Free Night Shifters by Sarah A. Hoyt Page B

month of his first shifting, his father had seen him shift and had shouted at him and . . . ordered him out. For shifting. Hard to tell yourself it was all in your mind after that.
    “How many of us are there?” Kyrie asked. “I mean—there’s you and the triad, but . . . You’ve known about this more and have been more places. How many shifters have you met?”

    She had to talk to keep her mind off what he was doing. He wasn’t hurting her. On the contrary. His fingers, touching her skin ever-so-lightly were a caress. Or the closest to a caress she could remember.
    It had been too long since she’d even let anyone touch her. Certainly not since she’d started shifting. Before that there had been foster siblings who’d got close, some she’d hugged and who’d hugged her. But not since then.
    Tom’s touch was very delicate, as if he were afraid of breaking her. It felt odd. She didn’t want to think of him, back there, being careful not to hurt her.
    And she really wanted to know how many shifters he’d seen in the five years since he’d left his house. She hadn’t been out much. Well, not out on the street and not out while aware of being in a shape-shifted body. She hadn’t been looking for other shifters. But he might have been. Hell, considering his thing with the triad, he probably had been.
    He paused at her question. He’d been taping the gauze down over her wound, and he stopped. For a moment she thought she’d offended him.
    But he sighed. “I don’t know for sure,” he said. “I wasn’t counting. Including the occasional enforcer for the triad or not?”
    “The enforcers for the triad have been trailing you all this time?”
    She was sure he’d smiled at that, but she wasn’t sure how. His fingers resumed their gentle touch, taping the gauze in place.
    “No,” he said. “Only a . . . part of a year.” He paused again. “Without counting them and . . . and the other triad dragons, of whom there are many, I’d say I’ve seen about twelve, maybe thirteen shifters. Not . . . not close enough to talk to. I’ve only talked to a couple. I never went out of my way to talk to them. And sometimes, it was ambiguous, you know. Like, you’re walking downtown and you see someone walk in a certain direction and moments later a wolfhound . . . or a wolf . . . comes from the same direction. The only ones I knew for sure were the triad and the orangutan and the coyotes. There seem to be any number of them within the triad. Hundreds. And that might be hereditary. They seem to think they’re descended of the Great Sky Dragon. They marry among themselves and they have rites and . . . and stuff.”
    “So—excluding the triad—a dozen in five years? That doesn’t seem like many.”
    “No. And most of the time it was larger cities than Goldport. Large cities back east. New York and Boston and Atlanta.”
    “Odd,” Kyrie said. “Because just last night—”
    “Yes, you and me and that lion,” Tom said, his voice grave, as he finished taping the gauze in place. At least she assumed he’d finished, because he lay the tape back on the table, with the scissors on top of it. And then, ever so gently, he tugged her robe back in place. “I’ve been thinking the same. Why that many in one night. With the triad here, too, we must be tipping the scales at . . . a lot of shifters. And I wondered why.”
    Kyrie wondered why too. She’d been living in Goldport for over a year. She remembered the Greyhound bus had stopped here and she’d thought to stay for a night before going on to Denver. But she’d never gone on. Something about Goldport just felt . . . right. Like it was the home she’d been looking for so long. Which was ridiculous, since it was what remained of a gold boom town that had become a University town. And she never had anything to do with either mining or college.
    But Goldport had felt . . . Not exactly familiar, but more safe. Secure. Home. Like the home she’d never known. She