The Skin She's In by Margo Collins (online e book reader .txt) 📕

I considered stopping for a snack but decided I needed to move to work with Serena. Sliding up onto the hot, dry rock, I felt it scrape against my belly in a way that felt right. The sand slipped away from my tail as I pulled the last of myself up beside the juvenile, who had raised up in interest, flicking her own tongue out to get a taste of what I was doing. Slowly, I coiled myself around her, allowing her to fully taste my intentions. After a few moments, spent winding herself around me in a twirling spiral, as if she knew we were meant to be together, Serena settled down and slid up next to me, a coil within my coil so that she rested her head next to mine.

And together, we dozed.

Or rather, she did. I simply watched the setting sun move toward the horizon, saw the shadows shifting and lengthening, smelled the world around me changing in all the tiny ways that humans so rarely notice. The small things low, low to the ground, in the grass, the things I missed living in the city.

I loved my human life. And I was learning to appreciate my life as a shifter. I liked being part of a community of other people who had the same—or at least similar—abilities.

But it didn’t leave much time for me to be Lindi the serpent. Lindi the counselor and Lindi the Shifter had been taking up all my time.

It was good to get back home, get out into a snake’s world, and just be for a while.

By the time I got back to the house and got Serena settled again in the terrarium, Mom was home cooking dinner.

Yeah. It was good to have some things that remained the same, no matter what else might change.

Chapter 18

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, I stood in front of the terrarium chatting with Serena. When I glanced down, I noticed something different about her bright green snake body. The colors were beginning to change, and the scales were smoothing out. Even as I watched, her body began to plump out and small appendages poked out of her side. Bright sparkles swirled around her. Unlike the earth magic that I saw when I shifted, these were multicolored, like tiny Christmas fairy lights glittering around her.

She was absolutely beautiful.

As I stood enthralled, I heard the door to the herpetarium open behind me.

“Dad, come look,” I exclaimed. “Serena is finally shifting!”

“She’s what?”

The voice that answered me was not my father’s.

By the time I spun around to try to intercept him, Shane was already standing next to me, staring into Serena’s enclosure, his mouth hanging wide open.

“What the...?” His voice trailed off.

I tried to interpose myself between him and Serena, but he was already peering down into the terrarium.

Serena’s shift was almost complete.

And Dad’s grad student had seen it.

I didn’t want to leave an infant human in the snake enclosure for any longer than I had to. I needed to get her into the house and check all her vitals—and all of that machinery was in the house.

For the first time, I realized how ridiculous it had been to assume that she wouldn’t shift while we were out in the snake house.

I shouldered Shane out of the way, and he stumbled a little, still too shocked to have any real response.

“You realize, of course,” I said, as I clutched the tiny baby to my chest, “that no one will believe you.”

I made eye contact with him and let my vision go gray, a sure sign that my eyes had shifted to serpent form.

A protective adrenaline rushed through me, and I let my fangs snap into place—a move I’d never actually made but had often fantasized about. “If you expose her to danger, I will come for you.” The S’s hissed with my most snake-like sibilance.

I let my eyes shift back to human, retracted my fangs, and gave him a sunny smile. “If you tell anyone what happened here, they’ll think you’re insane.”

Without another word, I turned on my heel and marched into the house, where I attached the miniature electrodes to Serena’s tiny, naked body.

She was perfectly fine.

I was trembling.

I STOOD IN MY OLD BEDROOM over the bed, where I spread out a small baby blanket and used it to swaddle the now-human Serena exactly as the doctor had showed me at the hospital. I was breathing hard, unable to calm down after the interaction with Shane.

The thumping of masculine footsteps up the stairs didn’t help my mood at all. I scooped Serena up in my arms and held her protectively. Turning to face the door, I narrowed my eyes, preparing to respond to either my father or Shane.

But who came through the door was actually Kade. An inarticulate cry escaped me, and I all but flew to him—at least as much as an arm full of human baby Serena would allow. He wrapped us both up into his arms, creating a protective cage that held us safe, at least for the moment.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I didn’t answer immediately, instead standing up on my tiptoes to press my lips to his. Everything about him seemed perfect in that moment. The fact that I didn’t have to stretch too much to kiss him. The amazing sense of presence he always projected into any space. The way his eyes swirled with hot, golden sparks after I’d kissed him. The fact that even as I stood there holding an infant, I felt his body’s reaction to mine as it pressed hard against me.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” he said, his voice crawling low in his throat. He pulled me tighter against him for a moment then put both his hands on my shoulders and took a slight step back away from me. His beautiful, brown-gold eyes examined me carefully. Then he reached out to take Serena from me.

He gazed down at her in his arms as he moved to