Page 17 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

LEAH

It was dark, and Leah’s head hurt.

She could tell that she was a shrew by the rapid beating of her heart—much faster than a human heartbeat, even if she’d had twelve cups of coffee.

Gradually awareness trickled back to her.

She was in some sort of enclosed space. It didn’t smell like her shrew pocket in her purse, or anywhere else she was familiar with.

She wriggled a little and nosed at her prison, trying to determine what was around her. There was a set of smells that she identified as laundry soap, dryer sheets, and coffee. The last one was faint, but it was probably why she kept thinking about coffee. Delicious, invigorating coffee.

She was lying on top of something soft. After struggling around a little and bumping into the walls of her prison a few times, she decided that she had been shut into a rinsed-out coffee can with a soft object in the bottom, probably a sock.

The can was metal, so she didn’t think trying to shift would be a good idea. At best, she would explode the can and lacerate herself on the shards; at worst, she would—well—implode herself.

It was completely black inside the can, from which she concluded that either there was something on top of the lid, or it didn’t have air holes poked in it.

Leah squeaked furiously at the top of the can, a litany of cursing in Shrew that mostly amounted to: What kind of idiot are you that you don’t know you’re supposed to add air holes if you’re keeping a live animal?

As her head cleared further, she decided that the can was large enough that air probably wasn’t going to be an immediate problem.

At least not as much of a problem as something else.

There was nothing in here to eat.

Whenever she designed a shrew space for herself, she made sure to stash food in it. She guessed that Fawkes had probably thought her shrew snacks were adorable. And they were, if she did say so herself. But they were also necessary.

A shrew’s metabolism was incredibly fast. So fast that a shrew deprived of food could starve to death in a matter of hours. As a human, she was in no more danger of starvation than a regular person. She just got hungry quickly and could eat a lot without gaining weight.

As a shrew, however, she had a shrew’s abilities—all of them.

Including the ultra-high metabolism and need for food.

She was already jittery with hunger. She wondered how long she had been unconscious.

If she remained stuck as a shrew, she would starve long before morning.