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. Dogs—and especially cats—knew to avoid our territory thanks to Marc’s 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 didn’t 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 cat’s instinct to try to catch anything that moved, like a kitten pouncing on a piece of string trailed across the floor. And I’d 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 I’d 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 I’d sought for so long at school. It irked me that I’d found what I wanted in my own backyard, when I’d 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 up—literally. I’d 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 water’s edge, I peered down at the rippling surface. My own face looked back at me in the moonlight. It wasn’t 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 I’d worked up during my sprint. And fluid wasn’t 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 right—a feeling I couldn’t verbalize because it had no human equivalent—I 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, I’d 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 he’d 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. You’ve been pinned twice in less than 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 couldn’t 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 mate—a 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
