Second Nature

by Jae

  "What happened?" Griffin asked. "Not that we were all warm and fuzzy with each other before, but why was she so angry with me? Why did she attack you?"

  Jorie wearily rubbed her eyes, half of her attention still on the door, just in case Leigh decided to come after them. "Rhonda told me that she's been in love with your sister for a lot of years."

  "And that made Leigh so angry that she chased you through the house?" Griffin shook her head as if to clear it from the haze of her almost change. "Did she want to keep their relationship secret?"

  Oh, it seems my interpretation of Wrasa body language wasn't so far off after all. Griffin believed they were in a relationship too. "That's just it. They don't have a relationship. And Leigh thought Rhonda was talking about you." It would have been funny if it hadn't ended with her being attacked by an aggressive shape-shifter.

  The muscles of Griffin's face twitched as if she was close to bursting into laughter. "Leigh thought Rhonda is in love with me? And here I thought the Kasari were better at this relationship thing."

  Griffin sat on the edge of the bed, and Jorie sank down next to her as the adrenaline wore off and her legs started to buckle. Compared to the angry Leigh, Griffin didn't seem so dangerous anymore. Maybe it was seeing Griffin stand up and fight for her, but for the first time, Griffin seemed more like an ally than an enemy.

  "You all right?" Griffin asked, studying her from head to toe.

  Two shaky breaths helped Jorie to calm herself. "Yes. Although I have to say this being chased by a predator thing is getting old."

  A smile danced along the corners of Griffin's mouth. "Oh, yeah. Seems I can't even turn around and leave you for a second without you finding a Wrasa to chase you." She reached out a hand and plucked a few slivers of wood off Jorie's sleeve.

  "While you never get into any trouble at all," Jorie answered, pointing at Griffin's swollen lower lip. "That happened before you decided to break down the door, didn't it?"

  Griffin nodded and said, "I ran into an old acquaintance."

  "And quite literally, it seems." Jorie took a tissue from the bedside table and handed it to Griffin. "Why do the people around here, including Leigh, hate you so much?"

  Sighing, Griffin tried to rub blood from a spot on her upper lip where no blood was. "It's..."

  "...a long story, I know," Jorie interrupted. She took the tissue from Griffin and gently dabbed at the blood in the corner of Griffin's mouth. "Is it because you're somehow different from them? A different kind of shape-shifter?"

  Griffin jerked back from Jorie's touch and the tissue. "Who told you that?"

  "No one. I'm not blind. And it's quite obvious that the Wrasa are afraid of anything that is different," Jorie said. "That's why they hate and fear us humans so much."

  "Then maybe we're not so different from humans after all," Griffin said. "Humans fear what they don't know or understand, and they kill what they fear."

  There was no point in arguing. History provided many examples and proved that Griffin was right. Still, the Wrasa were guilty of the same thing. "So you're hiding your existence because of some mutual paranoia?" Jorie had already suspected something like that. "You decided to kill me just because of some remote possibility that I might know about your existence?"

  Griffin flinched, and this time, it wasn't because Jorie's touch hurt her lip. "My kind has suffered a lot at the hands of humans. Some of them think it's better to be safe than sorry."

  "Meaning, when in doubt, kill the human?" Jorie said bitterly. Was her life worth less to Griffin than the life of one of her fellow Wrasa?

  Suddenly, Griffin scrunched up her face and covered her ears with her hands, looking as if she wanted to pull the bed covers over her head too.

  "Griffin?" Jorie asked. "What's wrong?" Griffin was acting as if she had a sudden strong earache. Did she hurt herself when she burst through the door to rescue me?

  One of Griffin's hands lifted from her ear. Griffin listened for a moment, then slapped the hand over her ear again. "Ew!" She shivered. "It seems my sister and Rhonda found something better to do than fight."

  "You mean...?" Jorie cocked her head and listened, but she couldn't hear a thing. To her human hearing, the house was silent. "You mean they're making love?"

  "Ugh," Griffin said, confirming it. "And we're caught here, forced to listen to it."

  "You could go out for a run," Jorie said. "That should take care of your lip too."

  Griffin's eyes widened. "Rhonda can't keep her muzzle shut, no matter if she's making love to my damn sister or talking to a human."

  Jorie had to grin. "Rhonda told me nothing. Like I said, I'm not blind. I saw that Leigh's eye was much better, almost healed, after her 'run.'"

  "But apparently, you're deaf — and you should be glad about it," Griffin grumbled.

  Griffin's dilemma was secretly amusing Jorie. "You don't need to listen to it either. I told you to go for a run."

  "And leave you here without any supervision, just with these two cats in heat?" Griffin shook her head with her hands still covering her ears. "No, thanks."

  A sudden, daring thought shot through Jorie's mind, and she couldn't force it back. "Then take me with you," she said.

  Griffin stared at her. "What? No."

  "You don't want to leave me here all alone, and you don't want to have to stay here, so taking me with you is the perfect solution," Jorie said.

  "No, it's not," Griffin answered. "Going for a run doesn't mean I'll put on my running shoes and pound the streets."

  "I know what it means." It meant prowling through the forest in her animal form. The thought of seeing it fascinated Jorie. "You keep saying that you want and need me to trust you, but you don't trust me at all."

  Griffin shot her a dark glance. "Of course I do."

  "So it's a sign of your trust that you keep me prisoner here, that you don't trust me to stay on my own without one of you to stand guard — and don't tell me it's for my own good!" Jorie said before Griffin could interrupt. "You don't tell me anything about yourself or your people. Is that what trust means to you?"

  A few seconds ticked by in silence. "You're right," Griffin said. "If I want your trust, I need to trust you too. But coming with me could be dangerous." Her expression was serious. "In my cat form, I react on instinct. If you get scared and run..."

  "I won't," Jorie said. "No running when you're around a predator. I learned that lesson."

  Griffin was still shaking her head. "Even if you don't run, it could be dangerous. Whenever I shifted around humans, it was to hunt them down." There was no pride in Griffin's voice, but she didn't try to deny it.

  A picture of one of the predators from her dreams hunting down a human flashed before Jorie's eyes. Griffin has hunted and killed humans. She had known it before, but it wasn't pleasant to be reminded of it. "And you're afraid you'll automatically do the same to me?" Jorie asked, trying to hide that the thought was scaring her too. "Do you lose all sense of who you are and who your friends and enemies are when you shift?"

  One long finger traced the rim of Griffin's ear while she thought about it. She was probably considering whether to give away information about the Wrasa. "No, not really. But our thought processes change when we shift. We don't think rationally. We act on instinct. I won't know your name or your role in this whole disaster, but I'll still be aware that I know you and if I consider you a friend or an enemy. Still, I can't know for sure what kind of reaction hearing and smelling a human nearby will trigger."

  It was risky, and Jorie admitted to herself that she was scared, but her instincts told her it was a risk she needed to take. She was curious and wanted to learn more, to experience more about the Wrasa. But it was even more than that. A part of her thought if she saw Griffin shift, she would be able to understand why they were so protective of their second nature that they were willing to kill to keep it secret. "It's my risk, and I'm willing to take it," she said.

  "But I'm not!" Very rarely did Griffin raise
her voice, but now it was getting louder and rougher. "I risked my career, my life, and my family to save your life, and I'm not throwing it all away to satisfy your curiosity."

  "Are you afraid of what you might do — or of what I might do when I see you in your animal form?" Was Griffin afraid of being perceived as a wild animal and rejected? Jorie still wasn't sure what had happened between Griffin and her family, but she had a feeling that Griffin had stayed away and told herself she didn't need them, because she was afraid of rejection. "I promise I won't run in panic, and I won't see you as a monster. It won't change the way I see you."

  "If it doesn't change anything, why risk it?" Griffin asked a little smugly because Jorie had just proven her point for her and had outmaneuvered herself.

  Time to use her most powerful weapon. Jorie looked her straight in the eye. "Because it's the only way you can get me to trust you again. I need to know that you trust me enough to show me your animal form."

  A sharp breath escaped Griffin, sounding almost like a hiss. "That's blackmail!"

  Jorie didn't try to deny it. She just kept looking at Griffin, forcing eye contact.

  "You're so good at manipulating others, you should have been born a Kasari," Griffin finally said.

  A smile tugged at the corner of Jorie's mouth. "I'll take that as a compliment." If she wasn't mistaken, Kasari were the leonine shape-shifters who lived in this town.

  "It wasn't," Griffin said.

  "Come on. Let's go before your ears fall off." Jorie stood from the bed and tilted her head in invitation.

  Slowly, Griffin unfolded her large frame and straightened to her full height. She looked down at Jorie. Shadows swirled in her eyes, darkening them to a greenish brown. "Come here," she said and opened her arms.

  "What?" Jorie laughed nervously. "You want a hug to make yourself feel better should you end up eating me?"

  Griffin growled. "I want to imprint my scent on you so that you'll smell like a Wrasa, not like prey," she said.

  That made sense. Jorie had often observed how important smell was to her own cats. They applied their scent to her by rubbing against her legs. She told herself that this was no different. "All right. I wouldn't want to smell like some tasty morsel," Jorie said. Sweat dampened her palms. She stepped closer to Griffin.

  Heat radiated off Griffin.

  Do Wrasa have a higher body temperature, or is she as nervous as I am?

  Long arms wrapped around her and pulled her forward until she was pressed against Griffin.

  Tingles ran up and down her spine as Griffin slid her hands over her back, rubbing Griffin's scent all over her.

  "This is awkward," Jorie mumbled, her cheek pressed against Griffin's chest. She heard Griffin's heart beat a nervous staccato — or maybe it was her own.

  "Try doing this while you're listening to your sister and your childhood crush making love to each other." Griffin's voice rumbled through her.

  Jorie chuckled. Ooh, so Griffin had a crush on Rhonda? I wonder if Leigh knew it and that's part of what went wrong between them? She held still and relaxed against Griffin. Being so close to a shape-shifter — to a person who had tried to kill her — should have felt scary and uncomfortable, but she realized that it didn't.

  The gentleness of Griffin's embrace almost convinced her that Griffin wasn't out to hurt her.

  Cold spread through her when Griffin finally let go of her and pulled back.

  "Okay," Griffin said, her voice raspy, "that should do the trick."

  "Now that I have the official friend-not-food stamp, let's go," Jorie said before Griffin could change her mind.

  Griffin disappeared into the kitchen while Jorie put on one of Rhonda's jackets. Standing in the hallway, she heard a throaty growl from Rhonda's bedroom. Are they making love in their animal form? she wondered. She wanted to ask Griffin, but Griffin looked already embarrassed enough as they sneaked out of the house.

  "Shouldn't we do something about that before we leave?" Jorie asked. The front door was still hanging off its hinges. She shivered when she thought about how Griffin had come through the door to save her.

  "It can wait until morning. We're in the middle of pride territory; we don't have to be afraid of someone breaking in," Griffin answered.

  That means that most, if not all, of the town's inhabitants are shape-shifters, Jorie concluded. She was glad she hadn't knocked on a neighbor's door when she had tried to escape.

  Griffin led her out of town and directly into the forest, choosing seldom-used streets so that they didn't meet anyone. The deeper they ventured into the forest, the more graceful Griffin's movements became. She sauntered with natural confidence as if she knew every tree and every blade of grass. Finally, she stopped and dropped her backpack under an oak. She opened it and pulled a big packet of raw steaks from the backpack.

  "I thought you wanted to run and not have a picnic?" Jorie said.

  A grim smile darted across Griffin's face as she threw Jorie a look over her shoulder. "Shifting makes me hungry, and if there's food readily available, it will discourage me from leaving you to hunt for my dinner."

  Jorie gulped. She heard what Griffin wasn't saying: Or worse, making me her dinner.

  Griffin kicked off her shoes and slipped out of her sweater. Her cargo pants followed without hesitation, giving Jorie a glance at smooth skin and muscular thighs.

  Part of her was fascinated and wanted to see more, but she forced herself to politely turn her back. Not that Griffin seemed to be embarrassed at all about undressing in front of her. And God knows, she has no reason to be. While Griffin wasn't remarkably beautiful by human standards, Jorie found her solid strength and fluid grace alluring.

  "Watching me shift with your back turned is going to be a little hard," Griffin said. Human bashfulness was clearly amusing her.

  Jorie turned. She tried to respectfully keep her gaze on Griffin's face, but it was tempting to take a few peeks. Her gaze was directed downward when Griffin scratched the bare skin of her forearm. She watched in amazement as the muscles of Griffin's arm thickened and the light hair on her arm spread.

  Then the crunching and cracking started. Bones rearranged themselves. Jorie wanted to cover her ears. She felt herself blanch when Griffin groaned, the sound almost drowned out by the grinding noise as her spine lengthened into a tail.

  Jesus, this is brutal torture. It wasn't the beautiful, magical transformation that Jorie had imagined. In her novel, she had portrayed the shifting process as painful too, but seeing it and writing about it were two different things. The sounds and sight of Griffin's pain left her light-headed, and Jorie gripped a low-hanging branch to keep her balance.

  Griffin's moans of pain became growls as her mouth and nose melted into a muzzle. She crouched down, now supporting her weight on massive paws.

  With a booming roar, the giant cat straightened and stretched as if it needed to get used to the new body.

  Not it, Jorie reminded herself. She. This is Griffin. Awe rooted her to the spot. Wide-eyed, she took in the big cat in front of her.

  She had been right — Griffin was definitely not a lion-shifter. Golden fur stretched over a body that was larger and heavier than that of a lion. A golden-and-black-striped tail ended in a black tassel. The light spots on her belly reminded Jorie of the rosettes on lion cubs, but the stripes across her back and her muscular shoulders were that of a tiger. She's a liger — a hybrid. Is that why the other shifters don't like her?

  The big cat's ears rotated in Jorie's direction until Jorie couldn't see the white spots on the back of the otherwise black ears anymore. The upper part of the liger's left ear was missing, proving that this was indeed Griffin. The liger lifted her head, and Jorie looked into familiar whiskey-colored eyes.

  There was no sign of recognition in those eyes. When the liger stalked closer, fear replaced Jorie's fascination. Rivulets of cold sweat trickled down her back. It only added to her nervousness as a scary thought raced through her mind, God, I hope the c
at doesn't smell it.

  The ten-foot-long cat prowled forward, her gaze fixed on Jorie. She snarled in her direction, revealing canines that were longer than Jorie's fingers.

  She could bite off my head in one single bite. Icy fear gripped Jorie and made her blood run cold. Her muscles trembled with the urge to run, to escape. Don't run; don't run, Jorie repeated her new mantra.

  Hoping Griffin would find the steaks more appetizing than her, she craned her neck. Where was the backpack? Her gaze wildly darted around but didn't find the steaks where she thought they would be. She half turned and — there! The backpack with the steaks was right behind her.

  Her heart thundered against her chest when she realized that she was standing directly between Griffin and the steaks. Oh, shit!

  Very carefully, she inched to the side, keeping her eyes on the cat to see what she was doing.

  Instead of circling Jorie to gulp down the steaks, the big cat ignored the food. On massive paws, she stalked after Jorie.

  Oh, no! We miscalculated. Seems she likes to play with her food before she eats it! Jorie wanted to squeeze her eyes shut in blind panic, but she knew the cat would interpret it as submission and might pounce. Stand still; stand still! Her shaking limbs didn't make it easy, but Jorie managed to stand motionless.

  Slowly, with the patience of a predator, the cat stalked forward. Hot breath brushed over Jorie's hands that Jorie held protectively in front of herself.

  Jorie's fingers flexed as she fought the urge to pull them back from the cat and her sharp canines. Accidentally, her index finger brushed over the row of long white whiskers, making them twitch.

  Oh, God, no. Jorie's breath caught.

  The liger drew back her upper lip and opened her mouth. Her nose wrinkled, but she didn't bite.

  She's scenting me! Jorie realized. She stood frozen to the spot, not even breathing, and hoped that Griffin's scent on her would tell the cat that she was a friend.