Chapter Nine
Kitty rolled over to an empty bed. She didn’t bother with the resigned sigh. It was a typical morning. Chigaru had risen before the sun so he could start his guard duty of Serenity before the woman woke.
After one month, Kitty stopped being upset about it. Either he guarded Serenity during the day or he guarded her at night. No matter which he chose, and he had to choose one as the leader of the Hell Hounds, Kitty would end up not seeing him for half the day. But then he more than made up for his absence when she did see him.
She smiled as she stretched and enjoyed the twinge of well-used muscles. Very well used. Good thing she was limber from her dancing or else everyone would have something to say about her inability to walk every morning.
A rapid, soft knock at the door roused Kitty from the bed. She smiled at her own living alarm clock. Princess Nilam had decided it was her duty to watch the dancers practice and didn’t want to miss a minute, which meant waking Kitty each morning and following her step for step until Nilam’s parents called her away for lessons. Nilam insisted on learning a few moves, which Kitty agreed to teach after asking Serenity’s permission.
Kitty loved Nilam’s enthusiasm. When Kitty was Nilam’s age, dance had been a burden her parents forced on her, not something to be enjoyed. Though Nilam’s little friends didn’t share in her fondness, Nilam didn’t abandon it.
The knocking persisted. Kitty called, “I’m coming, princess. Hold on.” She wrapped a sheet around her nudity and went to answer the door. Nilam wouldn’t stop knocking until Kitty let her enter. One morning, Nilam had knocked on the door for fifteen minutes straight. She’d given it a rhythm after a while. Kitty had let the girl persist just to hear the full song.
While tempting to do it again, she decided to be nice. A glimpse of orange in the mirror made her pause. She faced her reflection and stared. The knocking faded to background noise as Kitty tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
The skin on her left shoulder was orange, specifically Chigaru’s shade of orange. She brushed at it, but the color remained. It was her skin. Her skin had changed color. She opened the sheet and nearly screamed at the sight of the orange skin marching down her side.
“No, no, no, no, no.” Kitty scrubbed at her side with the sheet. She only succeeded in hurting herself before she concluded it wasn’t coming off.
“Silny.” She said the name as a prayer and a curse. Kitty rushed to the dresser and dug through all the drawers until she found the orb Trent had given her the day Kitty arrived. Once she had it, she tried to figure out how it worked. This wasn’t a cell phone. There were no numbers to dial and, if there were, Kitty didn’t know the number.
She shook the orb. “Do something, you stupid thing. I need to talk to Silny. Come on.”
Silny appeared in the orb. “You called?”
“There you are,” Kitty yelled. “Can you see me?”
“Yes, I can see you. Why have you contacted me?”
Kitty pointed the orb at her side. “What the hell is this?”
“The flesh. Hell Hound Chigaru’s flesh. It’s spreading.”
“Really? You don’t say.”
“Your sarcasm is unneeded. Come through.”
“Come through what? What—” Chigaru’s room disappeared and Kitty found herself in a room full of jars and a large pot. There was no accompanying flash of light like when Chigaru teleported. “What the hell?”
Silny stood before her. “Welcome to my workshop, Kristar.”
“Don’t call me that. Now what the hell do you mean Chigaru’s flesh is spreading? And why the hell is it spreading now? Is it going to kill me?”
“Unlikely. You are tied to the Hell Hound’s life. You will heal any injury that doesn’t separate your head from your body or cause excessive blood loss.” Silny walked forward and touched Kitty’s side. “This is… I’m not sure what this is.”
“Get sure. I’m turning fucking orange. Why?”
“We know why. What you want to know is to what end and how far it will go.”
“No, I want to know if you can reverse it.”
Silny laid her palm on Kitty’s side. It glowed for a few seconds and then Silny stepped back with a shake of her head. “It isn’t your skin alone, Kristar. Your body is changing. You are becoming bhresya.”
Kitty screeched, “I’m what?”
“This is astonishing to me. The flesh is changing you internally. If not for your bond to the Hell Hound, the transition would have killed you already. The change is extensive, reflected outwardly by your skin.” Silny touched Kitty again. “Have you felt different since coming to Gezane?”
“Well yeah, but I thought because I was no longer stressed.”
“How have you felt?”
“Stronger. Faster. More agile. Is that because of the flesh? I thought all my training for the court performances did it.”
“Your outward appearance remains predominately human, however your internal appearance has changed to bhresya.”
“That might explain my increased appetite.” Kitty shook her head. “Okay, so how do you fix it?”
“There is no way to fix it. None of which I know. The flesh has wrought these changes since your gunshot wound healed around it. You’ve been here over a month.”
“I’m turning orange. Can you at least stop that?”
Trent entered the workshop. “The color compliments you, Kristar. I say leave it.”
“Don’t call me that, and who asked you?”
He tsked and wagged his finger at her. “Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”
“I got on the perfect side of the bed this morning. I would have had a wonderful day if not for this.” Kitty jabbed her finger at her orange skin. She turned to Silny. “Tell me something.”
Silny straightened and met Kitty’s gaze with a level one. “The changes are done. If you had allowed me to remove the flesh the day of your arrival, we might have avoided this.”
“Might. You can’t say that for a certainty, which means you aren’t sure. And that’s in the past. Let’s focus on the future and me not being orange.”
Trent walked forward. “Let me try.”
“You?” Kitty gave him the most incredulous look she could manage.
He laughed off her concern as he laid a hand on her shoulder. “I know I look damn good for my age, Kristar, but I was doing magic long before Silny’s parents were born. Vampire, remember?”
“Just don’t bite me.”
“Only if you beg me and then only if you do it sweetly while on your knees.” He winked at her before closing his eyes. “Mmm, interesting. Silny is correct. Human outside, bhresya inside. Though not completely.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Don’t sound so hopeful. I don’t want to hear you whine when I tell you the changes are permanent.” He opened his eyes and removed his hand. “Changing you back would be like trying to take out the eggs after baking the cake. Not going to happen. Like it or not, you’re a half-breed.”
“Great,” Kitty bit out. “I’m a freak of nature. Just what I always wanted to be when I grew up.”
Silny asked in a low voice, “Is that how you see Princess Nilam, a freak of nature?”
“She was born a half-breed. That’s natural. Everyone is going to take one look at me and wonder if I’m contagious.” Kitty walked over to the nearest reflective surface and stared at herself. “Look at me. What the hell am I going to do? This isn’t normal. Not by any stretch of anyone’s imagination.”
Trent put his arm around her shoulders. “While true, cupcake, think of the fringe benefits. You’re stronger, faster, and now don’t have to work as hard to keep this lovely figure of yours.”
Kitty looked at him in the mirror and frowned. “I just noticed something.” She faced him. “Why do you talk like that?”
He grinned at her.
“Cupcake. Fringe benefits. Wrong side of the bed. That’s all Earth-speak,
my Earth. How do you know it?”
“You’re not the only one in from out of town. Vampires and shifters didn’t exist on Gezane before me, King Ganon, and five others arrived. And before you ask, we are from Earth but not your version of Earth.”
“Well duh. Vampires and shifters don’t exist where I’m from.” She regarded him. “So you’re from another alternate dimension? How many are there?”
“No clue.”
“Have you ever tried going home? How did you get here?”
“Errant magic catapulted us here and we decided to stay. Why give up being king of the hill to go back to being one of the pebbles in the valley? We’re top of the food chain here. And we learned from the mistakes of our dimension. King Ganon decided to keep our numbers low and manageable. We claimed our little slice of heaven and don’t want more.”
“And you threaten people with all-out war to get your jollies.”
He shrugged. “Can you think of a better way to cure a few centuries worth of boredom?” His gaze slid over to Silny and a sly smile curved his lips. “Besides sex.”
Silny blushed and Kitty stared in shock. She raised her hands and backed away from both of them. “TMI.”
“You’ll see, Kristar. Your bhresya has another two hundred, possibly three hundred, years left. No activity, no matter how interesting it seems at first, has the staying power of sex. There are so many positions and so many possibilities to the act.”
“Okay, you can stop now.” She indulged a whole body shake. “Listening to you talk about sex is like listening to my parents talk about sex for some weird reason. Ick.”
“Ah but it got your mind off your little problem for a while, didn’t it?”
Kitty looked at her reflection again. “This is more than a little problem. What do I tell people?”
Silny said, “The bond between you and your mate has manifested itself in a physical manner.”
“True. Guess I don’t have to wear orange anymore. Not that I minded, but it’s kind of obvious who I’m married to now.” Kitty nodded as she psyched herself up and tried to look on the bright side. “You’re right. It’s not that bad. I’m stronger and faster. I can’t see or hear better but that’s no big deal since I get more use out of the muscle enhancement.” She nodded again and turned so she could see herself from a different angle. “It’s like steroids without the chemical imbalance and nasty side effects…well, besides turning orange. Maybe this is the extent of it.”
Trent said, “The flesh is still making changes.”
Kitty glared over her shoulder at him. “You couldn’t let me enjoy the silver lining for five seconds, could you?”
“What can I say? I’m a happy little rain cloud.”
“Do you know what kind of changes?”
“Nope. I can tell you it’s still on the move.” He gestured to her side. “I take it this change was overnight?”
“Yeah. I went to bed brown and woke up with splotches of orange.”
“Based on that, I would say the next changes should make themselves obvious fairly soon.”
“Oh goody. I just loathe surprises.” Her manner turned serious and she faced Silny and Trent. “You said part of me is still human, right? Will the flesh change me completely?”
Silny said, “We won’t know until it happens or if it will.”
Kitty gave a hard sigh and went back to staring at her reflection. People would riot when she returned to the palace and they saw her. That didn’t worry her as much as Chigaru’s reaction to her new appearance. Would he be okay with this? She wasn’t okay with it, which was all the more reason not to return…ever.
Except that wasn’t an option. She was sick of running from her problems. If Chigaru rejected her because of this, she would face that head-on rather than hide from it.
* * * *
Chigaru nodded to Lidan as he returned from his patrol of the garden perimeter. Serenity and Melchior had decided to have a picnic breakfast in the gardens so Chigaru and Lidan took turns walking the area to ensure the security of the location.
Serenity asked, “Did you encounter trouble, Chigaru?”
He shook his head and raised his eyebrow in question.
“You’re injured.” She pointed to his arm.
Chigaru glanced at his shoulder, but already knew to what Serenity indicated without having to look at it. “Kitty.”
“She hurt you?” Serenity’s voice held dismay and a tinge of anger.
Lidan chuckled and cleared his throat before he said, “It’s a love scratch, Serenity. No need to get upset. You haven’t noticed, but Chigaru has started each morning with quite a few of these mementos since his return. They usually heal quicker than this.” He leaned over and looked closer at the wound. “She must have gotten you good for it to be taking so long.”
Chigaru rolled his shoulders. “Yes, that particular one was deep. The others healed while I slept.”
Serenity frowned at them both. “Why aren’t you more upset about this? She cut you.”
“Scratched,” Chigaru said.
“But why so brutally? Did you anger her again?”
Lidan said, “Scratches like that one come from satisfaction, not anger.” He glanced at the wound again. “I’m jealous. I also didn’t think any human strong enough to do such damage.” He clapped his hand on Chigaru’s shoulder, hitting the wound, possibly on purpose. “No wonder you are slow to rise each morning. I thought your time away had made you lazy. Now I see your mate fatigues you. Perhaps you should change to midday watch instead.”
Chigaru shrugged off Lidan’s hand with a muted growl. Leaving Kitty’s warmth and softness in the mornings might take willpower but only because of his desire to have more of her. Kitty invigorated him. If he indulged his longing to wake her with lovemaking, Chigaru would end up shirking his duties as a Hell Hound. That was unacceptable.
He said none of his thoughts aloud. Serenity wouldn’t be pleased to learn Chigaru waffled between the choice of guarding her or making love to Kitty all day. He’d become angry with himself when he realized that truth. His anger had turned to wonder and a small amount of happiness at finding Silny’s words to him on their first meeting had come to pass. Kitty, his true mate, occupied a place in his heart that surpassed the spot Serenity held.
It wasn’t by much, but that small amount had him mesmerized with Kitty when she performed for the court rather than keeping watch for potential threats. Every dance reminded him how she moved while in his embrace. Thoughts of Kitty beneath him—and on top of him—set Chigaru’s heart beating faster.
He pushed the errant memories to the back of his mind to focus on the here and now. Kitty had his nights. His days belonged to Serenity.
Her normal wide smile drooped and her eyebrows knit together in a frown of confusion. “You want her to scratch you? To cause a wound that takes all night to heal?”
Lidan said, “Such is bhresya pleasure, Serenity. You should know that by now.”
Melchior pinned Lidan with a hard look of disapproval.
Chigaru would have smacked Lidan if Serenity hadn’t been staring at the male. Of course Serenity didn’t know about the bhresya tendency of mixing small amounts of pain to give more pleasure. He and the others had purposefully left that out of her education when teaching her about bhresya sex. She was human and pampered, unlike Kitty. Serenity didn’t have the strength to break Melchior’s skin with her nails, let alone cause him a wound his bhresya healing would need time to mend.
“Bhresya pleasure,” Serenity whispered.
Lidan took a quick step to the side and bowed. “I should patrol the perimeter.” He rushed away before anyone could tell him otherwise.
Chigaru would have words with the male later. For now, he had to minimize the damage done. He and Melchior exchanged a look of worry as Serenity pressed her palm to her stomach.
“Is that why?” she asked in a soft voice.
Neither man answered. Chigaru wasn’t sure what she asked.
/> She met Chigaru’s gaze and then turned her eyes to Melchior. “We’ve tried so hard. Or I have. And yet we only have Nilam, conceived on a day I shed your blood.” She pulled in a shaky breath. “Do I not please you, Melchior?”
“Yes, Serenity, you please me.” He grasped her hands, but she pulled away.
“Not enough. You have release but you aren’t satisfied. Have you ever been?”
“Touching you always brings me pleasure. You’ve seen proof.”
“But not satisfaction. I think back on those times, and I have seen you sated only once—the day we reconciled.” She pushed to her feet and walked a few paces away only to return. “Why did you never tell me?”
“Serenity, I—”
“And you,” she said to Chigaru, “never mentioned bhresyas wishing pain during sex in all of your teachings. Why?”
“Not pain,” Chigaru said in a calm voice, hoping to soothe her.
“What then? Why wish wounds if not for the pain? Should I bring a knife to bed at night if Melchior and I are to conceive another child?”
Melchior jumped to his feet and started to say something but Chigaru held out his arm to stop him. Heated words wouldn’t solve this.
Chigaru said, “I did not speak of the bhresya tendency of wounding during sex because you are human, Serenity. You do not have the strength.”
“But Kitty is human and she has it.”
“Kitty can also lift and hold her own weight on one hand while balancing on the horn of a male below her. She is physically stronger than you, Serenity. Though I admit I didn’t know her strength could cause me such a wound.”
“And you enjoyed it?”
“Yes.” Chigaru didn’t mean for his voice to come out breathy but he couldn’t stop it as he remembered the way his release overcame him as Kitty dragged her fingernails over his shoulders and down his back.
Serenity’s expression grew darker.
He sighed. Perhaps it had been wrong of him, and the others, to keep this knowledge from Serenity. At the time, he hadn’t seen how it would do her any good since she couldn’t act on it. “Bhresyas are rough in our lovemaking, Serenity. It is part of our nature. We can heal any damage received while engaged in sex. The more pleasure, the more wounds.”
Kristar (Bookstrand Publishing Romance) Page 17