To me being a shapeshifter meant being hurt, degraded, and living in fear. Every bone in my body had been broken by shapeshifters before I was ten years old. I’ve been stabbed, punched, kicked, whipped, and set on fire. I’ve watched my mother being beaten to a bloody pulp repeatedly and with vicious glee. I had rejected that life and chosen the Order instead. The knights were my pack and Ted was my alpha.

Raphael knew all this, or most of it. I had told him about my childhood. But to him all that abuse had been inflicted on me by “bad” shapeshifters. The Atlanta Pack consisted of “good” shapeshifters, with laws, discipline, and safety. He thought they deserved my loyalty above everyone else simply because all of us turned furry. He had expected me to walk away from everything I’d worked so hard for and be his bouda princess. We had an ugly fight and went our separate ways. Neither of us said we were through. We just stopped talking.

I meant to call him. I had planned to do it after we finally took Erra down, but in that last fight I was injured. My shapeshifter status came out, and the Order cordially requested my presence at its headquarters. It wasn’t the kind of invitation one declined. So I went to stand trial. I thought it was my chance to change the Order for the better. There were other people in the ranks like me, closet shapeshifters, secret not-quite-humans. I wanted to prove that we were worthy of knighthood. I had a stellar record, years of exemplary service, and the decorations and awards to prove it. I thought I had a shot. I had tried, so desperately tried, and in the end it was all for nothing. The Order got rid of me and that was that.

I couldn’t change the past, but I could work on the present. I was miserable without Raphael. I knew exactly why I hadn’t picked up the phone. Sure, some of it was pride. Some of it was anger. I was tired of everyone judging me. The Order judged me for being a shapeshifter. The shapeshifters judged me for having the wrong kind of father. In a time when my life really sucked, I had needed Raphael to be that one person who didn’t judge me, and I was angry because he did. But deep under it all was fear. As long as I didn’t call him, Raphael couldn’t tell me that we were over.

How is it that I could run into a gunfight against overwhelming odds and put myself between bullets and civilians, but I couldn’t scrape together enough courage to speak to the one person who mattered the most to me?