's In by Margo Bond Collins

Author:Margo Bond Collins [Bond Collins, Margo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Paranormal Shifters Romance
Publisher: Bathory Gate Press
Published: 2020-01-07T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, I stood in front of the terrarium chatting with Serena. When I glanced down, I noticed something different about her bright green snake body. The colors were beginning to change, and the scales were smoothing out. Even as I watched, her body began to plump out and small appendages poked out of her side. Bright sparkles swirled around her. Unlike the earth magic that I saw when I shifted, these were multicolored, like tiny Christmas fairy lights glittering around her.

She was absolutely beautiful.

As I stood enthralled, I heard the door to the herpetarium open behind me.

“Dad, come look,” I exclaimed. “Serena is finally shifting!”

“She’s what?”

The voice that answered me was not my father’s.

By the time I spun around to try to intercept him, Shane was already standing next to me, staring into Serena’s enclosure, his mouth hanging wide open.

“What the...?” His voice trailed off.

I tried to interpose myself between him and Serena, but he was already peering down into the terrarium.

Serena’s shift was almost complete.

And Dad’s grad student had seen it.

I didn’t want to leave an infant human in the snake enclosure for any longer than I had to. I needed to get her into the house and check all her vitals—and all of that machinery was in the house.

For the first time, I realized how ridiculous it had been to assume that she wouldn’t shift while we were out in the snake house.

I shouldered Shane out of the way, and he stumbled a little, still too shocked to have any real response.

“You realize, of course,” I said, as I clutched the tiny baby to my chest, “that no one will believe you.”

I made eye contact with him and let my vision go gray, a sure sign that my eyes had shifted to serpent form.

A protective adrenaline rushed through me, and I let my fangs snap into place—a move I’d never actually made but had often fantasized about. “If you expose her to danger, I will come for you.” The S’s hissed with my most snake-like sibilance.

I let my eyes shift back to human, retracted my fangs, and gave him a sunny smile. “If you tell anyone what happened here, they’ll think you’re insane.”

Without another word, I turned on my heel and marched into the house, where I attached the miniature electrodes to Serena’s tiny, naked body.

She was perfectly fine.

I was trembling.

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