Niall helped her strip down to her underthings and out of her slippers, glancing at his watch. He was running low on time. He had to get this done and move on to Trill.
“I’m ready,” she announced happily.
“Now, make sure you stay in bear form for at least an hour and run to the right. There’s a river there you can play in, eat fresh fish, splash about. You must not let the humans see you if they come to find you. I’m going to hide your chair out of sight, and then I’ll join you. I won’t be far behind.”
“Wonderful. I’ll see you at the river,” she said, raising a hand to his face thoughtfully.
Niall watched as her old, wrinkled exterior began to contort, breaking apart and reforming until she had fully shifted. Much to his surprise, she was not a bear at all. Instead, he found himself looking at a less-than-ferocious-looking gray coyote. He watched as she hobbled past him, finding her feet, and then bounced a little more eagerly toward her destination.
Niall realized something he hadn’t given too much thought to before and probably should have. Trill was part human. What were his additional powers? They could be great or small. His mother was obviously a multi-shifter, so what was he that he’d kept hidden?
It was something he should have investigated more, but Deidre’s situation had forced them to expose themselves to protect her. He couldn’t complain about it, because he’d met an amazing woman who would be with him always, at least in spirit, if not in the physical sense. Still, it had forced his hand and he’d just have to deal with that.
He glanced at his watch and rolled the chair out of the woods, leaving it at the edge, empty and slipping back into the darkness. Now, it was just a matter of waiting.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Deidre
Deidre sat looking at her computer. It was all set up, but she’d have to wait on the internet. That was the one thing they’d not had set up for her here. There was electricity topped up on the meter and water was, of course, free, but she’d have to continue to use her phone while she waited for a modem to be delivered tomorrow for proper internet.
In the meantime, she used her phone’s mobile data to search for any news about Niall. It wasn’t likely she’d ever see anything about it in the local news from the north or south of the island, at least not in specifics. Shifters had learned a long time ago to watch for things in the news that made sense to them in a way they wouldn’t for humans.
For instance, finding your ranch house burned to the ground with no apparent source for the blaze other than suspected electrical faults or massive lightning strikes pretty much guaranteed a dragon burned it down. It was likely that the owner was a shifter and knew this and knew why.
Or the owner might be human and completely clueless about that or the missing livestock he kept. Cows and horses made good snacks for dragons and they didn’t usually care if they took out a barn to run them out into the open.
Likewise, unexplained animal attacks were a good indicator of murders committed by shifters. Though there were some tigers in Ireland, they were few or because their human shell was a multi-shifter. Most shifters in Ireland were wolves, bears, and dragons. Deidre couldn’t imagine living as a dragon. They had to be so much more careful about being seen.
She supposed that was something she’d get to know more about while in London. It wasn’t like she could roam the sidewalks in bear form without being both noticed and out of place. She’d have to find some countryside and privacy to roam free when she needed to do so. Shifters were well equipped to go extended periods of time without changing into their animal counterparts, but it wasn’t healthy—physically or psychologically.
The thought made her miss Ireland, despite only having left it a brief time ago. Even though she lived in Dublin proper, the countryside was never more than a bus ride away, and she could roam the mountains there freely. It wasn’t uncommon to encounter other shifters there doing the same. Though bears were no more common in Ireland than dragons, they were easier to hide among the woods and be mistaken for other animals from a distance.
If Niall had made his attack on Trill, there would be reports of it in the news. There would likely be mass killings and much of it would be covered up, but some of the people within the clans existed as humans outside the pack. It helped cover for older relatives who’d been alive much longer than humanly possible by assuming their property after a certain point.