Valley of Truth and Denial by Desni Dantone

Author:Desni Dantone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Desni Dantone

Chapter 15

“What about my dad?” I screech. “Is he . . .”

“No.” Luca shakes his head. “Your dad is mortal. He’s not a shifter.”

I relax a tiny bit, as if the confirmation that one of my parents is human makes the rest of this okay. But my mother . . .

Holy shit.

“What does that make me?”

“A half shifter-half human?” Luca shrugs.

“That’s a thing?” My voice is high-pitched enough to make dogs cringe, but I can’t bring it down. Not after this news.

Luca walks toward me, slowly, like he expects me to jump out of the broken window. “There are others like you. Rogue shifters have children with humans in the mortal realm all the time. That’s their choice, to live here amongst them.”

“Them? You mean . . . humans?” I laugh maniacally.

“Yes.” Luca inches closer. “You’re not completely human, Sav. You’re one of us. You can shift. You need to shift.”

I interrupt my impending nervous breakdown long enough to ask, “Why?”

“For your safety,” he says. “Because any shifter being hunted by shifters needs to be able to protect itself.”

I slide to the floor, pull my knees up, and rest my forehead on them. Breath in. Breath out.

“You should have already shifted.” Luca drops to his knees in front of me. “We all do on our eighteenth birthday. Even halves are supposed to have their first shift then, but you didn’t. You almost did, but we ran out of time.”

I look up to squint at Luca. “What?”

“That’s why I came back when I did, on your birthday. I tried to get you to shift that night, but . . .” He trails off with an uneasy grimace.

“At this point, there is nothing you can tell me that will freak me out more than I already am.”

I probably shouldn’t say that, but it’s too late. The words are already out, daring him to prove me wrong.

“You were attacked by another shifter,” he says. “You were under the influence of dark magic and hallucinating. Because of that, you never managed to shift.”

“Whatever you say.” I toss my head back with a groan.

“Sav . . .” He places a hand on my knee. “You should accept who you are.”

I snort.

“It’s something to be proud of,” he adds.

“You’ve known what you are since . . . what? Birth?” I wait for him to nod. “How many of your shifter friends went eighteen years before they learned what they were? My guess is none.”

“I was raised in the Kingdom,” Luca reasons. “You were not. You don’t know our history and traditions, but you can learn that stuff. There is a school—”

I laugh humorlessly. “You actually teach classes on how to be a shifter?”

“The Academy is a rite of passage for wolf shifters,” he continues softly, unfazed by my attitude. “That’s where I have been for the past three years. You can—”

“Don’t.” I shove him aside and push to an abrupt stand. “I’ve heard enough. I have to get ready for work.”

Luca jumps to his feet. “Work?”

“I start at ten.

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