“And how does this community work, exactly?” Lillian asked cautiously. “Your boss Cal presented a very...anarchistic picture. But he’s clearly in charge of something. You called him an alpha.”
Lillian had to admit that Cal Westland hadn’t been at all what she would’ve expected of a shifter leader. She’d pictured a shaggy, rangy type, living out in the woods. Surrounded, cult-fashion, by all of his followers.
Not the calm, thoughtful, fortyish man with the salt-and-pepper hair in a severe military style. It had been obvious that he was powerfully built, even sitting behind his desk, but he gave off a sense of...control. Like a man who was absolutely in command of himself.
Lillian hadn’t known very many men who were in command of themselves. The thought made her a bit wistful.
“Well,” Teri was saying thoughtfully, “it’s sort of hard to explain. Especially since we’re such a ragtag group—Grey’s the only one who really grew up in a shifter community, and he left it when he was a teenager. So most of us are making it up as we go along.”
“Cal too?” Lillian asked curiously. Was that self-command an act? Or just the sign of a man who didn’t need any external rules, because his own were strong enough to last?
Teri hesitated. “I don’t know about Cal. He doesn’t really talk about his past.”
“Oh.” That was oddly disappointing.
“Anyway,” Teri said, “apparently how it’s supposed to work is that anywhere you have a group of shifters, you have a leader. Some people call them an alpha. And they’re in charge of the group, and they have a say in who stays and who goes, and they keep everyone in line.”
Apparently how it’s supposed to work. “And how does it actually work, then?”
“Glacier is kind of weird in that it has all of these different kinds of shifters, and a lot of them are loners. So, like, old Mr. Thatcher and his daughter are hawk shifters—”
“They are?” Lillian had gone to school with Sarah Thatcher, and had had no idea.
Teri nodded. “Oh yeah. I didn’t know either. Anyway, there’s only the two of them, and they’re not about to let anyone else boss them around, you know? And that’s the case for a lot of the local shifters. One bear living out in the mountains, well, she minds her own business and no one cares.”
That made a certain amount of sense. “But you said Cal was an alpha.”
“Right, so, then there are a few types of shifters that actually have enough people for a community. And we’re one of them—the snow leopards.”
Snow leopards. Lillian had only had the very briefest glimpse of Teri’s shifted form, months ago. She’d had to do some Googling before she’d figured out that it must be a snow leopard.
Since then, she’d read all about snow leopards on the Internet, learning how beautiful they were, how they could turn almost invisible in a mountainous environment, the harsh climates that they could survive.
How, unlike most big cats, they took mates. That had made her feel much better about Teri’s situation—she’d rushed into the relationship so fast that Lillian would’ve been worried even without the shapeshifter aspect, but it seemed like snow leopards were committed animals.
“Snow leopards are super rare, actually,” Teri continued, “and Glacier is one of the few places in North America that has more than one or two. This environment is really well-suited to us. So there’s quite a few. And a lot of us are attached to the Park in some way. So, since Cal’s the head ranger at the Park, and has been here the longest of most of us, and is so much older—”
He hadn’t seemed that old to Lillian. Although she supposed that when you were twenty-five, forty was ancient.
“—he’s ended up in charge. He’s kind of ornery about it,” and Teri’s mouth quirked up in a smile, “and a lot of the time he’ll tell us it’s our job to sort out our own lives. He probably doesn’t like the label alpha, actually. But we all know that if there was ever a real problem, we could come to him. Like now.”
We all know that if there was ever a real problem, we could come to him.
Against her will, Lillian was envious.
What would it be like, to have someone around who didn’t want to tell you what to do, but was willing to help when you needed it?
Lillian’s mother wanted nothing more than to order everyone around and make them help her. Lillian’s father had shrunk down into almost nothing during their years of marriage, and obeyed his wife in every part of his life.
Lillian’s own marriage...well, the less said about that, the better. It had been over for two years now, and that was the best thing about it.
“Oh, right here,” Teri said, pointing at a house coming up on the left. It was modestly-sized, but clearly well taken care of, with cheerful sky blue trim and a neat lawn.
It was nothing like their mother’s dire predictions of a broken-down shack in the woods. She’d been convinced that Teri had gone off to live in squalor. Lillian was very happy to find out that she’d been wrong.
She pulled into the driveway and found herself checking all of the windows to make sure the mountain lion wasn’t lying in wait for her again. But she didn’t see it.
Teri noticed. “Don’t worry,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt. “If he shows up again, I’ll kick his butt. I bet I’m stronger than he is.”