“Are you deaf, man?”
“Yes,” he snarled back, silencing the man.
The bartender adjusted his hat in consternation and blinked rapidly. “Sorry,” he said, undoubtedly a mumble. “Scarlet warned us.”
“Who was that?” Conall demanded.
“That was gazelle,” the bartender explained. Conall scowled at him. It had been obvious what her shift form was, of course. Conall wasn’t sure what the point of telling him that was.
They stared at each other for a moment and the bartender sighed and ducked under the bar. He came up with a bottle of Tanqueray Ten. “You look like a gin and tonic man,” the cowboy guessed. “And you’re going to need this.”
He was good at his job, Conall had to admit; gin and tonic was his drink of choice. He settled onto one of the stools while the bartender put ice into a glass. His legs still felt unsteady from the shock. “Thank you,” he said automatically. “I’d appreciate that.”
His mate.
Had she run because she realized he was deaf?
/> What had she said that he’d missed?
“I’m Tex,” the other man said as he slid the glass across the counter to him.
“Tex,” Conall repeated numbly, confirming that it was a name. “I’m Conall.”
“That was gazelle,” Tex repeated.
Conall took a bracing sip of the drink and wondered if Tex would prove to be one of those people who assumed deaf meant idiot.
“She’s... different. Special.” Tex was clearly struggling. When the native man who had been hanging lights brought a tray of broken glass to the bar, he exchanged a desperate look with him. “How would you explain gazelle, Travis?”
Conall turned on the stool, watching carefully. Travis started to answer obliquely as he dumped the glass shards, and Tex stopped him. “He’s deaf, you have to face him.”
Travis looked straight at him, with the startled, uncomfortable expression that Conall was so familiar with.
“Gazelle is different,” Travis echoed Tex’s first descriptor reluctantly. “She’s... really different.”
Conall took another drink as Travis sat down on one of the bar stools, raking a hand through his short, dark hair. “Look, to understand gazelle, you have to understand where she came from.”
Conall glanced at Tex quickly enough to catch him saying, “... don’t really know.” They weren’t close enough to make watching both of them easy.
“There was a collection, like a zoo,” Travis continued. “Shifters in cages, torture.”
“... forced to stay in animal form,” Tex added.
Conall stared from one to the other. Someone had tortured his mate? Rage was not the least of his complicated emotions.
Travis continued, “She wouldn’t shift when we found her, or couldn’t. She stayed in gazelle form for months after her rescue, and as far as we can tell, she doesn’t remember anything before that. The other shifters we rescued all said she was there longer than they were.”
“We don’t know how old she is, or when she was captured,” Tex added.
“She might have been born there,” Travis said.
“She’s come a long way,” Tex said firmly. “But she’s still really...”
“Sheltered?” Travis grasped, clearly flailing.
“You have to be careful about startling her,” Tex said.
“She doesn’t like loud noises,” Travis agreed. “I try to warn her if I’ll be using power tools.”