“There’ll be no looking away,” Hartlin snapped. “I want you—” he jerked his chin at me, “—to see the damage your refusal causes. This woman’s degradation is your fault.”
I surged forward, but the guards instantly leveled their guns at my chest. Even with the drugs lasting a shorter duration, they had enough darts between them to put me to sleep for a week.
Spike slid the shirt from the woman’s shoulders, allowing it to drop to the floor around her feet. His shirt followed, and she let out a tiny moan, stifling her fear.
“Dammit, Hartlin, it’s not like I’ve fucking refused.” I whirled toward him, partly so I didn’t have to see as Spike shucked his pants, though I heard the fabric rustle to the ground.
Hartlin lifted one shoulder. “You had your chance. I told you we have a limited time frame. Now, look. Because, really, you’re the one raping this woman.”
A guard stepped forward, jabbing his rifle hard enough into my gut to force my breath out and spin me around.
Spike had pushed the woman against the wall, her face crushed against the stone, her beseeching gaze fixed on me as her breasts grazed the unforgiving surface. He jerked her hips toward him. His cock strained against the crease of her ass. She whimpered.
“Gods, Spike, don’t do it,” I bellowed.
He turned toward me, but his eyes were unfocused.
“Spike, you’re better than this!” I knew the man. Moodar or not, he’d never forgive himself if he took a woman against her will. “Hartlin, let’s talk.”
Smithton snickered. “Go for it, Tina.”
The rifle against my belly, I’d taken a half pace toward Hartlin, but Smithton’s words stilled my panic.
Tina.
It wasn’t pleading in her eyes.
Instead, it was a gleam of…anticipation.
And the room didn’t smell of fear.
It smelled of…arousal.
This was the woman who’d stood outside my cell, whispering to Smithton about what she’d like to do with me.
She was no unwilling victim.
“Spike, dude, scent her. She’s into it. It’s all right.” I said in Aaidarian. Spike would still have to perform, but there was no need for the act to haunt him.
“You’re right. She’s not unwilling. Not yet,” Hartlin interrupted in perfect Aaidarian. “However, we can take care of that.”
My shoulders slumped, and I stared at Hartlin. What else had he overheard?
He returned my glare, a frown deepening between his eyebrows. Then he snapped at Smithton. “Take the sample.”
Smithton nodded to the medic alongside him, who strode across to Spike. I expected Spike to fight back, but he stood still while the medic drew blood, added it to a vial, and shook it until the color changed. He passed it to Hartlin.
Hartlin’s jaw jumped and ticked. “Still not high enough.” He smashed the vial onto the stone floor, blood and glass fragments spraying wide. “That was your last chance, shifter,” he snarled at Spike.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I snatched the barrel of the rifle and thrust it back against the guard’s chest, though I wasn’t stupid enough to take a step forward.
Hartlin’s purple eyes bored into mine. “Agitation heightens testosterone levels, so there was a chance your friend might’ve actually been able to create a result, this time. But his levels are not high enough.” He nodded to the medic. “Do it.”
The medic stepped forward, this time injecting something into Spike’s arm.
Spike’s wide, terrified gaze met mine, all trace of moodar evaporated. “Gods, Khal…”
“What is it?” Hells, given my guns, fangs and claws, I could face any foe. But this unknown, unseen adversary was something I couldn’t grapple with.
“Sterone,” Hartlin supplied uselessly. A slow smile crossed his face at my confusion. “A forced steroid treatment we’ve come up with. Your friend here will be unable to resist the impact. It seems likely the Felidaekin genes are strongest when you’re in cat form, so that’s what we’ll use. Of course, that unfortunately means that we’ll probably have to keep our…egg donor—” he waved a dismissive hand at Tina, “—alive artificially until we can harvest the fetus. But, as you know, there’s collateral damage in any battle.”
Spike held up one hand, palm toward me. His fingers cracked and lengthened, massive claws extending from the tips. “Khal, do something! I can’t stop the shift!”
Smithton bobbed from one foot to the other. “Yes. Oh yes. He’s going to do her as a cat. Get ready, Tina, sweetheart. This’ll be your best lesson, yet. You do love a lesson, don’t you, you naughty girl?”
Suddenly the room reeked of fear, and Tina screamed, a genuine sound of terror, as two of the guards stepped forward to grip her arms, holding her splayed against the wall. Adrenalin ramped up in my throat, the full horror of Hartlin’s intention suddenly clear.
Spike stumbled toward me, the guards backing away. “You have to do something, Khal! If I touch her, I’ll kill her.” He gripped my forearm, his knuckles blanching. “Don’t make me do it, man. I’m not as strong as you. I can’t live with being a murderer.”
Chapter Nine
Lyrie
F ootsteps approached the small, dark, refuse-strewn cave where I cowered.
I cowered?
Shivers wracked my frame, and my heart pounded like a herd of pillions against my ribcage.
Because I was me, but not me.
I was something else.
“Sweetheart?” Khal murmured from the cave’s entrance.
Funny how the endearment would’ve passed through me like heat on a summer’s day in my old life. Why had he used it?
Bent over to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling, he came closer. He extended his hand, as if I was a wild beast who needed to be tamed.
Perhaps I was.
Clenching my teeth, I resisted the urge to rear back, spread my wings, and challenge him with my teeth and claws.
No, the urge didn’t come from me. She wanted to do this. My griffin. She didn’t trust anyone.
She didn’t trust Khal.
Khal knelt down beside me, and I was surprised to only see compassion on his face, concern in his amber eyes.
How could he look at me this way when I had turned into a monster?
“First time changing sucks, huh?” he said. Pivoting on his heel, he lowered himself onto the ground beside me with a groan, and rested his back against the stone wall.
Changing.
I was not a shifter. I was…Only the gods knew what I was.
“Hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it?”
My exhale was the only sound I seemed capable of delivering, but Khal nodded, as if he knew I agreed.
“Didn’t realize you had Aaidarian blood, sweetheart,” he said, squinting up at the ceiling.
Near the walls, wints swayed in the soft breeze skirting through the cave, chittering when the movement caused one to bump into another.
When I tried to speak—to deny his statement, because I was one-hundred-percent Glian—only a snarl came out.
He tilted his head, studying my agitated movements. “You must have some blood, long in your family’s past, or you wouldn’t be in this…predicament.”
Growling out my agreement, I lowered my head onto my hands—paws. I had large, light brown-furred paws. With lethal-looking claws. I liked them; they made me feel…safe.
Somewhere deeper within the cave’s system, water trickled, a rippling gurgle as it sped down walls and along flat, stony surfaces, until it joined with other small streams, becoming part of a larger river.
How had I not known about these caves? Or that there was this much water down here? In the desert, water was more precious than ebony gypsa.
“Remember it like it was yesterday,” Khal said, resting his palms on his bent knees. “The first time I changed, I was a puny, thirteen-year-old kid.”
I huffed. Sort of huffed, because I had a hard time believ
ing this solidly built man had ever been puny. Actually, my huff came out like a rumbling growl, because I couldn’t control my tongue or refine the sounds that erupted from my throat.
Not yet, anyway. Would I ever?
“It hits us in puberty,” he said. “At least little kids don’t have to deal with it, although those of us who come from mixed parentage are super curious about what we’ll change into and rather eager to have the change come upon us so we can find out.”
Shifting around on my haunches, I settled on my side to watch his face as he spoke.
His gaze cut to me, but instead of revulsion or judgment, I read acceptance there. Knowing he understood meant…Well, had anyone ever accepted my bad as well as my good?
One or two people in my family, maybe, but no one else.
The fear that had been overwhelming me stepped back a pace, letting rational thought take over. My wings settled against my spine, and my fur unruffled.
“But before we…talk more, I guess I should help you change back into the Lyrie I’ve come to know and…” He swallowed. “To know, anyway. A human woman.”
Know and…? I shouldn’t ache to know what he’d almost said.
“On Aaidar, we learn the mechanics of shifting from the time we’re cubs—” He cut a glance to me, “—but I don’t imagine they teach you anything about how we shift, not here on Glia.”
The only things I knew about shifting, I’d learned from books.
“I’ll keep it simple. It’s really not hard to change back into your human form.”
Easy for him to say.
“You just think hard about your fur turning back into skin, your paws into hands, and your tail—” Leaning forward, he stared toward my back end, “Yup, you’ve got a tail.”
Of course, I did. I was a griffin. A mix of a lioness and another creature—in my case, perhaps a bird, because I had wings. Although, I didn’t have talons or a beak. While I couldn’t see my own image, I knew my face was that of a lioness’s. Maybe I wasn’t a mix of a lioness and a bird, but a lioness and a dragon.
I liked that. Dragons ripped their enemies apart.
“So, do it, Lyrie,” Khal said. “Think about skin, hands, the pretty face I’ve been thinking about for days.” He coughed and looked away, as if he’d said something he shouldn’t have.
He thought me pretty, did he? And he’d been watching me? Intriguing notions, but he probably meant he’d been unable to look away, due to my colorful bruises and my crooked nose that had been broken not long after they’d captured me.
Nothing pretty in any of that.
“Do it,” he said again, swinging around to face me. “Think about what you were before and tell yourself you want to be that again.”
Did I, though? In this shape, I’d fought off an enemy.
In human form, I could barely defend myself against a teromotan.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to being helpless Lyrie. While frightening, my griffin form was growing on me. Inside me.
“You can stay in your griffin shape for as long as you want,” he said, as if he’d picked my uncertainty from my mind. “But the longer you remain in this form, the harder it will be to shift back. When we first gain the ability to change in puberty, we’re only allowed to become our beast for short periods of time. There are stories about shifters who…” He paused and directed his attention down to the cave floor. “Well, that’s something to talk about on a different day.”
If I stayed in this form, I could find my way out of the caves and fly free. Find my way home.
Home.
Which wasn’t my real home. The Resistance had settled in a cave system far out in the desert, but it wasn’t the place where I grew up. The home where I’d sunk my roots. Roots that had been yanked from the soil when we were driven from our cities and into a wasteland.
But what remained of my family was there, now. North. They’d welcome me.
Not in this form.
Yet still, I didn’t want to be human-Lyrie anymore. She had nothing to live for.
“Do it for me?” he asked in a low, coaxing tone. “I want—no, I need you. Change for me?”
Did he understand the lure of my griffin form? It had wrapped itself around my heart in a warm, snug embrace. It didn’t want to let go.
Think. Hands. Skin. Bones in an upright, human shape.
Focusing on my paws, I thought, hands…and by the gods, they started to change.
Khal leaned forward. “Yes. That’s it. More. Let the thought fill every cell in your body.”
The moment my fingernails emerged, they receded.
Hells, no.
As much as I wanted to flee after tearing my enemies apart—starting with Hartlin—Khal didn’t want me to remain a griffin forever.
He stroked my face. My neck. My side. “I know you can do it.”
Maybe I did have something—someone—to be human for.
“Keep trying,” he said.
Closing my eyes, I urged everything inside me to change. Fire coursed through my body, searing each muscle, tendon, and bone.
My fur withdrew, and skin took its place.
Rising onto my hands and knees, I closed my eyes and gave into the exquisitely painful process. I let it roar through me.
“Damn good job,” he said. He rubbed my shoulder. “Should’ve mentioned that you’d be naked after, though, huh?”
I half-chuckled, half-sobbed as I settled back on my butt. My human butt. Staring down at my hands, I flipped them over. No paws.
Cold sunk up into me from the ground, and I shivered partly from reaction, partly because it was damn frigid down here.
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand, urging me up and onto his lap.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck, and huddled against his chest as his arms enfolded me. He rested his chin on top of my head.
“I think changing back hurts less than becoming my cheetah,” he murmured. “But others might disagree about the whole thing.”
Inane words, but his lulling voice stilled my quivering flesh. I took in a deep breath. Released it. “Thank you.”
“For what?” Leaning back, he looked down at me.
“For understanding. And for helping me.”
“There’s not much I wouldn’t do for you, Lyrie.” The break in his voice told me he bared everything to me.
My heart splintering, I was beginning to think I felt the same, despite the fact that he’d pushed me away in his cell.
Had there been a reason other than a lack of interest in me?
When had all this caring crap started to happen? As if I’d only be happy if I made him happy. I didn’t like feeling this way, because it exposed all my vulnerabilities. Loving someone meant they could hurt you.
I’d be stupid to let myself need him.
We stood, and I huddled my arms around my waist, struggling to hold in my quakes.
“Here,” he said, unbuttoning and pulling off his shirt. He held it out to me. “You can wear this.”
I stuffed my arms through the sleeves and buttoned it up. While it covered the important parts, it only hung to mid-thigh. But it was warm, and it smelled…It smelled like Khal.
Since we couldn’t stand upright here, we left my tiny cave.
“When you shift next time,” he said. “I recommend stripping first.”
“That’ll be fun.” I cocked my head, unable to imagine the looks on my family’s faces if I yanked my shirt over my head and tossed aside my undies. “Do shifters just fling off their clothing whenever and wherever they please?”
“I do.”
I snorted and shook my head. “Does Hartlin…?”
“Does he what?” he asked.
“Do you think they know I can shift?”
He shrugged. “Hard to say.”
Smoothing my hair, I frowned. “Why wouldn’t they?” With all the vials of blood they’d drained from me, it would be strange if they hadn’t checked for something
unusual inside me. DNA? I wasn’t medically trained, but I’d had a good education.
“Would they give you free rein if they thought you could shift and fight back?” He waved to the larger cave system behind him. “It would be a bitch trying to track a shifter down here.”
Finding me would take another shifter. Like the one who’d come after me earlier.
I growled. “They put me down here and sent a man after me. A shifter.”
Khal stiffened. “You get a good look at him?”
“All of him. He was naked. And he tried…”
Khal gripped my upper arms and stared down at me, his face cratered with concern. “What did he do?”
“He tried to rape me.”
Releasing me, Khal stormed a few steps away, before turning. “It can’t be. You sure he…”
“His erection, let alone his words, ‘I’m going to fuck you,’ kinda gave him away.”
“Sorry. I don’t doubt you if you say he tried. It’s just that…”
“What?”
“There aren’t many shifters on Glia.”
He must mean his friends who now lived with the Resistance. “Maybe the Regime hired another battalion from Aaidar?”
Face clearing, he came over to stand in front of me again, a relieved half-smile quirking one side of his lips.
“Must be.” He glanced around. “He’s gone, though. I don’t hear or sense anyone down here but us.”
“I shifted, and he took off.”
Khal’s smile became full. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him happy, but I liked it. I could get used to seeing his grin directed my way.
“You make a pretty awesome griffin,” he said. “I can only imagine what the guy thought when you changed in front of him. Your wings…” He shook his head and chuckled.
“Will you teach me how to do it so it’s easy? I don’t like that it just happened.” That I was out of control. There were many here in this compound I’d gladly seek vengeance on, but I’d escape the compound, no matter what. What if I shifted once I was back at the Resistance stronghold and hurt someone I loved? I couldn’t bear for that to happen.
CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR: ENSNARE: (A Sci-fi Alien Romance, Book 3) Page 9