voice cracked with desperation.
"Try me," Dan said. "I swear to you, no matter how embarrassing or—or bad it is, we'll find a way to—"
"I turn into a monster!" Austin blurted out.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he clapped his hand over his mouth and looked wildly around the bus station. This late at night, no one was around to pay attention. Even the woman behind the bulletproof glass in the ticket station had earbuds in and seemed to be watching a movie on her phone.
And Dan had to fight with all he had to suppress a grin of pure relief. Out of all the problems he'd expected, this wasn't one of them, but at least it was vastly easier to deal with than just about anything else he had thought of. And he was the perfect person to do it.
"What kind of a monster?" he asked quietly. "Dragon? Giant bear?"
Austin jumped up off the plastic seat. "You're making fun of me," he snapped, his voice shaking.
"No!" Dan said quickly. He got up too, picturing the kid running out into the winter night. "I swear I'm not. I've ... dealt with problems like that before. Kid, I turn into one too."
Austin stared at him. A range of expressions passed over his face, desperate hope warring with suspicion and anger. "You're just saying that. There is no one else like me, except maybe my dad, but I don't know and I can't find out. Maybe our family is just cursed."
"There's nothing wrong with you. You aren't cursed. It's called being a shifter," Dan said. "I turn into a bear."
Austin's eyes went briefly wide, then narrowed in teenage suspicion. "You're lying."
"No, I swear I'm not. I can prove it, but not—" He glanced around. "Not here. Get in the car with me and I'll take you somewhere that I can show you. And you can show me too."
"This is stupid," Austin muttered, but he shoved his hands in his pockets and slouched toward the door with Dan. A fragile hint of hope quivered in his voice, cracking it. "You're lying. You're just going to take me to my mom's house."
"I'm not. I'm going to find the nearest patch of woods and show you what a grizzly bear looks like."
He tried to push down the nervousness rising in his chest. He just hoped that when it came down to shifting for the first time in years, he would be able to actually do it.
He texted Paula from the car. He's in the car with me. I'm gonna take him to get something to eat & talk about things before we head home.
"What are you doing?" Austin demanded.
Dan showed him the text before he sent it. "I promised to tell your mom what's happening, and I'm keeping that promise. But I'm also keeping my promise to you. Not a word about monsters. I always keep my promises."
"You're a regular Captain America," Austin muttered, slouching down in the passenger seat. But he didn't jump out of the car.
Not knowing the area well, Dan decided to just randomly drive until he found a side road that looked like it headed into an uninhabited stretch of woods where they could shift unobserved. It helped that it was the middle of the night, so there was almost no traffic. He drove slowly, the heating vents beating back the chill.
And he tried not to think about the fact that the last time he'd shifted, he'd had two good arms, and four good legs as a bear. He knew he hadn't lost touch with his animal entirely, which was a risk for shifters who hadn't shifted in a long time, but would it come out for him after all this time? He was trying very hard not to worry about that.
"So you're not gonna tell me what you turn into?" he asked.
"I don't believe you turn into a bear," was Austin's reply.
"It's pretty easy to prove, and I'm about to prove it as soon as I find a—aha, this looks good."
He turned onto what looked like an old logging or hunting road. Vehicles had driven over it earlier in the winter, flattening down the snow, but the road surface was loose and sloppy even with the car's all-wheel drive. He stopped just a few yards in. All he needed to do was get off the road where he couldn't be seen. He didn't want to get stuck.
"This is so stupid," Austin said, but when Dan got out,