Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Is A Shifter Who Can't Shift Still A Shifter?

The next morning the maids offered me entirely different attire: fitted pants, a shirt, and a pair of gloves. As usual, they avoided eye contact and made it clear they didn't want to talk to me. Korr, Itek, and Ethat had stayed downstairs after breakfast to talk about some envelopes that had arrived with the morning eggs.

Sure, they were pain in the ass mythological shifters, but they were also ambassadors. Or something.

I'd also woken up with Itek sleeping at the foot of the bed again, this time in his griffin form. He snored softly as he dozed.

"Why are you lot insisting on sleeping near me?" I had asked irritably. "Don't you have somewhere else to sleep?"

He'd shifted down into human form, which sported just his leather lion cloth and nothing else. "Just keeping an eye on you. Making sure you don't try to jump out the windows. Or have a conversation with a raven."

"I wish the curtains could be open," I had said, annoyed by the sunlight creeping around the edges of the thick curtains. "Are you really convinced the birds will spy on you?"

"Convinced? We know it. Eat breakfast and get dressed. You are the most interesting thing in the world to them right now, and we will deny them their entertainment."

"Why is everyone so interested in a mutt-shifter?" I prodded. "You all think I'm a shifter—"

"We're sure you're a shifter."

"But I can't shift."

Now he looked doubtful.

"Every shifter can shift. Even infants adopted by humans, and never meets a shifter, and everyone thinks it's a human baby but the kid shifts one day," I went on. Most kids learned to shift right around when they figured out crawling, but sometimes kids took a while, or they weren't good at it or it was difficult so they didn't do it much. But it just was, and it wasn't something that parents had to teach anymore than parents had to teach a kid how blow spit bubbles for fun. "I can't shift."

I'd never tried, never felt any urge to, never had anything weird happen. Everyone told me I wasn't human, and maybe I wasn't, but I also wasn't a shifter.

"If I can't shift, I'm not a shifter," I said.

"We're sure you're a shifter," he said. "We'd like to figure out what kind. Besides mutt."

"Well, like Korr said, I'm just such a mutt nobody can tell what I am anymore."

"Even then you should be able to shift."

"I can't shift. Knock it off, you're wrong. Deal."

"Now you know why you're so interesting. A shifter of an unknown variety that can't shift." He rolled off the bed and shook out his hair as he left the bedroom.

And that's how he left it. I fumed. This was stupid. I wasn't a shifter. I couldn't shift. Maybe I was some angelic descendent. Those were super rare. The angelic servants of the gods didn't normally tryst with mere mortals. Maybe some kind of demon-angel hybrid. Ooo, the secret fruit of a forbidden romance across dimensions...

I smacked myself with a pillow until I got the stupid out, then went in pursuit of some food, but not before Yanice and Delia arrived to dress me for the day's adventures... and in the process say as absolutely little to me as possible about where I was going, what I was doing, or even so much as a good morning.

"I thought people were... friendly with their maids and man-servants," I finally said to Yanice, because this was stupid. "And I don't mean friendly like my hands under your skirts friendly."