I heard them behind me, pursuing me for the thrill of speed, and not because they had any hope of catching me. Surely they knew they had no chance. Maybe in a car on a long stretch of highway, but not in the woods where Id grown up. And never on four paws.
My pulse racing, I darted between trees and vaulted off fallen limbs, sending small creatures fleeing ahead of me. Everywhere were the sights and sounds of the woods. The undergrowth grew thick and green, and pine trees soared to over one hundred feet high, with the red birches not far behind. My ears were on alert, catching and instantly cataloging the various nocturnal forest creatures as I passed them. Mice squeaked, owls hooted, and possums waddled off in search of safety. I ignored them all.
For fun, as my heart beat a syncopated rhythm against my rib cage, I climbed a broad oak tree, gripping the trunk with my claws over and over again, leg muscles tensing and relaxing as they propelled me upward until I gained a low, thick branch. With a glance at the ground below, I leapt onto a limb extending from a neighboring trunk. From there, I worked my way along, leaping from branch to branch, tree to tree, until I finally thumped to the ground, already running.
My eyes were perfectly suited to roaming the forest at night. They made good use of generous pools of moonlight pouring through gaps in the canopy of leaves and heavily laden pine branches above. Light reflected from the eyes of potential prey, and I could easily distinguish the dark coats of nocturnal animals from the shadows nestled in every niche and crevice, and hiding beneath curtains of fern and blankets of poison ivy. Dry leaves crackled beneath my paws and thorns tugged at my fur as I sprinted, my lungs relishing the luxury of such fresh, fragrant air.
Our forest was home to any number of woodland creatures, the largest of which were deer. But we were the biggest predators around for miles. Dogsand especially catsknew to avoid our territory thanks to Marcs obsessively organized system of scent marking. We had the run of the forest, and we liked it that way.
On my right, something slithered beneath a pile of leaves, but I didnt pause to identify it as I ran. The only things I chased that night were my personal demons. Or rather, they were chasing me. For the first time in years, I felt the hot breath of my past on the back of my neck. It was the carnivorous spirit of everything tradition demanded I become, and the only way to escape was to run, to beat the ground with my paws, in a furious race for the right to control my life. And I would not lose. Not again.
Finally, when my lungs burned, my legs ached, and every muscle in my body insisted that I must stop or collapse, I had to admit that at least for now, the demons were only in my head. My pursuers were my fellow Pride members, and they only chased because I ran. It was a cats instinct to try to catch anything that moved, like a kitten pouncing on a piece of string trailed across the floor. And Id trailed my string all over the forest, practically daring them to come get me.
I slowed to a stop, listening between ragged pants as I calmed my racing heart. The guys had fallen far behind, and the evidence of their pursuit faded into the symphony of shuffles, rustles, cracks, hoots and squeaks that defined the forest at night. Satisfied that Id proven my point, that I could outrun them all, I sank to the ground to rest at the base of a pine tree. I glanced around, taking in even the most minute shift of leaves in the warm night breeze. The night was mine for as long as I wanted it, and I finally had the privacy Id sought for so long at school. It irked me that Id found what I wanted in my own backyard, when Id searched for it fruitlessly for years, hundreds of miles from home.
Content, I licked the dirt from my paws, giving my ears a good swipe while I was at it. Grooming was always relaxing. It gave me a chance to think, which I could never do without something to occupy my hands. Or paws, as the case may be. As I set to work on my whiskers, a gurgling sound caught my attention, and my ears perked upliterally. Id paid little attention to direction as I ran, more intent on escaping the tomcats and my personal demons, which became harder to tell apart with each passing moment. But the sound of running water was unmistakable. I was near the stream.
Unlike house cats, we swim very well and love to fish. And unless something had changed in the last two years, the stream was full of fish practically tripping over one another for the honor of filling my stomach. I stood and listened carefully, my ears rotating in unison as I searched for the direction of the sound.
There. Southeast, and not very far away. I could already smell the mineral-rich water.
Still tired from my run, I turned in the direction of the stream and took my time, batting at every firefly I saw on the way. At the waters edge, I peered down at the rippling surface. My own face looked back at me in the moonlight. It wasnt my human face, of course, with dimples and slightly ruddy cheeks, but the reflection wavering in the stream was no less familiar. My fur was solid black, with no distinguishing marks and no variation in color except for whiskers, which stood out as startlingly white against the dark background.
My eyes were the same color in either form: pale green, almost yellow in the moonlight. At school my friends said they were distinctive, but in cat form they looked normal, even average. Of course, the shape was completely different than my human eyes; as a cat, my pupils were slits, rather than circles. At least in the daylight. At night, they dilated almost all the way, leaving only thin rings of color around broad black disks.
I leaned forward and lapped at the water, quenching the scorching thirst Id worked up during my sprint. And fluid wasnt the only thing the race had cost me. Cats have a higher metabolic rate than humans do, and we seem to have a higher rate than even most large cats, possibly due to the calories used up during the process of Shifting. Simply put, Shifting makes us hungry. Immediately.
Motion from the stream caught my eye. Something darted just beneath the surface of the water, too big to be a frog, and too fast to be a turtle. I hunkered low to the ground, preparing to charge into the water after my dinner. When everything felt righta feeling I couldnt verbalize because it had no human equivalentI jumped. But I never hit the water.
Something smacked into me in midair, ending my forward momentum and driving me to the right. I hit the ground on my side. A crushing weight pinned me down. I saw nothing but black fur, but even with my eyes closed I would have known who it was. On two legs or four, I knew his scent better than I knew my own and had every inch of his body memorized, in both forms. I knew every line, every scar, and even every striation in his irises. As a teenager, Id gazed into those eyes for hours at a time, wondering if they were as bright by moonlight as they were in the sun. It turned out that they were.
But those days were behind me, by my own choice.
Get off me, Marc! I thought, but what came out was a growl. It was a damn fine growl, in my opinion. Low and threatening, and very serious. But he ignored it with a blatant disregard for my will that would have been uniquely his, if not for the fact that hed learned it from my father.
Marc lowered his face to mine slowly. He rubbed his cheek against my whiskers and my head, making his way slowly to my only exposed shoulder.
Great job, Faythe, I thought, as furious at myself as I was at Marc. Youve been pinned twice in lessthan an hour.
Marc bit me softly each time I tried to throw him off or get to my feet, and I never stopped growling. He was marking me with the scent glands on either side of his face.
I hate being marked.
He would go no farther; we both knew that. And he was being very gentle, even seductive for a cat, but that couldnt have been further from the point. The point was that he had no right to mark me. None at all.
Marking was an overt declaration of possession. Of territorial rights. Werecat instinct led us to mark our personal possessions, our kills, and the boundaries of our property. By rubbing his personal scent on me, Marc was claiming me for himself like he might claim the front seat or the biggest slice of pizza. The implication was that I belonged to him. Which was far from the truth.
His behavior would have been perfectly acceptable, even expected, if I were his matea wife, or even a long-term girlfriend. In that case, it would be appropriate for me to reciprocate. But I was not his mate, therefore I was not his to mark. Not anymore. Not ever, if we were being completely honest.
Trapped in a cage formed by his legs and pressed to the ground by his weight, I could do nothing but wait for him to finish. That, and feed the rage mounting in every bone in my body. In every shadowed corner of my soul. I passed the seconds with thoughts of retaliation, of the pain and humiliation I would unleash on him at the first available opportunity.
Yep, thats me. Sugar and spice, and everything nice.
Finally he made a mistake. He moved lower to reach my rib cage, but wasnt willing to back off of me for fear of my escape. Instead, he turned, placing his left hind leg within reach of my muzzle.
I lunged. My teeth sank into his leg, an inch above his paw. I withheld nothing, giving in to my instinct to bite through to the bone. Marc deserved only my best effort. After all, thats what I was getting from him, in a bizarre, gently insistent kind of way.
Marc yowled and tried to jump away, hissing in pain and anger.
I refused to let go. It took every ounce of self-control I had to keep from snapping his bone. My canines met around his leg. My back teeth sank through fur and into muscle. I growled, my claws gripping the ground for stability. Blood flowed into my mouth, threatening to choke me if I didnt swallow. Still, I held on.
Marc turned on me, with that peculiar feline flexibility, and roared almost directly into my ear. But I didnt let go until he nipped my shoulder just hard enough to draw blood. Id had a potentially crippling grip on his leg, and hed held back from hurting me. Some might call that sweet. I called it poor judgment. I only played for keeps, and if Marc wanted to play with me, hed have to do the same. I was finished making exceptions for him. Id moved on, whether he realized it or not. And hopefully he would now.
Four more shapes burst through the thick undergrowth, all large and black, the edges of their fur melting into the shadows. Daddys other loyal tomcats had come to rescue his right-hand man from a tabby half his size. If I could have, I would have laughed. As it was, I could only huff, but that was good enough to make my point. Marc hobbled off, settling on the ground several feet away to clean his wound, pausing to glare at me periodically and to growl.
As I washed Marcs blood from my face, Ethan approached me warily, his head hanging low. He sniffed the air as he came, as if he wasnt quite sure it was actually me. If my scent didnt convince him, one look at my eyes would. Cats can communicate anger through their expressions just as people can, and I was really good at looking pissed off. Id had lots of practice.
My appetite was gone, along with any peace Id gained from my run in the forest. I shot one last contemptuous glance at Marc, then turned my back on them all and jumped over a tangled clump of brush and vines, landing silently on a bed of pine needles on the other side. I was too tired to run, and the walk back to the house took much too long to suit me. The sights and sounds Id rejoiced in half an hour earlier now grated on my last nerve. Each owls hoot seemed to scold me; each rodents squeak mocked my plight.
At the edge of the trees, I sank my teeth into my neat pile of clothes, managing to get everything but my panties. I hesitated, uncomfortable with leaving my underwear exposed on the lawn, but abandoned it in the end because I didnt have any hands and was too pissed off to try Shifting immediately.
Luckily, I didnt need hands to open the back door, because it was equipped with an oblong handle, easily depressed by cat paws. As long as someone was home, we never locked the doors, because a cat has no place to carry keys. Also, we figured that anyone stupid enough to trespass deserved to be eaten and probably wouldnt be missed.
Im kidding, of course. Mostly.
Pawing open the screen-door latch, I trudged into the back hall. The tiles felt cold and smooth against my paws, and the air-conditioning ruffled my sensitive facial whiskers. The only sound other than the whistle of air through the vents was the hum of the refrigerator. It sounded oddly mechanical to my cat ears.
I padded into my room through the open doorway and dropped my clothes on the carpet. Still fuming, I jumped onto the bed and curled up with my tail wrapped around my body. I was hungry and thirsty, and too mad to Shift. Great.
And it only got better when Jace leaned around the door frame, waving my panties from one finger like a white flag. I growled at him, but he only laughed. He knew I wouldnt hurt him in human form, because that wouldnt be playing fair. But then, neither was waving my underwear around for the whole world to see.
You want them back? he asked. I bobbed my head, and he laughed again at my approximation of a very human gesture. Come and get them.
He stepped into the doorway, wearing nothing but a pair of black bikini briefs, and I was suddenly glad to still be a cat. Anyone else might have looked ridiculous in so little material, but Jace was temptation personified. If Id been human, he couldnt have mistaken the look in my eyes for anything less than lust. But as a cat, while I had a healthy appreciation for what lay, rather obviously, beneath that tiny triangle of cloth, I was distanced from it by the boundary of species. Jace was much less a possibility than he would have been had I not been sporting fur and claws.
Come on, if you want them, he repeated, and I cocked my head, trying to look curious since I couldnt just ask why he wouldnt bring them to me. It worked. Marc said hed use me as a scratching post if I ever went into your room unchaperoned again.
Aah. Yes, that sounded like Marc, though he would never have said it in front of me.
Jace grinned, eyes glinting suggestively. He didnt say anything about you coming into my room.
I snorted air through my nose at him and thumped to the floor, landing more delicately on four feet than I ever could have on two. He held out my panties, and I padded over to him, taking the waistband between my teeth. I blinked up at him.
Youre welcome, he said. You really did some damage to his leg, you know.
I bobbed my head again. I did know. Id meant to.
Your fathers going to be pissed. Marc was supposed to make a run up to Oklahoma tomorrow to check out a report we got yesterday about a stray.
I blinked again and yawned, dropping the underwear on the floor. So Owen would go instead. OrParker. I didnt really care about my fathers plans to patrol the territory, unless they meant taking prying eyes away from me. Of course, by injuring Marc, Id inadvertently guaranteed that hed be around to watch me for a while. Great job, Faythe. That was me, always careful to plan ahead.