The First Shifters

Secrets

It took me a minute to find the dorm room, but I’d finally found it. I could smell his scent from this side of the door, and knew he was home. I hadn’t knocked yet, and Fiona kept quiet for the sake of my nerves. It was one thing when he crept up on me in public, it was another entirely to show up to where he lived.

“I know you’re out there,” I hear Ryker growl by the door. “You can leave anytime.”

“Please, Ryker, I just want to talk with you,” I tell him softly. I know he can hear me.

“There is nothing you and I need to talk about.”

I sigh, wondering if this was a bad idea after all. Fiona nods her head at me, trying to encourage me to keep going.

“Ryker,” I say his name softly. “What if I told you that I believe you?”

It’s dead silent, ringing in my ears silent. I’m straining so hard to listen that all I hear is my own blood rushing through my skull. I’m wondering if I’ve just messed up big time when I hear the lock click and Ryker opens the door. He’s shirtless, so I can see the fur run across his chest, trailing in a line down his rippling, muscular stomach. It leads to that delicious part of him that’s hidden behind a pair of grey sweats, and it takes all of my self-control to not openly ogle this man. Without the distorted red hue from the sun, I can see that the blue on his fur is very dark, like a raven’s wing. It gives him the appearance of black fur in the normal lighting of his home. His skin is gorgeously tan, and now that we weren’t fighting in a darkened street, I could see his facial features better.

“Believe me?” he asks. “What could you possibly believe me for, Princess?” He’s leaning against the door frame, his arm over his head, the other hand on his hip. I swear he knew he was being a distraction, and I couldn’t help but lick my lips again.

“I know there’s something that happened, at the science center.” I barely get the words out before he’s in my face, snarling and his hand tempted to wrap itself around my throat. Fiona snarls, keeping him from doing anything too reckless.

“You have no idea what happened at the science center,” he growls lowly, fire in his green eyes. “I had a career waiting for me. But their secrets…” he trails off. Ryker is visibly stressed and angry, and I feel awful. He shakes his head and turns from me. “They can keep their secrets.”

“That’s what I wanted to come talk to you about,” I say to him calmly, taking a step towards him. I felt like I was trying to calm a wild animal, a wounded beast that was ready to have my head in a second’s notice. “Take this as my white flag,” I tell him. “I just wanted to come talk to you.”

I’m finally in his home, and it’s cramped for a dorm room. Were they all like this? It felt way too small, and smaller still with Ryker’s tall frame looming over me as I sat on his tiny couch. He pours himself a glass of water and sits next to me, lounged out comfortably. Fiona lays at my feet, and I feel trapped in this cube.

“So, you’re here now. What do you want?” He asks lazily. It about gives me whip lash, given that he was all anger a few moments ago.

“I was informed that you have issues with my brothers,” I start, and he snorts. I ignore him as best I can and continue. “Please, tell me about this theory you have about my family.”

“It’s no theory, Princess,” Ryker scoffs. “I know what I saw.”

“What? What is it that you saw, Ryker?” I felt like I was pulling teeth from this man to tell me the truth. Why was it so hard to spit out?

He leans forward, and part of me is screaming to back away.

“Are you sure you want to know, Princess?” I growl at the nickname he’s given me.

“Stop calling me that. Yes, I want to know. I want to get to the bottom of this.” Not having the answers was stressing me out, but more importantly, I felt that I needed to know. That knowing was going to be the piece to a puzzle that I had been subconsciously solving for years.

“Your beloved family of Greys is the very reason our earth had an ice age,” Ryker growls lowly. All I can do is blink at him. This again? It couldn’t be true. He must have read the look on my face because he scoffs. “I told you, you’re not ready for this.”

“Ryker, you have to know how crazy that sounds,” I say, trying to defend my facial expression. “I mean, that was mass destruction. The entire world, Ryker. The whole... entirety of it was covered. Obliterated. Gone. Whole civilizations, countries. I mean, common Ryker.” I started laughing. He had to be crazy. This gorgeous, incredibly smart man was definitely crazy. Who plunges the world into an ice age? Could there even be a motive?

“I know how it sounds,” he snarls, and Fiona lets off a warning growl. He takes a deep breath, running his hand through his hair. “It doesn’t make sense to me either. I wasn’t able to get to the why before I was caught. I wasn’t even looking for it.” His voice turns into a whisper. “I wish I’d never seen the file.”

“Regardless of what happened, and what you saw, I want to start over.” I turn my body towards him more to face him better. “I want you to know that I’m nothing like my brothers. I’m sorry for what they did. I can’t change it, but maybe I can show you a different side of us?” I couldn’t even answer why I so desperately wanted him to accept me, but I think part of me was done living in the menacing shadow of my brothers and father. I wanted others to know that we didn’t rule society, we were just apart of it like everyone else.

Ryker is looking at me with an unreadable expression, and it starts to make me feel uneasy. Not in a bad way, but I wasn’t used to this much eye contact from anyone.

“Why are you trying so hard to get me to accept you?” he finally asks me in a low voice. His green eyes are soft as he gazes at me, waiting for my answer.

“I think it’s because I’m tired of people thinking I’m just like my brothers,” I say slow, thinking about how I wanted to answer. It wasn’t just Ryker I wanted to prove my kindness to, but everyone who thought my family was just power hungry. I wanted to be done being defined by what the males in my family made our image to be. Ryker leans in close and my breath hitches in my throat.

“Are you ready for a change, then?” he asks in a serious tone. His hot breath is fanning over my face, and it smells like he was chewing spearmint gum earlier. Mixed with the smell of his cologne, and something else I couldn’t quite place my finger on, it felt like my body was screaming at me. Instinctually, I very much wanted this fine specimen before me. His jawline was strong; Ryker looked exotic and wild. Like he was a bad decision I wasn’t going to regret later. I wanted to keep making bad decisions if it meant Ryker was involved.

“What kind of change?” I whisper, my brain bamboozled and scrambled. I don’t remember ever feeling like this before. It was like I’d grabbed a hold of an electrical wire and didn’t want to let go, in fear that I’d forget what this felt like. Was an electrical wire even the right analogy? I needed to stop asking myself ridiculous questions.

“The kind that probably requires a lot of personal sacrifice,” Ryker answers. That perks my ears back up a bit.

“Personal sacrifice?” I sit up a bit. We’re just so close to each other.

“I would assume so.” I’m confused by his response, but his close proximity is not helping me think clearly in the slightest. Ryker’s nose brushes against my cheek as he moves his mouth closer to my ear. “After all, I saw your name and picture in their database.” I furrow my eyebrows together. Now that definitely didn’t make sense at all, and he’s snapped me out of his distraction for a moment.

“What do you mean, you saw me in their database?” I’ve leaned back to look into his green eyes, trying to search for the answer in them.

“Exactly that Princess,” he answers with a chuckle. I’m not laughing, and I’m getting a little annoyed that he’s just playing with me.

“Ryker, seriously, what do you mean?” My sharper tone seems to get his attention on the fact that I’m not playing around anymore.

“In a folder next to the Ice Age Project, it’s labeled with your name and photo,” he huffs, as if I should have put two and two together already. But what he’s said is so off the wall that my brain just isn’t processing correctly. Why would there be an entire file about me? Wait, what?

“Wait, wait. You mean the ice age was a project?”