Lynx Northern Shifters 3

twice before he rose, leaving Jonah alone on the cot, wordless.
Almost wordless. “You thought I was younger?”
Trey gave his half-smile, which Jonah was coming to realize meant affection, not cynicism. “You seem both older and younger. Which makes sense. You’ve had an unusual life here. But then, a lot of shifters do.”
“Did you have an unusual life?”
Trey breathed in, and Jonah immediately regretted his question. It wasn’t welcome. “I had a family, not a very nice one. My father was an asshole.”
“My father didn’t stick around,” Jonah offered.
Trey nodded. “I don’t find it that easy to talk about my family, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask questions. Just that I won’t always be comfortable answering them.”
“I understand,” Jonah said quickly. “I find it hard to talk sometimes, even when I want to. And other times, I say too much.”
Trey grinned for some reason, and Jonah felt like the sun was shining on him. Then Trey said, seemingly out of the blue, “I’m very glad to have met you, Jonah.”

Chapter Six
    Jesus, he had to be careful, Trey thought as he lay on his newly made cot that night, listening to Jonah breathe the slow, deep breaths of sleep. Trey should have been tired after shifting, but he was wide awake and a little alarmed by himself.
    Okay, alarmed was too strong a word, but he was concerned. Jonah was a very attractive, very lonely, incredibly naïve, reclusive lynx shifter who was starved of affection. Trey needed to keep their relationship purely platonic to avoid betraying the young man’s trust.
    He’d touched Jonah earlier, for a couple of reasons. The lynx was skittish and Trey thought perhaps physical contact now and then would reassure him at a basic level that Trey was not here to hurt him. A body remembered who had hurt you and who hadn’t. And someone, not Trey, had hurt Jonah. Also, shifters who went feral tended to crave human touch once they returned to their human state. While Jonah was definitely not feral, he had been as alone as a feral could be.
    It had been the right thing to do. Jonah had responded a little jerkily at first, but he’d calmed down and then been more at ease in Trey’s company. Besides, while wolves might be the shifters who most needed touch—a need Trey had managed to ruthlessly suppress—cat shifters, when human, when it came to spending time with their loved ones, tended to overcompensate for their solitary time spent as cats.
    But crap, it had only been a few days and Jonah had gotten right under his skin, in a way that tempted Trey.
That was all right. Trey knew how to control himself. But he had to be careful not to create an expectation in Jonah that Trey could not meet. Because in two weeks, Trey would be walking out of here and Jonah would be left behind. Trey wished he had somewhere to take Jonah to, someone who could befriend the young man. However Trey had created a life for himself that existed of living among people who would like to destroy shifters if they discovered them.
Trey was aware of why he stayed away from his own kind. They had killed what he loved, more than once, and in more ways than one. A lifetime ago, Trey had led death to his lover, and while Jonah was in no way his lover, he would not endanger another innocent.
Too many memories of Quinn, alive and then dead, torn apart by wolves who Trey had in turn destroyed. The revenge had not been sweet. Trey had not been able to move on.
He closed his eyes and forced his mind to close down on thought; he painted a palette of rivers and lakes and blue sky in his mind’s eye, and when that was completed, he relaxed enough to fall asleep.
The next morning, Trey helped out with the breakfast routine, starting the fire, doing the dishes. Jonah was back in shy, noncommunicative mode, with occasional hopeful glances at Trey. An improvement, really. It signaled he wanted Trey’s company.
Trey wasn’t used to being the one who made the conversational volleys and tended to avoid being put in any such situation, but this situation with Jonah was different in many, many ways.
Standing up, Trey stretched. “I slept well last night. Thanks for that.”
Jonah ducked his head. It appeared that with those eight words Trey was embarrassing him with excessive praise. “It’s fine,” he mumbled. In anyone else this reaction would have been put-on, fake, but with Jonah it was alarmingly endearing.
Trey cleared his throat. “What’s your project