The Lion Within (Ghost Cat Shifters #1) Read Free Page B

point of pain, he wanted to lash out and scream, and an otherworldly sense of power raced through him. Each time, he’d raced out of the woods and returned home. When he’d asked his mother to take him to a doctor, she’d avoided it, insisting it was nothing and would pass. The only thing he’d discovered was as long as he stayed out of the wilderness, the episodes didn’t recur. After leaving Painter, his parents had moved to Denver. Though Denver was a bustling city, the mountains were right there and the city was filled with outdoor enthusiasts. Daniel had to curb his natural inclination to spend time hiking the many trails in the area. At his mother’s question, he finally nodded.
    Her eyes teared up. “I know exactly what was happening. I don’t know how else to explain this, other than to just say it. It’s going to sound crazy, but trust me, it’s completely true. I didn’t tell you before because I wanted to protect you the way I didn’t manage to protect your brother.”
    He took a breath and nodded.
    “You know those rumors you hear every so often about mountain lions that are also people?”
    He could barely breathe, but he managed another nod. Whispers of mountain lion shifters were frequent in the area. Colorado, along with most of the West, was home to a healthy population of mountain lions. Rumor had it shifters lived amongst them, shifting from human to lion and back again at will. Daniel, along with most people, dismissed them as wild legends from times gone by.
    His mother’s eyes filled with tears again. He snagged a tissue from the box on the table by her bed and handed it to her. After she wiped her eyes, she took a labored breath. “Everyone in my family is a shifter. I’m one and so are you.”
    He felt like he was falling from a great height. Stunned, he simply stared at her.
    “Those times you felt so strange were when your lion wanted to come out. But you have to be ready and accept it for a full shift to happen. I’m so sorry I didn’t say anything sooner, but I promised your father I wouldn’t. The day before he died, he gave me permission to tell you when I thought the time was right. David died because he shifted at a playground. He had learned how to shift, but he didn’t know how to control it yet. The man who shot him only saw a mountain lion in the middle of a bunch of children. Normally, I wouldn’t have taken him to a park like that, but it was a school day trip. It was a horrible accident. Your father knew I was a shifter, his whole family knew. They were safe, and they’d protected the secret of shifters for years. After David died, I promised your father I wouldn’t tell you. He didn’t want you to die the same way.”
    Daniel sat there and tried to wrap his brain around what his mother was telling him. Somehow he stumbled through the rest of the conversation. She’d insisted he come back to talk more. In the intervening weeks before his mother died, she shared as much information as she could about her side of the family. Sadly, David’s death had not only pushed their mother to disavow the shifter side of herself, but it had threatened the safety of the rest of her family. Shifters had lived in secret for centuries. David’s unintentional shift had led to his own tragic death and heightened fear about shifters among those who were uncertain of their existence.
    Daniel thought back to the day he’d hiked deep into the mountains and shifted. The visceral sensations that had so frightened him before whipped fluidly through him. He hadn’t known what to expect. Doubt and disbelief dissolved in the face of reality as he stood there, fur rippling over his skin, power coursing through every step he took. In his lion form, he felt like he’d found a part of himself. He’d bounded free through the woods. It was as if his lion had been desperate for this day. It was past sunset with darkness thick in the trees when he shifted back into human form where he’d