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Chapter One
     
     
     
    Cecelia
                 
                  “Pick me up,” Michael pleaded, holding his little arms out wide. Cecelia couldn’t resist. He was too adorable with his trusting blue eyes and little blonde head. She lifted Michael up into her arms, bobbing the four-year-old as his sister and brother ran around her feet.
                  Cecelia Conrad didn’t usually cave to the adorable. With her raven-black hair and dark green eyes, she preferred the night over the day, mystery over mirth. But something about children lightened her spirit. It was why she had studied child development in college, and why she’d looked for work as an au pair upon graduating, eventually landing a job with the Johannsson family.
                  They were a beautiful bunch with their Scandinavian blonde hair and bright blue eyes – all except the father, who looked more Mediterranean than Scandinavian. The children took after their mother, Diana Johannsson, a hardworking woman with a genuine smile.
                  On a normal day, Cecelia took care of the children while Diana ran her own marketing company and their dad played big man at his law firm, but this wasn’t a normal day. They were on vacation, trading in the buzz of the city for the restfulness of the wilderness. As Cecelia held Michael on the porch of the log cabin where they were staying, if a two-story timber palace could be called a cabin, she looked out into an endless forest.
                  “You’re an angel,” Michael sang, twirling a piece of her nightshade hair around his finger.
                  Cecelia smiled and set him down. “Go play,” she encouraged. It was a good thing she did. As soon as Michael’s feet touched the ground, he hiccupped and turned into a bear cub.
                  “Oops,” he said when he changed back into a boy, covering his mouth. “I hiccupped.”
                  Thank mercy the clothes of shifters return with the flesh , Cecelia thought as she watched Michael and his siblings run around. Otherwise, I’d spend all day redressing triplets.
                  Nearby, Diana sat in a cushioned lounge chair drinking a pink lemonade Cecelia suspected had a shot of something special added to it. Between sips, she chatted loudly on her phone. “I miss the city already,” she groaned. “There’s no cosmopolitan on the Great Frontier.” She paused. “Yes, mother, I know we can come home at any time, but this will be good for us. We have bear in our blood. We need wide open spaces.”
    She laughed as if she’d just told a joke, but then her face fell. “Mother, not this again. There’s no danger out here. You’re being oversensitive, like the time you thought the triplets were drowning at sea and it turned out they were only watching Sponge Bob. You need seer spectacles.” She laughed again.
    Cecelia tuned the conversation out. Fixing a button on her purple flannel shirt, she wondered what it was like to shift. She never had, and she never would. Most of the members of her family were shifters, but the gene wasn’t always passed down. Her older brother was a shifter. At will, he turned into a big brown grizzly, but his heart was gentle, at least when it came to those he felt he needed to protect. He was in the military, using his abilities for good.
    “My mom’s at it again,” Diana called from her lounge chair, tucking her phone away. “Being a seer is only a gift if you can see straight.”
    That was something else Cecelia had missed out on – special gifts. It was rare, but some shifters could do extraordinary things, like see what others could not or make the earth tremble with a stomp of their foot.
    “What is she worried about this time?” she asked.
    “She thinks we’re in danger out here in