Hope. Animal Senses, #17

While Foster was growing up, it was normal for children of neighboring clans to disappear. He always thought they had moved away or were stuck at home being bored. ?It wasn't until he was twenty that he understood what was really behind the vanishing of every type of shifter in his world. ?Before he reached thirty, half of his relatives and friends were gone, so it was only natural that he joined the Shifter Alliance and did his part to help all of the clans in Canada.
He didn't care if they were legal ones or rogue groups; every single shifter out there should be able to live in peace without maniacs collecting them like novelty cards. It turned his stomach to think of them treated like pets or worse.?He wasn't a hero and warrior like many of the men and women who fought for the Alliance were, but he was exceptional at running fast and hiding better than anyone he knew.
If those skills were useful, he'd use them along with his sense of humor and boyish good looks. ?He tried not to dwell on the worse parts he'd heard about or witnessed, or he'd lose all ambition to stay on the road and do the endless hours needed to help balance the scales in favor of any being with more than one form. Since she was a small child, Ena struggled with controlling her curiosity. She knew there were rules and things one should and shouldn't do, whether because of propriety or safety, yet she couldn't help following her gut whenever it told her something was going on that she needed to investigate.?It was that part of her that led her to follow one of her clansmen when he disappeared every few days.
She was glad she had, and secretly, she was sure he was too, because then he wasn't carrying the burden of what he discovered all alone, and she had found a cause worth fighting for. ?Now, weeks later, she was on her own trying to finish what he began because, like all shifters eventually do, he had vanished. ?All she had to do was stay alive, not get abducted, and find the Alliance member who had been sent to bring down a man who thought her kind was a commodity to trade and barter off.
When that was accomplished, she just had to prove to the Alliance that they needed her to help other clans in the USA because there wasn't going to be any going back to hiding with her clan and staying out of sight for the rest of her life. She planned to fix it all so her friends and family could live out in the open and have a real life from now on.