Still, Cindy could see where those people were coming from. They both had long blonde hair and blue eyes, though Cindy was graced with freckles and a larger bust – her C-cup chest nearly eclipsed Jenna’s A-cup. Cindy also had slightly wider hips and a more substantial behind; in general, she was fuller-figured, something that was rather unfortunate considering how little she wanted to use that body for what everyone thought was its God-given purpose: sex.
Jenna had considered herself asexual for as long as she could remember; she hadn’t learned the term for it until junior year of high school, but she’d known even in ninth grade – or earlier – that the crushes her friends had on boys just weren’t her thing. Neither were girls, for that matter. She didn’t get porn, the few times she tried to watch it. She’d had a few boyfriends, and even had sex in a quest to ignite a passion she knew everyone else had. But nothing worked.
For a long time, she’d struggled to find her place in a society that was obsessed with the pleasures of the flesh, especially because her own flesh was, apparently, considered quite pleasurable. But once she entered Vassar as a freshman, she realized that there was a whole spectrum of sexuality, and it was okay to place yourself anywhere on that spectrum – even outside of it entirely.
Sure, she’d had some issues relating to the other girls she lived with in her dorm, especially during those early freshman months of one-night stands and late-night girl talk, but once the girls got the idea that Cindy just didn’t feel the way they did, they accepted it and didn’t let it get in the way of their friendship. Even Jenna, who was one of the more promiscuous girls in their group, had quit ragging on Cindy about her asexuality long ago.
Now, in their junior year, the obsession with sex and boys had calmed down anyway, with grades, internships, politics, and post-collegiate plans becoming the main concern. Students at Vassar were very much encouraged to make the most of themselves, and being celibate was something of a badge of pride. All the more time to devote to making your resume look good without having to pay attention to a boy- or girlfriend.
And Cindy was very motivated. Always had been. She would graduate with honors, undoubtedly, and had already scored an internship with a prominent legal group that dealt exclusively with impoverished and minority clients. She was taking the Shifter Relations class because it fit perfectly into her busy schedule, and because shifters always seemed to be getting themselves into trouble.
At least one-sixth of the clients she saw coming in and out of the legal office were shifters, or in shifter-related cases, which was impressive considering the relatively low population of shifters in New York. The human-animal hybrids were much more common in rural areas than the urban jungle of New York City.
Cindy was reminding herself of this, as a means to kill time while Professor Turick droned on (although his accent did make that droning far more pleasant). Her phone buzzed; surreptitiously checking it under the table, she saw that her best friend, Sam, was demanding her presence at the coffee shop outside Chicago Hall. Typing out a quick agreement, she was relieved to see the professor hadn’t noticed, and was even more relieved to see she only had to endure fifteen minutes of boring getting-to-know-you rigmarole.
Sam and Cindy had been best friends since high school; they’d bonded over being similarly confused over their sexuality in a small Pennsylvania town where being confused over your sexuality wasn’t yet in vogue. Only, where Cindy felt confused about liking no one, Sam was confused about liking the boys on his lacrosse team instead of the cheerleaders who screamed for their victory. He’d spent a semester at a very liberal state school before transferring to Vassar, saying he wanted to be closer to New York City. Just like Cindy, he’d found himself at college, and was no longer ashamed to dish about guys he had crushes on.
“So,” Sam said as soon as Cindy sat down. “Is that Turick guy as hot as they say?”
Cindy laughed and took the coffee he ordered her; Americano, black, her favorite.
“I guess so,” she said with a shrug, her mind lingering on the way she’d felt oddly captivated when his eyes passed over her. “He has an English accent. Pretty hot.”
Cindy wasn’t asexual to the degree where she found people unattractive as a whole. She could see George Clooney and, in her logical mind, recognize his hotness. But that’s generally where her interest in the opposite sex stopped.
“I’m so jealous,” Sam gushed. “I have not one but two women professors, and the rest are old enough to be planning their own funerals.”
Cindy laughed.
“Missing out on some eye candy?” she asked. “Any cuties in the classes?”
“A few underclassmen seem promising,” Sam said with a twinkle in his eye.
“Well, here’s to a fruitful semester for me,” she said, raising her cup.
“And a bootyful semester for me,” Sam said, raising his own to clink against hers. For a moment, Cindy contemplated telling her best friend about the weird moment in class. But it was easier just to push it to the side and focus on how to make sure she wowed the professor academically – it never hurt to have a smart Brit on your side, especially when it came time to applying for grad school.
3
“For example, wolf shifters tend to be highly pack-oriented, and will entrust their mates to the pack as a whole. Often, a wolf shifter pack may share one or a number of females, with the pack’s alpha taking ownership of the most fertile or desirable, with the remainder of the pack sharing anywhere from three to seven females, depending on the size of the pack.
Bear shifters, on the other hand, are more of a ‘hit it and quit it’ species, to use the parlance of the times. A bear shifter, regardless of its breed, will mate with a female until she is pregnant, then want to have little or nothing to do with her, unless his cub is in direct danger. Of course, in modern times, the father will be required to provide financial assistance and – if the female insists enough – some emotional support for the family. It’s an unpleasant time to be a bear shifter.
Feline shifters – tigers, jaguars, lions, panthers – are far more devoted to their mates, and are so fiercely protective that they’ve been known to kill others who tread too closely to what they consider their territory. The famous case of Macon versus the People set a precedent that although the shifter was acting out of some overwhelming primal urge, he could still be convicted of second-degree murder.
Feline shifters are not generally associated with a pack, tend to be solitary, but when they find a mate they will give up their solitude, going to great lengths to ensure that the female remains at their side. Of course, lion shifters have a bit of a pack mentality, but only insofar as their immediate family – cousins and nephews – are concerned.”
Cindy made a few general notes – though it was more like single words than actual notes. She’d already read all of this in the textbook, having jumped ahead a bit, as was her nature. It was only the second day of class, but Cindy had read three chapters ahead of the required reading. The notes were more a ploy to distract her from Professor Turick’s intense gaze. She’d noticed how he looked at the females in the class, devoting long seconds to each one, as though he were in a grocery store picking out the freshest apple in the bin.
Pervert, she thought. He had yet to single her out for a staring contest. She wasn’t looking forward to it, but knew it had to be coming. In fact, she was a bit annoyed that it hadn’t happened yet. She wasn’t a vain girl, but she knew her own beauty, and it was almost like being snubbed when Professor Turick’s gaze landed on the homelier girls before it fell on her.
The truth was, she knew that the main reason she wasn’t looking forward to his eyes finally finding her in the crowd was because she was afraid of what would happen in her mind when they did. Even when he wasn’t looking at her, looking at him did strange things to her brain, which was usually as logical and rational as a math formula. She wasn’t a daydreamer. But when she looked at him too long, her mind seemed to get sucked into some ot
her world, someplace mysterious and warm and dark. Someplace far from civilized society. Someplace Freud would probably love to visit.
Biting her lip, she dared to glance up from her scribbled notes. He was looking at a brunette in the row in front of her, those not-quite-green eyes containing so much intensity it seemed the girl in question should have spontaneously combusted already.
“Of course, the most interesting thing when discussing the nature of shifter romance, or lack thereof in the case of some species, is the calling of the females. Now, as you should know if you’d done last night’s reading, not all fully-human women are able to be impregnated by a shifter male. And since shifter females are so wildly rare, it’s something of a life mission for most shifters merely to find a woman capable of becoming pregnant.”
Suddenly, Cindy’s breath was sucked from her lungs. He’d found her. His eyes had found her. Like a magnet, they drew her forward in her seat. Her jaw dropped slightly, hypnotized as his eyes seemed to melt from green to gold. Suddenly, the world was too sharp to be true; she could hear every whisper of pens scratching against paper, could see Professor Turick’s chest rise and fall, see the whites of his teeth when his lips parted to speak. Her stomach knotted up, constricting almost painfully as a strange and dark desire rushed through her, tightening her nipples and causing her thighs to clench together.
And then, like a cramp letting go, she was free. His eyes moved on. Cindy felt immediately ill, like a bad hangover: head pounding, mouth dry, stomach sick. But as soon as it had happened, it passed, and she almost slumped down in her seat, taking a deep breath. Jenna turned to her slightly, one eyebrow raised.
“So for this week’s writing assignment, I’d like a two-paragraph summary of the breeding chapter, with special attention paid to the signs of a shifter-receptive female,” Professor Turick said. Cindy glanced at the clock; class was over. She wished she’d looked at the clock earlier. She couldn’t tell if she’d been locked in that strange, catatonic state for seconds or minutes. She had no idea if she’d missed some of the lecture. All she knew was that she felt exhausted. And confused. And very, very afraid.
She caught Jenna’s arm as they left, pulling her friend away from the chatter of their fellow classmates.
“Yo,” she said. “Did you catch Professor Turick staring at you today?”
The blonde sighed and pretended to swoon.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “And I saw him looking at you, too. Maybe he’s looking for a new personal teacher’s assistant.”
Cindy’s brow furrowed. Had her friend not felt the same intensity that she had? The same…whatever it was?
“You didn’t feel like…weird? Like, I don’t know, I felt kind of…um…woozy,” Cindy said, picking her words carefully. Jenna looked at her with a smug grin.
“Well, I definitely felt something. Looks like you might have yourself a little professor crush, Cin,” she said before waving to a group of girls coming the opposite direction down the hallway. “Gotta run, see you later!”
Cindy waved after her friend, mind still troubled. At least her classes were through for the day; she could go home and lose herself in her textbooks. And she’d start with Dramatic Writing, then work her way back to Shifter Relations. That two-paragraph response could wait until she didn’t feel like she was going to pass out whenever she thought of her professor.
4
Cillian was frustrated. He’d spent the last two classes trying to figure out which of the females were exuding that scent. He’d spent most of the last class examining each of them, trying to draw out the scent with his gaze, calling to that deep part of them that would respond to his beast.
A few had showed some promise – the brunette who always sat at the end of the second row, the redhead in the middle of the first row, the two blondes in the third row, and the one with the dyed hair in the last chair of the fourth row. But although that helped narrow it down, it wasn’t conclusive. Whoever she was, she had some intense will power to resist his call. And he couldn’t tell if those two had seemed to react were doing so out of a shared instinctual need, or out of pure human lust.
Locking up his office for the weekend, he was happy he’d ridden his bike into work that day; he could use the physical exercise to get rid of all that residual energy in his limbs. The hilly, Bronxville neighborhood where he lived offered a challenging ride, but his natural strength made it the perfect balm for a troubled mind.
But that evening, the ride simply wasn’t enough. He couldn’t stop thinking of the smell, driving him crazy, how he was only just barely keeping it together in class.
You swore she’d be the last one, the only one, he told himself, remembering the woman he’d once loved with every ounce of his being. The one who had claimed to love him back.
The one who’d left.
You’re drawn to this student, whoever she is, out of pure physical instinct, he lectured to himself, as though he himself was a student who needed to be set straight. You’re smart, too smart to give in to it.
Except, when she was in that class, it was the only thing he could think of. It was like his mind shut down entirely, his lecture a robotic response to stimuli while his panther paced, back and forth and back and forth, seeking her, seeking the girl who was releasing that scent…
In those moments, he wasn’t smart at all. Far from it. He was pure cat, the predator, an animal enslaved to its lust. Not knowing which student was giving off that scent was exquisite torture, but it was also the only thing keeping him from pursuing her at all costs. Because, though he longed to withstand the call of his beast, he knew that once he looked into her eyes, as soon as their fingers brushed, as soon as he knew for sure…
Well, it would only get worse after that.
Sun was just setting when he arrived at his brownstone. The air was heavy with a coming storm. He was still tense, however, and decided that it would be a good night to release his panther in the nearby park. He didn’t generally like doing it, preferring to wait until he could take a weekend in the Catskills or a few weeks in the Adirondacks, where there was far more room and far fewer people. But tonight he knew he needed the release.
After a quick dinner eaten standing up in the dark kitchen, he slipped out once more, this time wearing only jogging shorts and a tight shirt. He ran to the park; by the time he got there, dark had fallen, though the rain was still hovering in the clouds above, not yet dampening the earth. The air around him crackled with energy, not unlike the energy in his own soul.
Finding the darkest part of the wooded park, where the trees were dense and the forest spread out for a few acres, he stripped, hiding his clothes in the shelter of a rock. As though he and the weather was one, the rain began to fall in soft patters on his bare skin. With a shudder of release, he felt his panther emerging. Slowly at first, his eyes turning to pure amber, his teeth lengthening; fur emerging through his pores. Then all at once, and he fell to all fours, the rain coming down harder now, making his black fur sleek and shiny.
The world changed from the human world to the animal world, where nothing looked quite the same, and every smell was like a vision, every sound a sensation. A growl rumbled through his throat and he lunged forward, testing his claws against a tree trunk before racing to a large-limbed oak. He leapt to the lowest branch, then upwards once more, taking in the acres below him. Pacing along the branch, he licked his lips, feeling his whiskers quiver as raindrops fell against them.
And then he was off, running silently through the woods, smelling the loamy earth and the traces of other animal, the rain pelting him harder and harder, cooling him down, his soul finally quieting, quieting, until there was nothing but him, the forest, and the rain.
5
Cindy couldn’t focus. It was Sunday, and she’d had three days to complete the simple assignment for Professor Turick’s class. Granted, she had wasted a good deal of Saturday in bed nursing a slight hangover from the night before; she was a college student, after all, despite
her dedication to her work.
But the reason she couldn’t settle down and write up the two paragraphs had nothing to do with lack of time or energy. She knew the material well enough to have completed the task in less than an hour. She’d managed to clean her suite from top to bottom, make a batch of muffins for breakfast for the coming week, and read far in advance for all her other classes.
No, the reason she couldn’t focus on the assignment was because she was starting to have very, very strange feelings about the class itself. And the subject material was hitting rather close to home.
A human female who is shifter-receptive will exude an idiosyncratic scent, only detectable by shifters of the species with which she is compatible. Shifter-receptive females tend to have lower-than-normal sexual drive when confronted with non-shifter males, but higher-than-normal sexual drive when encountering shifter males. A shifter-receptive female may be unnaturally susceptible to the shifter’s pheromones and extrasensory mating calls, more so than non-receptive females, though they, too, can be affected by these same reproductive tools.
A shifter male who comes in contact with a shifter-receptive female of his species will be able to tell from her scent as well as her level of responsiveness to his mating call. However, one-on-one contact is required for both parties to ensure the compatibility. A shifter who senses a receptive female in a large group will likely go to great lengths to discover which female is exuding the scent. Studies indicate that shifter males undergo significant distress when a female exuding the scent passes them by in a crowd and they cannot attain the one-on-one meeting necessary to confirm compatibility and result in mating.
Exact figures of the numbers of shifter-receptive females are hard to come by, though genetic testing suggests that females receptive to wolf shifters make up the greatest population, with 50% of shifter-receptive females compatible with wolf shifters. Bear and feline shifter-receptive females make up 20% and 10% of the remainder of the population, respectively, with the final 20% receptive to heretofore uncategorized mammalian, avian and reptile shifters. It is estimated that only 2-3% of the world’s female population is shifter-receptive, making finding a mate a matter of utmost importance to most shifters, regardless of the species.
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