The days spent within the confines of a cage were perhaps some of the worst days that Beorn had ever known. Through a chance encounter of a fellow escaped prisoner, he has to slowly come to terms with perhaps not being the only skin-changer left. Though this has left him with many questions, he doesn't seem wholly able to voice them without Azog's cruel intrusions. When both skin-changers cross paths again, a plan to escape and a chance of freedom starts to stir and linger.

Beorn is a skin-changer, a man who can also take the form of a ferocious black bear. When he meets the dwarves and Bilbo in The Hobbit, he is the last of his kind -- his family was wiped out by the evil orcs. On An Archive of Our Own, author Thorinsmut wrote a story called "Pretty Bird," in which the dwarf Nori is a skin-changer like Beorn, only Nori's animal form is a bird. Meeting Nori, gives Beorn something to think about--maybe he doesn't have to be alone. Inspired by that lovely fic, I decided to write a story about how Beorn finds his mate. Also, for this story I have created a new group of Rohirrim, a clan that lives in the mountain steppes and who have darker hair and skin tones than the more common Nordic-looking people of that nation.

26 year old Anabelle is a young woman just discovering her abilities as a telekinetic. She knows little about her mutation, or how to control it... She only knows that mutants are all over the news, constantly referred to as savage and dangerous. When Anabelle's abilities respond to her distressed emotions and kill her abusive step father, Troy, she does the only thing she knows to do... Packs up what she can carry on her back, and flees her home, Portland, and ultimately the entire state of Oregon. Anabelle survives seven lonely months on her own, struggling to teach herself to harness her telekinesis, which proves to be an uphill climb for her. She gets by with her looks, hitching rides from city to city with truckers, or whoever will pick her up. Over the months, she perfects the art of shoplifting, living off gas station snacks and drinks. She learns to sleep wherever she can lay down, and soon the homelessness starts to take a toll on her. But when Anabelle meets Logan, a mysterious, rugged man with no memory of his past, her world turns upside down. She discovers that he, too, is a mutant, trying to figure out who he is and where he came from... And she is fascinated by him. Can a man who doesn't even know his own identity mend the shattered pieces of a young woman's broken soul...?