lovely or wonderful as artwork designed by shifters.
Not that everything in our gallery was created by shifters.
Some of our artwork was locally designed and detailed. Both of my parents loved the idea of helping local artists get a leg up in the world. My father had reached out to colleges in the area and managed to get art students from all walks of life to dedicate sketches, drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Even now that Pops has passed away, Mom is still heavily involved in the local art community.
So why didn’t the thief take any of that?
Why did she take our pictures?
Not just any pictures, but pictures of me and my brothers?
Then I remember something my mother told me long ago, something I’d once forgotten. I think, for just a moment, that I might feel sick. It can’t be. No, I silently shake my head. I must be wrong.
Only, I know that I’m not.
Not about this.
Not this time.
“Gentlemen,” I said quietly. “Tell me where your Tokens are.”
My brothers are silent, but I can practically hear their hearts dropping into their guts as they realize suddenly what we have lost: exactly what we have lost.
We stare at the empty spaces on the wall and I wonder how she could have known.
When a wolf pup in our pack is born, each one is given a small token. Usually, this is a sapphire. Sometimes it’s a diamond or an emerald, but most of the time, a sapphire is what’s given. This is called the pup’s Token. Later, when the shifter grows up and is old enough to be mated, the jewels are bonded together in a new piece of jewelry: two jewels representing the two families that have been joined.
My mother always valued our Tokens more than my brothers and I. She’s of the belief that when we find the right woman to love, our Tokens will feel more important. She also thinks that finding the right woman in our wolf pack is not an impossible task, while my brothers and I feel that it definitely, absolutely is.
Trevor is the only one of us who has even been close to being mated. He was in love with a female wolf from the pack. They grew up together and we all just knew that one day, he’d present her with his Token and she would give hers to him. Tragedy struck as it so often does and ripped that dream from Trevor.
He hasn’t loved another since.
He has a good excuse for being single.
Lee and I?
Well, we’re just busy bastards who throw ourselves into work, fuck when we feel like it, and don’t worry about finding the one.
Only now, we’ve got a problem.
When we had our portraits done for the gallery, my mother took our Tokens and put them into the frames of each portrait. These pictures were hung here, in the jewel room, for obvious reasons. The jewels aren’t visible right away. It’s not unless you’re looking at them in just the right light that you’ll notice their location. They blend in carefully with the painted frames each portrait is tucked in.
We all thought it was a nice, safe way to keep them guarded until we were ready to be mated.
But now they’re gone.
Our little thief took more than just our pictures.
She took our gifts to our future mates.
My brothers and I each shift when we’ve realized what’s happened. We change into our wolf forms, not even bothering to remove our clothes. The room is filled with the sounds of fabric rifting and tearing. Then, in unison, we howl. We cry out, devastated for the loss. I don’t know if there’s even a chance we could ever recover these items. It doesn’t seem like it and the realization hurts. Even if we didn’t get married for years, being able to give our Tokens is an important part of being a wolf shifter.
It’s part of our identity.
Now everything hurts.
It’s not often that our wolves take over, but in this moment, we’re all feeling anxious, frustrated, and worn out. We’re all feeling tired. We’ve all clung to the belief that one day, we would find mates. We’ve all thought this for so long that now, the idea of losing our first gift to those mates seems overwhelmingly terrible.