Free Pride by Rachel Vincent

psycho kidnapper—was now dead, so his testimony would be pretty damn hard to scrounge up. And none of my other potential vouchers—Marc, Michael, my father, and my cousin Abby—were considered reliable witnesses because they all loved me and would presumably lie to save me.
    The tribunal had voted in favor of excluding their testimony by a margin of two to one, and no matter how fiercely Uncle Rick had argued, he was unable to gain even one vote. Stubborn bastards .
    But he wasn’t done trying to help me. “Dr. Carver, do you think such a Shift is possible, medically speaking?”
    Dr. Carver sighed. “No. Medically speaking, no Shift is possible. Our very existence should be a physical impossibility. But we do exist. And so does the partial Shift. I see no reason for it not to. It takes intense concentration to Shift intentionally, so it stands to reason that intense concentration focused on a particular part of the body would cause only that part to Shift.”
    His gaze swung left to include only Malone and Blackwell. “What makes no sense to me is that men like you—creatures whose very existence humanity has denied for centuries—refuse to believe something that requires only a small portion of the transformation you put your entire body through on a near-daily basis. The only reason you don’t believe in the possibility of the partial Shift is because you don’t want to believe.”
    Yeah! I wanted to stand and clap, or cheer, or…sing the national anthem. In a matter of minutes, Dr. Carver had drivenhome the very point I’d been trying to make for the last five months. And he’d made it look easy, and honorable, as if he were saying something that needed to be said, for the moral well-being of all involved.
    To my utter surprise, though Malone still scowled, Paul Blackwell looked half-convinced. He placed one thin, wrinkled hand on the table. “Dr. Carver, I have to admit this partial Shift gibberish is starting to sound less and less like nonsense. But we still need proof Ms. Sanders can actually accomplish such a thing, even if it is possible.”
    Okay, it could have been worse. Blackwell was the swing vote, and he was definitely coming around. But he wanted proof—which I still didn’t have.
    In a real court of law, where the burden of proof was on the prosecution, I would have been good to go. There was plenty of doubt about my guilt. But here, I had to prove myself innocent beyond all doubt, which seemed less and less likely with each hour that passed.
    The doctor nodded. “Of course. But let me point out that Faythe’s explanation for why she can’t prove it yet makes sense. Medically speaking.” Carver was taking no chances on his testimony being thrown out because it didn’t pertain to his area of expertise. “We all know most werecats experience their first Shift at puberty. But you may not know, or recall, that many of these first Shifts are actually brought on by bouts of strong emotion. Anger, fear, excitement…even lust.”
    Calvin Malone squirmed in his chair. Rumor had it his first Shift was triggered at age fourteen by heavy involvement with his human girlfriend. He’d reportedly barely made it into the empty field behind her house, shedding his clothes along the way like a madman.
    So if anyone understood about emotion bringing on a Shift, it should have been Calvin Malone. But his stiff posture and angry eyes said Malone was not pleased by the trip downmemory lane. Nor was he willing to acknowledge it, even indirectly—especially not to help me.
    “Dr. Carver, what happens to preteenagers at the mercy of their hormones is not relevant to this hearing,” he snapped. “Ms. Sanders is twenty-three years old. She had her first Shift at least a decade ago, and should long ago have learned to rule her emotions, rather than being ruled by them. The fact that she has yet to reach that level of control does not speak in her favor here. It is simply one more example of her inability to