John and Teresa are like the couple everyone wants to be, and they became that couple against steep odds. They share a loving relationship based on the trust and respect they each feel for the other. They certainly aren’t perfect, but they love one another deeply. John and Teresa met in college, where John (who was majoring in South American Studies) was one year ahead of Teresa (who was studying Interior Design.) You can read more about how they met in Chapter 18 of RECAST:
[Teresa] shrugged and wiped her hands on a dish towel she’d just pulled from a drawer by her feet. “I’m not really a good person to ask about all of this, since I’m a Normal and all.” She smiled at her own sarcasm and headed toward the stove on the other side of the galley-style kitchen. “Are you okay to finish up the rest of the biscuits while I work on some bacon?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely.” I thought for a moment, about her ‘normal’ remark. “How did you and John meet?”
I thought I heard her chuckle quietly but I couldn’t be sure.
“In college,” she replied, smile evident in her voice. “He was this exotically beautiful, charismatic dream, studying cultural anthropology.” She really did chuckle that time. “I was there for design. He followed me around for an entire semester until, finally, I let him take me on a date. Mind you, I’d been interested in him all along.” She smiled, shaking her head in amusement at the memory. “Then we had Collin about a year later and the rest is history…”
John and Teresa had Collin while they were still in college, and before they got married. They married shortly after graduation, and John went on to get his Masters and PhD in Anthropology, specializing in South American cultures and archeology. He is a newly tenured professor at UC Berkeley* when Leah meets him for the first time in RECAST. They had Carrie, Collin’s sister, 12 years later.
Teresa is kind, unassuming and smart. She doesn’t take nonsense from anybody, but she has a very good sense of humor and loves to laugh. Part of what made her fall in love with John was his goofy sense of humor and laid-back approach to life. While Teresa is not a shifter (nor was she aware of any shifters in her family’s lineage,) she is a recessive carrier of the shifter trait, which is why her and John’s son (Collin) is a shifter.
John is fiercely intelligent, fun-loving and energetic. He greatly enjoys the pursuit of knowledge and likes to spend his free time studying shifter family genealogy, as we see in chapter 17 of RECAST:
“Real glad you’re here,” John said. I got the feeling he meant the comment for Drake specifically, not in relation to the whole group. “Glad Collin’s home safe.” He turned to me. “And freaking thrilled I’m finally getting to meet you. Wish the circumstances were different, but there we are!” He threw his hands up.
Drake laughed darkly, but then smiled at me. “John studies shifter genealogy in his free time–he’s probably been waiting for you to turn 17 for years.”
“Since you were born!” he exclaimed.
Wha…? I must have made a face because he quickly recovered himself.
“Not in a creepy way–purely for the purposes of my studies, I promise!”
Drake laughed, which sent me laughing quietly, as well. It would seem that everyone had known about me before I’d ever met any of them. Strange to think about. Made me wonder what all the fuss was about.
John also loves to read and stay on top of current events. John prefers to take life as it comes and chooses not to stress over that which he has no control. He is a very good judge of character, and he trusts his own instincts above all else. John is a complete human and complete animal shifter, in keeping with the King lineage.
*You may have noticed that all of the Kings we’ve met so far in the series are tied to UC Berkeley in one way or another. Explanation: Harris and John grew up in the Bay Area of California. After Harris graduated from college, he was offered a job at an architecture firm in Arizona, which led him and Samantha to move there. John traveled across the country and abroad while working toward his PhD, but chose to return to the Bay Area to pursue his tenure at UC Berkeley when offered a professorship there. So while Drake has lived his entire life in Arizona, Collin has actually lived in a number of different places, though most of them he was too young to remember.
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