TW: Mention of abusive relationship, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

After lunch, I did explore the small yard out back, and was surprised to feel what Riven meant – the yard was relaxing, like I’d taken a breath of fresh air that was accented with peace.  In fact, it made me feel so relaxed that I ended up shifting and then running around the yard, playing with Sapphire.

Dogs don’t always play well with shifters, but she was happy and friendly and pretty gentle with me, which worked out well.  She was willing to play chase and not squish me if she caught me, and I could stretch my paws in the quiet, peaceful yard and feel like, at least for a brief moment, I had nothing to fear.

Then I caught a whiff of a familiar prey shifter and stopped in my tracks, Sapphire nearly running over me in the process.

Nathan was standing in the door to the house, just watching me.  He smiled at me when I looked in his direction, then crouched down to get closer to my eye level.

“Hey, how was your day?  Feeling any better here?”  He pushed Sapphire off when she ran over to lick him, keeping his focus on me.

I sat down, then considered.  I probably should talk to him and apologize for running off after the picnic – and for stowing away in his bag.  I was still scared of dealing with a prey shifter and unsure of what his intentions were with this whole thing, but…but my stupid heart was still happy to see him anyway.  Despite everything, despite knowing he was in love with someone else.

Might as well get this over with.

Reluctantly, I shifted back, then sat down on the bench that encircled the base of one of the trees.  “Uh, yeah, it’s been nice here.  You were right, Riven is really…nice.”  Underwhelming, but at least I was talking to him, that seemed like an improvement.  “Sorry for hiding in your bag.  And for…yelling at you.”

I glanced over at him as I finished, barely flicking my eyes in his direction.  To my surprise, he smiled gently at me, then came and sat near me on the bench – not close enough to make me jump off, but still close.

“I admit, I’m not used to people being scared of me because I’m a prey shifter, that was new.”

I cringed.  He’d realized what had upset me that day, then.

“But no worries about the bag.  I knew you were there.”

I stared at him, confusion filling every fiber of my being.  Obviously he’d known after he found me in the train, but…before that?

He laughed lightly.  “I saw you enter my room,” he explained.  “I figured it was a shifter and was confused, and when I came in I didn’t see anyone even though I looked under the bed.  It had just dawned on me that the only hiding spot left was my bag when that man knocked on my door.”

I flinched and tensed, not answering.  Even out of the corner of my eye, though, I saw a kind of sad smile on his face.

Nathan settled back, crossing his legs and leaning his back against the tree.  “You were the only shifter in town I actually knew, and while I figured there were others, at least the wolf shifter you mentioned, when he showed me the arrest warrant I decided who I’d seen must have been you.  I didn’t buy what he told me – I’d actually met you so it seemed pretty preposterous – so I just figured I’d take you with me since that seemed to be your goal.  I didn’t want to scare you off, though, so I waited to say anything until we were on the train for a while.”

“I thought you’d take me back when you found me,” I admitted in a whisper.  “And give me back to – to –to him.”

I still couldn’t even say his name.  It felt like poison in my mouth.

Nathan shook his head.  “I wouldn’t do that, at least not before hearing your side of the story and understanding what was going on.  If it was clear you were lying and he was right, it would be one thing, but I’m usually a fairly good judge of character on stuff like that and I didn’t buy a word he said.  Plus Riven’s opinion matters a lot – he’s even better at reading people.  Since he confirmed my belief that you weren’t what that man described, I wouldn’t turn you over.  That’s why I want to talk to Ren’s mom – she has political connections, she can hopefully push to get the warrant taken care of.”

I hugged myself, trying not to be overly optimistic when that idea seemed like a stretch.  “I – would they even do that?  Just getting rid of a legal thing like that?  Besides,” I suddenly realized, my heart sinking, “it’s not like it matters anyway, he’d still – he’d still come after me.”  I swallowed hard.  If I hadn’t been drinking that tea lately, I’d probably feel nauseous again, but at least that seemed to be something we had a handle on now.

Nathan hesitated, then very slowly reached out and set his hand on my shoulder.  It was loose, gentle, warm – not at all like he intended to harm me, but I still couldn’t help but flinch anyway.

“We won’t let him get to you,” he told me firmly as he withdrew his hand.  “You’ll be safe here.”

I looked over at him warily.  I wanted to believe that, I really did.  He didn’t even know what was going on, yet Nathan was promising me safety.

Was this like the opportunity Riven was talking about, an opportunity to trust someone if I didn’t get in the way of myself?  Not Nathan, necessarily – he was still a prey shifter after all – though he did seem to be on my side, and if it wasn’t that he was a prey shifter, I’d probably trust him.  Riven, at least, though.  And maybe Ren, I hadn’t talked to him as much, but…if they were offering safety, was it okay to trust them?

I wasn’t sure if I had a choice.  It wasn’t like I had any other options at this point, anyway.  I was just going to have to trust them.

I was going to have to tell them the truth.

~~~~

I waited until after dinner, which Nathan joined us for, before deciding to start my story.  I’d been nervous the entire dinner and kind of picked at my food, which didn’t go unnoticed by any of them, but they didn’t ask, either.  Nathan and Ren did most of the talking, light banter and familiar conversation which reminded me that these two were old friends.

I tugged at Riven’s sleeve when the other two got up after dinner.  “I want – I want to tell you,” I managed to get out.  “All of you.  If you’ll listen?”

He nodded immediately, his gray eyes understanding.  “Of course.  Take a seat in the living room, I’ll grab the boys.”

I felt really nervous as they all sat down – Ren and Riven curled up together in the couch across from my armchair, and Nathan sitting on the floor where he could throw a ball for Sapphire.  I could feel their eyes on me, waiting patiently, but it still took a few minutes for me to work up the courage to actually start.

This was not a fun story, but it was time to tell someone.  Someone who might believe me.

“When I graduated from high school,” I finally began, “I majored in childhood education – I was thinking of being an elementary school teacher, and I made several friends in my major.  Just after graduation, I went to a party with one of them.  Someone there, I can’t even remember who, introduced me to this…guy.  He was a police officer, and he seemed really nice, really supportive of my plan to be a teacher.  He said he thought it was a good career and teased me about looking young enough the parents would never take me seriously.”

I crossed my arms and tried not to look as tense as I was, actually spelling this all out.  “He, um, invited me out for coffee a couple days later and I went.  We just sort of started dating, and at first it was nice.  He was kind, he was thoughtful, he seemed really great.  He’d joke about being a prey animal protecting a predator but it just seemed like an ideal relationship.

“I’m not really sure where things changed.  It was so gradual at first I didn’t even notice it.  Just little things – I’d moved in with him, theoretically to save rent for both of us since he was already in and I was going to be in a public service career, and somehow I slowly stopped hanging out with my friends as much.  I was busy looking for a job and dating, so I didn’t notice it initially.  But then there was little things with him – he’d get upset about something, blame it on me, we’d have an argument, and then later he’d apologize and it’d all be fine.”

Looking back, I really wished I’d seen the red flags – the moments of jealousy and possessiveness that I’d overlooked because I was young and “in love.”  It probably was a pretty normal story for someone in an abusive relationship, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept my blindness.  “It slowly started to get worse.  He’d get really possessive, want to know about everyone I talked to, didn’t like it when I hung out with my friends, and he even started slapping me during some of our arguments.  He’d always apologize right after, but…he also always apologized in such a way that made it clear it was my fault it had happened, not his.  He was always innocent.  Everything bad was my fault.  I found myself glad that at least he still liked sleeping with me, because at least that was a way I could, um, apologize for all the things I was messing up on and making his life harder.

“We’d been together for probably about two years when it dawned on me one day that I was simply afraid of him now.  I didn’t love him, I was just afraid.  I was afraid I’d make him mad, afraid he’d throw me out.  I was still struggling to find a job, which was stressful for me, and I didn’t know where I’d go if he kicked me out.  At that point I was just…just trying not to make him mad.”

I took a deep breath.  This was where the story started to get really dark.  I wasn’t looking at them, because I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing anyone’s response to this – good or bad – so I kept my eyes trained on my shaking hands as I continued.

“Right around then, I went to an interview for a teaching position.  I didn’t understand why I’d had such bad luck getting a job – I’d done very well in school, had a great GPA, had some good internship experiences, and interviews seemed to go well.  I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong.  But this interview, right at the end, I heard one of the interviewers whisper to the other that ‘this was the guy the police officer called us about.’  I didn’t even need to ask who they meant.  I just knew.  But I did ask them what he’d said.  They were flustered at first at being called out but one of them ended up admitting that a police officer had called and warned them that I was an unstable predator and was being investigated for harming a child during one of my internships.

“It was all a lie, of course, but not exactly something I could prove to them.  A police officer was telling them this.  But I went home, furious, finally realizing that he’d deliberately sabotaged my efforts to find a job, and probably not just that one, but all the jobs for the past two years, too.  When he came home, I confronted him, and he didn’t even deny it.  He claimed, though, that he’d done it for my sake since he ‘couldn’t protect me if I wasn’t safe at home.’”  Yeah.  Sure.  It had never been about protecting me.  Not to mention that the only danger I was in was when I was at home, not when I left the house.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged.  “I guess somehow this time I just didn’t buy the lies.  Or it was just too much overall.  I told him I wanted to break up.”  I could feel my throat close up a bit and paused, taking a deep breath so I could continue.  “He stopped all pretense at that point.  He quit pretending he cared.  He made it clear that to him, I was a possession that wasn’t allowed to disobey him.  I was expected to do what he wanted without protest.  He got violent, and,” I felt the distaste in my mouth, “started, um, sexually assaulting me since I wasn’t cooperating anymore.”  That was kind of as tamed down a version as I was willing to say.  “He wouldn’t let me out of the house without him.  If we did go out, I wasn’t allowed to talk to people without him right there, supervising every word.  I don’t know if he was afraid of me telling people he was holding me captive or what.

“Any time he hurt me enough to leave a mark, he’d restrain me afterwards and make sure I couldn’t get out or take a picture or tell anyone.  He wouldn’t let me go until the marks were fully healed.”  He hadn’t even let me go to the bathroom alone during those times, which just added humiliation on top of everything else.  “He knew – he knew no one would believe me since I’d healed and there was no proof.”