Rising Storm (Westin Force #2) - Julie Trettel Page 0,3

They hadn’t been able to confirm that at first though, and the others didn’t believe him.

Roger was especially brutal. Really, he was a complete psycho, the worst of them all. He had tortured me for months trying to force me to shift. I wouldn’t do it. I still refused. I would live in my fur forever. Animals were far more compassionate and accepting than humans.

Of course, I’d grown up in my skin. We didn’t get our animal spirits until we were fully matured. So I had had no choice. Humans had found me and took me from my family. I’d grown up in a poor orphanage in Africa. I was the outsider. I looked different than the others there. I acted differently too and that had led to bullying and ridicule throughout my entire childhood.

As I’d entered puberty, my curves started to show. I was thicker and taller than the other girls at the orphanage school I’d been transferred to for high school. Everyone else had looked similar, but not me. It wasn’t just my size and weight, both of which had me accused of sneaking into the kitchen on the regular, but my pale skin that set me apart from the others in an area where the people dominantly had dark skin.

I wasn’t fair skinned exactly, and with time in the sun I did tan well, but I might just as well have had a neon sign pointing over my head announcing this one is different.

I’d struggled further when my gorilla surfaced, and I needed to escape to let her out more. I’d been dubbed a runner and often put in lock down. Still, after high school ended, I’d moved to the city to work at a wildlife sanctuary. Or at least that’s what it was supposed to be.

I’d gotten a firsthand experience with the unethical treatment of animals and it broke my heart. Humans were cruel and uncaring. They couldn’t be trusted. I’d started to withdraw even further into myself and that just gave cause for even more of my distrust of humans, who thought they could walk all over me and order me around.

Over time I’d developed a bit of a temper. It went against my mild nature. Female gorillas were calm and meek, shy even. I definitely had the shy part down. I kept my eyes averted, kept to myself, and did whatever I was asked to do, but I drew a line to that obedience, and it snapped hard the day they brought in a small troupe of gorillas.

The silverback was only trying to protect his women and children, but the humans didn’t see that and when they couldn’t control him, they killed him and sold his meat off to local markets. They had planned to sell the rest of them to zoos around the world. There was a lot of money in gorillas. Since that realization surfaced, I’d wondered every day if my family had been killed for meat or sport, or if they were still out there somewhere living in captivity. Now that I’d been in captivity for the last year, I prayed they were dead.

Gorillas lived in bands or troupes and the silverback led and protected the others. The animals would take multiple mates, one male with multiple females. Gorillas were fiercely protective of their own.

That was one area that gorilla shifters differed. Shifters mated for life and remained monogamous. There were so few of us left though. It was very rare to cross paths with one. I’d actually had the privilege of meeting only three others since my childhood.

Many, like my mother, had lived mostly in their fur, protecting, and caring for the wild gorillas. So when the humans had killed that silverback, I knew what I had to do. To me there was no choice. Escaping with the females and children had been freeing.

They were scared and unsure of their future. None of them seemed to understand how it would be possible to live without the protection of a male, but I was determined, and growing up the way I had, made me tougher than I ever imagined possible. No one was going to hurt my new family. I was already resolved to live out the rest of my days as a gorilla. There was nothing that could coax me back into my skin.

My heart cracked a little harder as I allowed the memories back in. I was here, and no matter what Roger or the others did, I was