by Oxford, Rain
Scott was a big man, but he wasn’t brutish in appearance; he was clean-shaven with styled hair and simple, clean clothes. His wife was a very beautiful woman with shoulder-length, curly blond hair and piercing blue eyes, and she was just starting to develop lines around her eyes and mouth. She wore a long, dark blue dress.
Their daughter was about sixteen with long, straight blond hair and a blue dress to match her mother’s. Henry wondered how the family had clothing that him since he could smell that there wasn’t another child in the house.
“Well? What are you waiting for?” Scott’s wife asked. The strictness in her voice made Henry flinch, since he associated it with anger. When he glanced at the door, she sighed. “Do you want to be out there, starving and cold, or enjoying good food and good company in here?”
Henry sat. He learned that the family had a teenaged son who just moved to America on an exchange program. Thus, they had an extra room. Henry stayed the night and then Scott’s wife, Debra, took him shopping for clothes the next day. He was floored when Debra paid with cash; she didn’t haggle, slip anything in her purse, or make Henry put something on under his clothes. These people were not like his parents.
He told them his first name, but when they asked for his last name, he refused to tell them. “The bad guys will find me.” In this case, the bad guys were his parents.
Days turned into weeks and Henry found himself enjoying this life. Scott was an architect who took Henry to the office sometimes. Henry found the sketches fascinating and watched everything the big man did with nothing short of admiration. Scott got him a drawing pad and some colored pencils. Even at seven, without having ever gone to school, Henry was very good at learning from others. Sitting on the floor in Scott’s office, he drew for the first time. He drew the scene in which Scott found him, the family as he first saw them together, and every moment that was happy to him.
He drew the scene in which he lost sight of his mother. After that, he started on the sad moments as well. In a few hours, he told the story of his life in a way he could never say out loud.
Scott’s daughter, Sandra, teased him about his American accent. Although his natural instinct was to stop talking altogether, Scott pushed him to talk more, especially in vocalizing what he wanted. Therefore, Henry picked up a British accent. Since this pleased Sandra, she and her friends took him to the park just for fun. He was playing on the bars when he heard Sandra’s friends berating her. Apparently, they only talked to her because they liked her older brother. One of the three girls started talking about Sandra’s brother in a very vulgar and inappropriate way and wouldn’t stop no matter what Sandra said. She didn’t see Henry sneaking up behind her. He bit her on the arm, causing her to scream.
Sandra took Henry’s hand and told the girl she got what was coming to her. This was the moment she really stopped treating him like a new puppy and started treating him like a younger brother.
For months, everything worked out flawlessly. Then Debra tried to enroll him in school. With no citizenship, last name, or birth record, Henry’s new life came crashing down overnight. Debra and Scott fought over what to do, which Henry could hear from his room.
Scott went to his room, sat on his bed, and asked Henry to be honest with him. Knowing it would get him kicked out or given back to his parents, he told Scott everything, including that his parents were thieves. He admitted that he was forced to steal, but promised that he never stole from Scott’s family.
After a while of sitting there in silence, Scott ruffled his hair and stood. “Sometimes you got to do what you got to do to survive.” He walked out, leaving Henry confused. Henry was sure Scott was going to kick him out.
He never found out what Scott would have done. Since he had cried himself to sleep, his ears and nose were clogged. He never heard or scented the jaguars breaking in. He slept deeply, only waking for a moment from the sharp sting in his arm.
* * *
Henry woke the next morning in the living room, covered in his foster family’s blood. His pajamas were torn to shreds. Luana and Matheus Lycosa sat on the couch, each without a speck of blood on them. They drank coffee and chatted about the new home they found as Henry tried to pull himself out from under the murky fog that clouded his mind. “What happened?” Henry asked, wiping blood from his mouth. The coppery taste made him gag, but the ever-present consciousness of the jaguar inside him refused to vomit.
Luana lowered her coffee. “We tried to let you stay. The family kept pushing you away since the first day. They called the cops, the schools, everything to get you into foster care. Fortunately, you were a good boy; you didn’t give them your last name. We were able to intercept their calls and appointments so you could stay with them.”
Henry studied the blood all over his hands. Tears streamed down his cheeks even as he denied the possibilities. The more his mind cleared, the more memories of blood filled it. “What happened?”
“Your jaguar got mad when he heard them fighting,” Matheus said, unconcerned. “We tried to tell you that you were dangerous, but you never listened. You shifted and killed them.”
When Henry started crying hard, Luana stood and patted his head gently. “You’re okay. Did you learn your lesson? We’re the only ones who want you and leaving us will just get other people killed. Do you understand that now?”
Henry nodded.
* * *
Henry didn’t confront them on the thievery. He did what he had to do to survive. When he was fifteen, his parents robbed a small, broken family. It was a woman who had come into some money after her husband died while fighting in the army. His parents’ plan to sneak in was foiled and they attacked. Matheus demanded that Henry deal with the woman’s two daughters.
Henry said he wasn’t going to help them anymore and distracted his parents long enough for the family to escape. Matheus beat Henry until the jaguar in him couldn’t take any more. He shifted into a beast much more massive than any natural jaguar with saber fangs that looked like they belonged on a creature from Hell. He struck like lightning; strike, retreat, strike, retreat, all before Matheus knew he was in trouble. Henry was far too fast for Matheus to fight back.
However, Henry relented before he could kill his father. He didn’t want to be a killer. This gave him the chance he needed to change the dynamics between them. His parents said they would turn him in for all the crimes he did and blame their own on him. This alone didn’t scare him, but they told him the authorities would put him in an orphanage because he was underage. In fear for the safety of everyone he encountered and covered in his father’s blood, he made a deal.
For some reason, despite having the horrendous examples that his parents were, he had a sense of morality. He laid boundaries about the thefts he would do and what crossed the line, including defenseless women and children. It was a tentative agreement, of course. Over the next three years, his parents pushed his boundaries and he had to get more and more violent with them.
Everything changed when he was eighteen. His parents wanted him to steal from a corporation that was making progress in cancer research and he finally decided that he was more of a threat with his parents than without them. I just have to make sure I never get upset for any reason whatsoever.
Matheus and Luana knew Henry pretty well, unfortunately, so the young shifter decided to do something so out of character that he was sure they would never find him again; he drained one of their offshore accounts, got a fake I.D., and ran away to Jamaica.
He never really did well in school anyway. He was intelligent enough, but his parents told him being successful at something brought attention to himself and so they encouraged frequent skipping and sneered at him if he did well on an assignment. Of course, neither Luana nor Matheus went to school, and it was only because he was an American citizen and it was required by law to have some form of education that he was allowed to attend at all. His parents weren’t going to risk exposure for something so minor. Besides, it got him out of their
hair for a few hours.
This was Henry’s chance to start over. Without using his normal contacts, settling in was a little more complicated than he had expected, but the excess money made it possible. His parents had told him many times that all they wanted was the life of luxury they were owed, yet here he was living that life while his parents planned their next hit. He could live comfortably on what amounted to pocket change to his parents.
He got a beautiful apartment with a balcony that overlooked the beach and a bed way too big for him. Sometimes, when he saw it, he would imagine having someone to share it with, which was something that was never an option before. Then he would remember blood all over his hands and he would walk away.
For a year, Henry looked twice at every movement, knew the escape routes of every building, stayed away from cameras, and never gave anyone even his first name unless it was an absolute necessity. He went by Henry Hyatt, as he figured getting his first name wrong was a slipup he couldn’t afford to make. Hyatt was the name of the one of the passengers on the flight.
Then a woman moved into the apartment across the hallway from his. She had long, straight, almost gold hair with red highlights and huge, light green eyes. He saw her only in passing for the first month. She once tried to introduce herself at the mailboxes, but Henry choked up and walked away without a word. His throat hadn’t closed up since he was eight, so he was far too embarrassed to try talking to her after that.
Fate had other plans. Henry was walking up the stairs when he heard the commotion. Right outside his apartment, a man shoved the woman against her door, screaming at her. Henry reacted instinctively. Although the jaguar inside Henry wasn’t concerned with a woman being abused, he was concerned with a dominant male near his territory. Henry shifted and roared. Before he could even attack, the stranger ran.
The woman saw him shift; she was a threat. Oddly, his jaguar seemed to have no interest in killing her. Since the jaguar didn’t get to fight off his aggression, it was more difficult for him to shift back, so he stayed in his beast form. He glared after the man in the hallway, not quite willing to chase after him, when the woman dropped to her knees.
Henry was a normal-sized jaguar this time and his fangs were only slightly longer than a regular jaguar’s, but the woman should have been screaming and trying to get away. Instead, she was quiet, seemingly in awe. “You…” she started breathlessly. “You’re the guy from…” she pointed weakly to my door. “You’re a cat!”
Henry shifted back to his person form, grabbed his shopping bags, and unlocked his door. “You’re dreaming,” he said before shutting the door behind him.
“Wait!” she yelled.
He ignored her, dropped the bags, and leaned against the door. He noticed an odd sound, as if the woman was trying his knob, but the door didn’t open and Henry waited until he heard her door close before he checked. Nothing was unusual, so he closed it and went back inside. He put his groceries away and only once that was done did he realize he left his key in the doorknob. The woman had taken it.
The next morning, Henry knocked on her door, waited until she opened it, and politely asked for the key back. That way, if she refused, he wouldn’t feel bad about taking it by force. Before she could say anything, he noticed the bruises all over her face. “Did he come back?”
“No, I just haven’t put my makeup on yet.”
Seeing something suspicious on the floor behind her, Henry pushed the door open. The woman’s apartment was trashed.
She blushed. “I wasn’t going to steal anything. I just wanted a place to hide if he came back and I know you go out for dinner every night. Carl comes by about that time.” She handed him back his key ring reluctantly. “It was impulsive and stupid, I know. Don’t be mad.”
Henry made a sound that was almost a laugh. “You think I would call the police or something? That would go over smooth.”
“Yeah, about that… I won’t tell anyone. Will you come in for coffee? Or milk… I think I have a bowl left.”
Henry growled low, but not threatening, in response to her teasing. Somehow knowing the difference between a warning growl and the sound Henry made, she laughed and stepped back so he could enter. He did, breathing deeply to get a good scent. The man from the previous night had been there many times, as were others. Henry detected four distinct scents aside from the woman’s. “Who was that man?”
The woman leaned against the door and Henry noticed she was only wearing a t-shirt without shorts or shoes. “My ex-boyfriend.”
“Does he know he’s an ex?”
“When he landed me in the hospital and I got a restraining order on him? Yeah. But he doesn’t take no for an answer. He wouldn’t leave me alone, so I called the cops. His dad is a cop, and he showed up threatening that if I ever bothered his son again, I would go to jail. I moved here to get away from them, but Carl and his friends found me.”
“You had no family to turn to?”
“I couldn’t. Life was great growing up and I have fantastic parents, but I couldn’t get them involved in this.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen. So… you’re a werecat? If you bite me, would I turn into a cat on the full moon?”
Henry laughed outright. “It is not contagious; my curse is genetic. I am a jaguar shifter and I can shift at will any time of the month.”
“I’m Zoe. Pure human.”
“I’m Henry.”
* * *
Zoe hid out in Henry’s apartment when Carl came by, but after a week, one of Carl’s friends broke in during the day. Zoe decided to move away, but Henry had another idea. He converted his art studio back into a bedroom and told her to live with him. It took some convincing, but Zoe eventually gave in and they moved what little wasn’t destroyed into the spare room. Henry didn’t like trying to sleep with the smell of paints, so he used the living room as his studio. He was shy about his art at first, but Zoe insisted on watching him work and he learned to enjoy her presence. In fact, it quickly got to the point where her daily routines inspired him.
After a month, Carl knocked on Henry’s door and demanded to know where his “bitch” was. Henry broke the man’s nose and then slammed the door in his face. When Carl then tried to break in, he lost a fair bit of flesh to an angry jaguar. Carl wasn’t about to call the cops, and after three more miserable attempts, gave up and moved on.
A year later, Henry and Zoe got married.
* * *
Henry had never been happier. He sat on the chair by the window, using the early morning light to draw his wife of ten months. Her long hair shielded her face, as it always did when he wanted to use more than his memory to sketch her. She said she had a big nose and didn’t want it shown. Henry told her she was so beautiful that it hurt not to draw her.
After half an hour of begging, she finally turned her head so he could see her face as well as the small bundle in her arms. The newborn baby thrashed a little as Zoe’s hair was no longer blocking the sun from his eyes. Henry couldn’t help but to smirk. His son didn’t like sunlight.
The shifter barely managed to finish his drawing before he joined Zoe and Scott on the bed. After Henry finally told Zoe his entire story, they had decided to name their baby after the man who helped Henry when everyone else just saw him as a puppy.
Zoe kissed him, but pulled away before he was satisfied. “You’re daydreaming a lot today,” she commented.
He shrugged. “It’s stuffy in here. Let’s go to the beach.” She laughed. “What?”
She kissed him again. “We could. Or we could get a babysitter.”
“Huh?”
“You’re always more intimate on the days before, during, and after the full moon.”
“Am I? I thought you were just hotter on the full moon.”
She shoved him playfully and he reached his arm around her in a cat-like motion, then bit down lightly on her shoulder. She laughed and tried to shrug her way out of his grip. “This is what I mean. You’re p
layful, goofy, and you make ridiculous innuendos. You act your age. I hate to waste that walking in the sand, trying to talk you into the water.”
“I don’t like the salt on my skin.” He released Zoe and fluffed the peach-fuzz on his baby’s head. “He has your hair.”
“He has no hair.”
Henry studied Zoe’s hair dramatically, rubbed his chin, and studied his baby in the same fashion. “What’s your point?”
She punched him in the arm and got up. “I’m going to take a shower and then we’ll go to lunch.”
They did exactly that, and they had a great day. After lunch, they walked for a few hours, just enjoying the afternoon and each other’s company. Zoe could make every day feel like the best in his life. Arguments between them were few and far between. Scott was only a couple of weeks old, but he was the perfect child so far. He was in great health, not fussy, and could sleep through the night. Henry assumed this was thanks to the baby’s jaguar genetics.
It was the night before the full moon and Zoe was right; Henry was a lot more intimate during that time of the month. With their son asleep, they spent hours enjoying alone time with each other before they finally went to sleep.
Henry didn’t remember much after that. He was awoken by the sound of wood snapping and remembered getting out of bed to check on Scott. He remembered the baby’s peacefully sleeping face right before he felt a sudden pressure in his abdomen. Everything was blurry after that. He saw flashes of blood splattering and flesh tearing. He remembered Zoe screaming, Scott wailing, and the vicious snarling of a jaguar.
What he didn’t see was his father stabbing him from behind with a sedative. He didn’t remember shifting into his jaguar forms and trying to kill Matheus and Luana to protect his wife and child. The drugs in his system were too quick and too strong.
* * *
Henry woke with a massive headache and soreness in his muscles. He knew before he opened his eyes that he was covered in blood. His parents were sitting at the breakfast table without a care in the world.