Prologue
"Mom, no!" Jack grabs his mother by the arm and yanks her back. "No!" he snarls at his mother, upper lip pulled back, teeth bared in a brave show of defiance. She has a pair of shears in her hands and a manic look in her eyes.
"I have to," she screams.
"We just have to be careful!" Jack insists, pulling her away from the little girl curled in the corner of the room. She's shaking, eyes wide in fear as she look at the two people she loves most in her life fight about her.
"If she can't hide them, we have to get rid of them!" her mother insists.
"How're you going to explain her injury in the hospital? What're you going to tell your friends?" Jack demands, biting back At eighteen-years-old
, he has been taking care of their little family ever since their father disappeared ten years ago. "Things have changed now, Mom. They aren't killing people like us anymore," he says.
"People like her!" An accusing finger points towards the young girl in the corner.
"I'm like her too!" Jack all but shouts, yanking off his cap. His fuzzy orange ears swivels back, agitated.
A look of pure horror crosses her face. It's clear she hasn't thought about her son's animal ears for a long time. Jack keeps them well-hidden. None of them thought April would present as a werecat. The gene for shifters in their generation is weak at best. It should have been bred out completely and yet there she is, six-years-old girl fully capable of pretending to be human if not for the pair of white-tipped orange ears on her head and the long tail curled around her knees.
Their mother's eyes are red-rimmed when she turns to her. She drops the shears on the ground. The loud noise makes April jerk back further into her corner. "Mommy?" she calls out.
It is her voice that breaks the spell of fear and anguish that had ensnared their mother when she first saw the ears on her head. But instead of the motherly instinct that would call her forward and protect her only daughter, she takes a deliberate step back and away.
"I've- I'm done. I never signed up for any of this," she stumbles towards the bedroom and drags a luggage from the cupboard. That is already packed full tells Jack that she had been planning to leave for a while.
He ignores her in favor of crouching in front of his terrified younger sister. "Are you alright, April?" he asks.
She nods and reaches her arms beseechingly at her older brother.
Jack sighs and lets her cling to him, hugging her tight. "It's alright. I'm going to keep you safe."
Chapter One: Hide
April yanks her beanie over her eyes and tries to make herself as small as possible behind the computer screen. It's not that hard. She's eighteen but looks younger because they didn't have much to eat growing up. Jack tries his best but they don't always have enough food on the table and as a result, her growth had been somewhat stunted. She probably takes a little after her mother too. Jack had suffered the same circumstances and is a relatively big man. Meanwhile, she's barely five feet tall and is too skinny for her own good.
She's filled in all the wrong places, in her opinion. Breasts too big for her small waist and round hips that only makes it harder for her to hide her long tail. She curls her tail around her waist.
It's her first day at work and she's glad that they've put her in the basement because it means she doesn't need to explain why she's wearing a beanie down here. The long colorful skirt tied around her waist also does a good job of hiding her tail when she's tired of having it curled around her waist too.
It's colder here than it is anywhere else in the building and even though she works with a team of other people, she can see that they are all bundled up too. It's not suspicious at all for her to be wrapped up all the time.
She lets out a sigh of relief. It's her first day at work and she's already paranoid about being found out. It really shouldn't matter these days though. Shifter acceptance have come a long way. People like her are no longer being hunted down like animals.
Still, a lifetime of hiding has taught her not to trust anyone and that kind of conditioning is hard to get rid of, especially since she spent the better part of her youth hiding in the middle of nowhere with her older brother.
Jack has taken care of her for such a long time. It's only fair that he doesn't have to worry about her now that she's officially an adult.
"You must be the new girl."
She peeks up from beneath long blond lashes and keeps her hands to herself even when she sees him offering his hand for her to shake. "Yes," she answers softly. She's long since mastered the art of not being liked. She keeps her long hair down and hides her golden eyes with dark contacts. The over-sized clothes she wears makes her look frumpy. She had been compared to a walking sack of potatoes once and she thinks the description is accurate.
It helps that she doesn't meet anyone's gaze when she's spoken to. It's a miracle she got the job in the first place, but everything had been doing remotely and the interviewee had only required that she be capable of answering calls, so she was deemed satisfactory.
"April Snow?" he asks, retracting his hand with a frown when it becomes clear to him that she's not going to shake his hand.
She nods. "Yes, sir."
"Right. My name's Mike. I'm in charge around here, so if you have any questions, just bring them to me."
"Yes, sir." She can feel him judging her lack of enthusiasm.
"Right," he repeats.
She has a feeling he says that a lot.
"Alright. If you don't have any questions, your cubicle is this way," he says, guiding her down a long hallway with cubicles of people who all seem like they're deep in work. One glance at their screens lets her know they're actually playing some sort of video game. She frowns. "Keep up," he says, catching her attention straying.