Page 50 of Found in Obscurity

Which meant he’d practiced magic.

He groaned at himself, too tired to have another existential crisis. He turned to place the mason jar on the coffee table, planning to cuddle up next to his familiar and finally get some uninterrupted sleep, when he saw that Kit had vanished. And in his place was the man. The ghost. Sleeping under the blanket Lorin had wrapped Kit in.

He screamed and the figure bolted upright in shock, wide-eyed and whining.

Whining?

He looked at Lorin’s startled face before blinking and looking down at his own naked form, the blanket barely covering his hips.

He raised a hand in front of his face to stare at it, wiggling his fingers like he’d never seen them before. And then, because Lorin’s life wasn’t already weird enough, the hand began to morph into claws.

Lorin scrambled back against the wall, his heart slamming inside his chest.

He was for sure going to die. And where was Kit? Was he okay?

The answer soon smacked him in the face. The pieces falling into place one by one as fluffy white fur began to sprout through human skin.

Lorin watched as the ghost that had been haunting him, the entity he’d been trying to banish, turned into his own familiar in front of his eyes.

Kit

Kit had been so exhausted that the shift hadn’t woken him. It wasn’t until Lorin had screamed that he’d roused, that sound able to awaken him from even the deepest sleep. His mate was in trouble. Scared. Nothing could have kept him from him.

Turned out Lorin was screaming at the sight of him, and as he drew himself up to be indignant, he realized the room was painted into human color once more.

It didn’t last long, just like the other shifts, but Kit wasn’t too upset becausefinallyLorin had seen with his own two eyes.

He knew.

Kit scrambled out from under the blankets, ignoring the vertigo the shift brought as he spun himself in a circle once in excitement.

“K-Kit?” Lorin stuttered, still curled up against the wall in front of him with blown pupils.

Kit screeched in victory, tongue lolling out once he was done.

“That was you,” Lorin said slowly. “In the mirror…and when I woke up…”

Kit yipped.

“…and you tried to write your name on the table… You weren’t trying to kill me…”

Kit yipped again.

“And the familiar book you kept trying to get me to read,” Lorin said, finally picking up steam. “You’re so weird and actlike you understand me because you can! You’re not a familiar. You’re ashifter!”

Well…technically, Kit was both now.

“Just like my dad.”

Kit tilted his head, his ears pricking up. Had he heard that right? He jumped off the sofa and hurried over to Lorin. He pawed at his ankle.

Say it again.

“I’m so stupid,” Lorin said, running his hands over his face harshly before moving up to tug his own hair, the strands standing up wildly between his fingers. “Though, to be fair to myself, he died when I was two, so what the hell do I actually know about shifting? The signs. Grandma didn’t notice either and she knew him for years. I feel like I get a trauma pass.”

He buried his face in his hands again, cursing quietly to himself. But all Kit could hear was one thing.

Lorin’s dad had been a shifter. Kit wondered what type of animal he was.