by Aja James
“We had given up that you’d ever find us, that you’d ever even look,” she continued quietly.
“Of course I know why you are here. But I admit that I, for one, have been angry that it’s taken you so long. He has waited for you, warrior, waited so very long for the cub he left behind to recognize and own up to his true nature.”
Maximus’s brows knitted in an effort to control his expression.
Sorrow and guilt were rising like lava beneath the icy surface of the invisible prison of his conscious mind, boiling through the bars of the cage he locked himself behind.
“He’d been too weak to take you with him that night. It was all he could do to hide away from the humans and vampires that would have hunted him down. He couldn’t protect you, couldn’t risk you. It is his deepest regret and shame.”
Maximus swallowed the lump in his throat, his eyes burning.
“When he was strong enough to look for you again, when he finally found you, he could sense no more of the animal inside you. He thought it was better to leave you to the human and vampire world. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. Though he has always hoped that you would find yourself one day and find your way to him.”
Maximus gave a jerky nod.
Finally, he understood why he had those recurring dreams. The animal in him had been dying from his prolonged suppression of it. It—he—had desperately wanted to be free.
“Why do you say he is mostly animal?” Maximus queried, recalling how Mistress Circe had seemed to turn the white tiger into a man. Had she forced that upon him too?
“The history of our Kind will take more than a few minutes to tell you and for you to understand,” Leti said.
“But the short answer is that there are many types within our Kind, who have the ability to take animal forms. There are animals who can take the form of humanoids. There are humanoids who can take the form of animals. There are spirits who can inhabit both animal and humanoid forms. And there are animals imbued with a special spirit, whose bodies can live as long as that spirit, after they have pledged themselves to a humanoid partner.”
Maximus understood that the last type described what Simca was, an eternal familiar.
“In my culture, we call ourselves Shou-Jing, or Beast Spirits,” Leti explained. “Other cultures call our Kind different names. Weres, skin-walkers, shifters, changelings, amongst many others. The Pure and Dark Ones believe that the ability to transform into animals is a Gift bequeathed by their Goddess, but in reality, it is simply that they have been Gifted with an animal spirit that binds to their soul.”
“So Goya has always been able to turn into a man?” Maximus asked.
“Yes. That has always been his Gift. An animal who can take human form. But it is very rare that an animal would choose to do so. Throughout the history of our Kind, this only occurs when the animal has chosen a human Mate. He would only take this form to Claim his Mate.”
Maximus realized the same instant Leti’s eyes went black with grief the significance of what she revealed.
Mistress Circe had defiled Goya in the most horrific way possible, raping him of a gift he would have only given to his chosen Mate.
“Come,” Leti urged gently,” we must not keep him waiting any longer. He has waited too long for you already, warrior. I wanted you to know this much before you went in there. Please be kind to him.”
Her eyes welled with tears, but she kept them contained.
“He is one of the strongest males I know, one of the purest souls. He might seem cold. He might show aggression. But he has been hurt so deeply…is hurting still, and you are the one who has the power to hurt him more.”
Maximus swallowed hard and gave one firm nod in acknowledgement.
Together, they entered the cave.
*** *** *** ***
Ariel couldn’t help staring at the Tiger King, Goya.
His resemblance to Maximus was uncanny. Or, she supposed, it was more accurate to say Maximus’s resemblance to him.
They had the same black hair, silky yet rough. The same icy blue eyes that burned with an internal flame. The same height, same build, though Maximus was slightly bulkier with muscle, while Goya had a sinewy leanness and fluidity to his muscles that rippled beneath his skin whenever he moved, and even when he sat still.
He sat mostly still. Sometimes, he twitched ever so slightly, as if the clothes he wore chafed his skin. He probably didn’t wear clothes very often and wasn’t used to it. Ariel recalled that Leti had said he only took this form now for Maximus.
If the Tiger King could sense that she was rudely staring, he didn’t seem to care. His attention was focused solely on the entrance of the cave, waiting with obvious expectation and longing for Maximus to come through it.
But when he finally did, Leti following closely behind him, Goya’s expression was wiped of the anticipation he’d shown in unguarded moments. He looked hard and implacable.
Downright lethal.
The edges of his upper lip curled in a halfway snarl, his brows gathering in a forbidding scowl.
Maximus paused when he met the Tiger King’s gaze.
Goya growled low, the sound vibrating in the back of his throat as if in warning. But Maximus did not react in any way.
He simply looked steadily back, came forth to the small fire pit around which Ariel, Rhys (now with his wings nowhere in sight) and Goya were sitting, and took his seat on the hard ground next to Ariel, across from Goya.
Leti sat down next to Goya, careful not to touch him. She tilted her head at him instead, so that he saw her in the corner of his eye.
Slowly, the growling subsided. But Goya continued to glare at Maximus as if they were sworn enemies.
“Speak, warrior,” Leti said to Maximus. “Tell us what you have come for, and how we may help you.”
For long moments, Maximus was silent. So long, Ariel wondered whether he knew enough of his own mind to answer.
Thus far, she’d been the one to drag him along, push him to this point. She didn’t know whether he was committed to the path she’d led him to.
Guess now was the time to find out.
“I have come here to learn myself,” he finally spoke, looking only at Goya.
“All my existence I have known that something is missing. I am other. I am different. But I didn’t know why,” he continued in a low, gravelly tone.
“When I found out, I wish I hadn’t.”
Visibly, Goya flinched, as if Maximus had just stabbed a hot poker into his flesh.
Leti and Rhys both bared their teeth at Maximus in aggression, reflexively protective of their King. But more than that, protective of someone they cared deeply about beyond just his role as their leader.
“I was an unwanted, unclaimed boy,” Maximus went on relentlessly. “I had just killed the female who raised me. You must understand I had not meant to reject the animal side of me.”
Ariel heard what he didn’t say—I had not meant to reject you.
A soul-deep pain entered the Tiger King’s eyes, so splintering, Ariel reeled from seeing it. She could barely breathe from the pressure in her chest. How Goya must feel if even she, a virtual stranger, had such a visceral reaction to his pain?
“I know now, with Ariel’s help,” he looked briefly at her, a softness in his gaze she couldn’t define, “what I have been missing all this time. I am here to claim it. I am here to be who I am.”
Maximus held the Tiger King’s stare and said, “I ask you to help me. Teach me. I want to understand your ways. I want to understand myself.”
Surreptitiously, so that no one else could see, his hand reached for hers in the few feet that separated them, and he tangled their fingers together as if she gave him strength.
To the group he declared with conviction:
“I want to be set free.”
*** *** *** ***
“Wan’er, when will you come to see us? I still don’t understand why you felt it necessary to leave the Shiel
d. There’s plenty of space for everyone.”
The female researcher squeezed a couple more drops of solution from the pipette she held and answered, “You no longer need me there, Rain. You have Valerius, your Mate, and now Jade, a superb healer in her own right. Besides, I am very busy with my clinics here in the City, in Boston and D.C. You know I’d love to visit, but there’s never any time.”
The Pure healer’s voice came through clearly in Wan’er’s earpiece, “But we are your family, Wan’er. I miss you. I know you are terribly busy with all the good work you’re doing. I miss working alongside you, in fact. Surely you can find a few hours to come by, especially since we are in the same city now. I worry about you out there all by yourself.”
Wan’er smiled a humorless smile.
“I am hardly a defenseless child, Rain. You worry needlessly. Be assured that I am very well. I will try to come see you one of these days. In the meantime, keep leaving me your messages. I am always eager to know the happenings at the Shield.”
And through those innocent messages, she was still able to spy for Medusa on the Pure Ones’ movements.
“Very well,” Rain sighed. “But come see us soon, Little Sparrow. We are hungry for news of you.”
Little Sparrow.
The ill-fitting endearment the Pure healer had bestowed on her ex-handmaiden. If only she knew that Wan’er was a fox spirit who ate “little sparrows” for breakfast.
“Of course,” Wan’er said, though the only reason she’d ever visit the Shield would be to gather more information for Medusa.
“I must go now. I have experiments to oversee.”
They disconnected just as an explosion of roars, growls and banging erupted down the hall.
Wan’er knitted her brows at the disturbance and finished allocating different concentrations of the new solution she’d created into the row of test tubes on the counter.
The banging and clanging and animal violence grew louder, with snarls, yelps and breaking bones added into the mix.
The researcher sighed and tugged off her gloves.
She grabbed two guns loaded with heavy-duty tranquilizers and made her way down the corridor to the Cage of Horrors, as she liked to call it in her mind.
Maybe she could still salvage a bit of usable DNA from whatever mess the animals left for her to clean up this time.
*** *** *** ***
“Rise and shine, my bipedal friends! It’s time to start your training!”
The cheerful shout in Ariel’s ear at barely four o’clock in the morning, if she remembered to reset her watch correctly, was followed by a much shriller screech and a tornado gust of flapping wings.
Usually, she’d bounce up alert and ready for any situation, no matter how few hours she’d slept or how weak her body was.
Not so, this particular ass-crack of dawn.
She’d eaten extremely well—lots of juicy raw protein from the night before, thanks to her accommodating hosts. She’d bathed in a hot spring within the catacomb of caves to ease the soreness in her muscles and cleanse her skin.
And she’d slept like a kitten, curled into Maximus’s big, hot body on a heap of furs in their private cave that led out to a rocky overhang.
Likely she’d slept too well, because she didn’t want to leave the heated, heavenly smelling cocoon of strong arms, hard chest, lean hips, and long legs.
Too bad they wore all their clothes.
Maximus had rather prudishly and uncharacteristically insisted upon it.
He never slept with clothes on. She should know. She’d slept with him (or rather, Simca did, but damn if she didn’t recall everything in glorious detail!) every night for millennia.
Alas, now that she was aware of him as a woman, sexually aware and desirous, he decided to put on some modesty.
She didn’t even know vampires had any. She thought he’d rut with her at the first sign of receptiveness on her part, and she’d been about as blatant with her receptiveness as a female could be. But no, still no rutting to be had from her warrior.
She was getting extremely impatient.
Ariel sighed with pent-up frustration and tried to pretend she hadn’t heard the wakeup call. She didn’t have a choice, however, because Maximus disentangled himself from her body and got up to shield her from the blasting wind of giant eagle wings.
Ariel stood too and cracked her neck, rolled her shoulders, and arched her back to stretch awake.
They were both starting their “training” today. Oorah!
She’d piped up after a heavy silence when Maximus had finished speaking his purpose yesterday, and said that she wanted to discover her inner animal too.
She’d gotten a good hard look from all three of her hosts, tiger, eagle and snake, and they’d seen then what they didn’t notice at first.
Ariel also had an animal spirit.
She thought their eyes were slightly more welcoming after that revelation.
It made sense. Everyone, from any race or Kind, would feel more affinity to their own kind than to creatures who were different from them.
Having been created in a test tube as part of an experiment she didn’t fully understand herself, Ariel hadn’t felt affinity to anyone until she was possessed by a black panther. Now, she felt it in the middle of nowhere Siberia, amongst a group of beautifully terrible and terribly beautiful misfits.
And most of all, she felt it for the male the panther in her adored more than anything and anyone in the world—Maximus.
She followed her warrior out of their cave and onto the open ledge.
Fifty feet below, no other animals were about, either still sleeping (as the cats liked to do) or out hunting.
Before she could open her mouth to greet her would-be trainers, hard talons dug into her shoulders and plucked her into the air.
“Hey! Give me some warning, will ya?” she groused, not her perkiest self without her morning coffee, especially at the ass-crack of dawn.
Rhys, in eagle form, looked briefly down at her and purposely shook her a little, dipping precariously in flight before gathering speed and climbing back up.
“Fucker,” she muttered beneath her breath, once she caught it again.
She’d never appreciated the human language as much as she did now. So much more expressive and satisfying than animal speak. The panther in her was tickled pink at having access to Ariel’s arsenal of languages. So many words to curse with!
When she glanced up, she thought she saw an evil smile curve the eagle’s beak.
She narrowed her eyes. Maybe that’s just the way an eagle’s beak was built. But she was pretty sure he was laughing at her.
Looking around as best she could, she saw that the second giant eagle from yesterday that had carried Maximus was carrying him again, the two birds flying in formation toward an unknown destination.
With nothing better to do than dangle, Ariel let herself enjoy the exhilarating flight. It wasn’t everyday she got to glide through the skies like an eagle. This was way better than sky diving or hang gliding. She was actually flying!
Well, not her, but she felt the wind beneath vicarious wings nevertheless.
The view from her vantage point was absolutely stunning.
White-capped mountain tops and jagged cliffs painted in green and gray and brown, cast in a pearlescent bluish glow in the pre-dawn skies. Rolling hills and valleys embraced the base of the mountain range, dotted with various shapes and sizes of lakes and rivers, like a scattering of jewels around Mother Nature’s bosom.
They were headed east, chasing a purplish pink haze that stretched from the horizon, dodging curls of clouds and mist that swirled around them like caresses from a lover’s hand.
She whooped with joy and spread her lips in a triumphant grin, keeping her teeth tightly together so she didn’t inhale a blast of icy cold air.
Rhys screeched an answering call and looked down at her with his eagle grin.
This was the freedom she could gain, she underst
ood from his wordless communication. This was what it meant to embrace the animal within.
Soon, they came to another plateau, and just like before, the eagles dropped them about twenty feet from the ground.
Both Ariel and Maximus were more prepared this time, their reflex to tuck and roll instinctive, rather than calculated. They landed smoothly on their feet and shared a look of intense joy.
That flight was fucking awesome! They couldn’t wait for the return journey.
Within seconds, however, they saw that they had company, apart from the two eagles who’d disappeared behind a ridge.
Leti was there waiting for them with three other humanoids.
Ariel was starting to sense the animals in her new acquaintances. The female beside Leti was a cheetah. One of the males on the other side was a lion, and the second male was a snake. She just couldn’t tell what kind of snake.
It didn’t really matter, she supposed. Snakes were all equally repulsive in a strangely attractive way.
Just then, Rhys rejoined them with the other eagle in human form. It was a female, a monolith of one, at over six feet tall, just a couple of inches shorter than Rhys.
“This is Cassandra,” Leti introduced when they were all present, gesturing to the cheetah on her left.
“Roark and Luka.” She gestured to the lion and snake in turn.
“And my wing woman is Apolla,” Rhys said.
“She’s bigger than you,” Ariel couldn’t help but point out.
She’d never been so mouthy before. Agent Kyles only spoke when absolutely necessary. She had no friends and family. No personality either.
But apparently, her panther spirit was full of comments and opinions and wasn’t shy about voicing them.
Ariel rather liked this new side of her personality. Well, she rather liked finally acquiring a personality period.
Rhys bristled indignantly, and she could see his wing feathers ruffling behind his back.
“Only in eagle form. She’s a Martial eagle, I am a Golden eagle. Of course she has a larger wingspan.”
“But in general,” Leti cut in helpfully, “female eagles of his breed are larger and more aggressive than their male counterparts.”