by Romi Hart
Looking at Val, I saw her skin glowing a pearl-like color. Although faint, I saw another face glowing over hers. That of a polar bear began glowing brighter and brighter before it disappeared.
She has some shifter in her already.
Many humans had some sort of shifter in them that they were never aware of. Only at times of great crisis did their powers show themselves. And even then, only temporarily. And still most didn’t notice that.
Valentine’s courage made a lot more sense now. She would be happy when I told her about this finding. This would mean her brother and sister had the polar bear- shifter blood within them too.
Having some distant relative who was a shifter made people sturdier than people without the blood. But it didn’t give them immortality.
If the person with the shifter blood became a shifter, it could give them more powers than the shifter they became though. Which meant Val might have the power to create portals.
Her idea about becoming a shifter may have come straight from her blood. She was going to become a magnificent fox-shifter. And how proud I felt that my bite brought her to our world.
Flipping onto her stomach, she made a terrible sound then she stood on all fours in front of me. With her head bowed, she growled then clicked her teeth as white fur sprouted all over her fox body.
Mesmerized, I stood there, unable to blink as I watched her become something other than what I’d envisioned when I set out to make her into a fox-shifter.
Her polar bear had merged with the fox I’d added, and she’d become an Arctic fox. When she lifted her head to look at me, brilliant blue eyes – the color of an iceberg – looked into mine.
For a moment, we just stared at each other. Then I changed into my fox to greet her telepathically, “Hi there, gorgeous. How do you feel now?”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me. Twisting her head, she snapped her jaws as if trying to talk like a human – which wasn’t possible in her animal form. Finally, I heard her words, “I am okay.”
“You look amazing. You’re an Arctic fox, my dear.” I couldn’t stop looking at her. “I think you’re the most beautiful shifter I’ve ever seen.”
Again, she snapped her jaws then her paws stomped on the floor before she said, “Thinking to you is harder than I expected it would be. I can hear you fine. But I can’t say what I want to say with ease at all.”
“You’ve just said quite a lot, Val. Give yourself a break.” Training her to switch back and forth was the next task. “Okay, let’s change back and forth a bit so you can get used to doing that.”
“How?” She shook her head. “Ugh! This is hard to say. How can I change?”
“Picture yourself as you were.” I changed back into my human form. “See?”
Nodding, she closed her eyes then she stood in front of me in her human form. When her eyes opened and she saw that she was standing on her feet instead of four paws, she smiled. “I did it, didn’t I?” She ran her hands over her arms. “My fur’s gone.”
I ran my hands over her arms too. “Your fur is amazing. And so is your skin. I feel like the luckiest male alive.”
A lopsided grin moved her pink lips. “Is that so?” Taking a few steps backward, she seemed to be testing her body. “I feel so strong and agile – even in my old body.”
“That’s a new body too.” I took a couple of steps toward her to close the distance she’d put between us. Taking the bottom of her t-shirt, I lifted it up then placed her hand on her stomach. “You’ve got abs of steel now, Valentine.”
Rubbing her six-pack of abs, she laughed. “Oh, my goodness! Would you look at that?”
“I can’t wait to get a gander at your new and improved human body, baby.” My cock was hard as a rock for her. Slipping my arms around her body, I hugged her tightly. “You and I are going to have lots of fun together. I want you to be mine forever, Val.”
Looking up at me, she cocked her head. “Yeah, we’ll see. Shouldn’t we get out of here before Codut comes up?”
We’ll see?
20
Valentine
I’d felt it and then seen it, the love Twilight had for me. It was sort of overwhelming to me with all I had going on. It wasn’t a thing I could deal with yet. “Mist probably needs our help. Come on, Twi, let’s get going.”
His hand on my arm, stopped me as his eyes drooped. “Val? What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that Mist probably could use our help.” I knew what he’d meant but wanted to avoid that. “Come on now.”
Letting me go, he nodded. “You’re right. Mist needs us.”
“You’ve got a lot to teach me, Twi.” I walked alongside him. “Let’s not let anything get in the way of that right now. We’ve got an important mission to deal with here.”
“You’re right.” He bumped my shoulder with his. “You’re hot too. You were hot before, but you’re super-hot now. I guess I’m afraid some other male will come along and scoop you up.”
“No one will be scooping me up, Twi. Not right now, they won’t. There’re so many things for me to learn right now. And this foxy brain I’ve got is working overtime. I swear, it’s making to-do lists for five years from now.”
“Yeah, I get it.” I had the same type of brain. I was just used to it. “I’ll chill out.”
“Hey,” I stopped to look him in the eyes. “I still love you.”
“Good.” Grabbing my shoulders, he kissed me hard. “I’m going to make you keep on loving me, you sexy little vixen, you.”
I like that!
“I feel like I was born for this, Twi.” I had more energy than I knew what to do with.
“I think you were.”
I held up my hand to stop him. “Twi, do you feel that?” The floor felt as if it was shaking underneath my feet.
“I need to morph.” He switched into his fox form then howled softly before coming back into his human form. “Mist had been captured. The movement you felt was him being slammed into a cage in the dungeon.”
“This is bad.” I didn’t know what to do. “This is really bad. You and I are it, Twi. If we get caught, it’s all over.”
Grabbing my hand, he pulled me with him. “We’ve got to get the hell out of this castle. Codut knows we’re here.”
“How?” I asked as I ran with him.
“He got into Mist’s head. He’s figured out how to bypass the security of the shifter’s brain somehow. It’s got to be the metal the cage is made out of. It renders the shifters powerless and that means their minds are open for Codut to see into.”
Moving like the wind, we left the castle, heading in the other direction than the one we came in from. My heart pounded as my feet barely touched the ground. My human speed had increased by a lot and my stamina was unending.
If I can run this long, how long can I have sex?
There was so much to learn and try out now that I was a shifter. But the thing Mist had said to me before Twi bit me about no birth control working on me now, stopped me from wanting to try our any sexual things just yet.
To be trapped in the dragon’s realm and to become pregnant too, wasn’t a thing I wanted to see how it would all turn out. So, we ran and ran until we felt safe.
“Funny how we’re not out of breath,” I remarked. “During sex, you got winded.”
“Emotions have a lot to do with that. You’ll see what I’m talking about. If you felt threatened while you were running, then your body would’ve reacted a little differently and your breathing would’ve become a little harder to do.” He turned in a circle as he looked around at where we’d ended up. “This place is so desolate. Like, I don’t see any difference in this area than the last one we were in.”
“This dragon lacks imagination.” A bright idea came to me. “Should we turn into foxes and see if we can dig a hole? We could get out of sight that way.”
“We could do that,” Twi said then shook his head. “But I don’t think we should do that. I think we’re going to
need help to get everyone out and take care of Codut too. We need to get out of here, Val.”
“Well, that’s impossible. So, we’ve got to figure out how you and I can free everyone, including your cousin now.” Having a nice hole to hide in made sense to me. “Let’s change and get to digging. How fast can we dig, Twi?”
“Pretty fast but not abnormally so,” he let me know. “Listen to me though. I think we might be able to get out of here. I saw something when you were in the process of changing that has me thinking you might have more power than I do.”
He’d interested me with that. “What did you see?”
“I saw your face covered by that of a polar bear.” His grin went from one ear to the other. “Most bears can open portals.”
“Even if I can open one, how can I make it go to a certain place?” I needed to know more and the shifters in captivity could tell me more than Twi could. “We’ll need to go to the dungeon to see if any of them can explain portals to me.”
Shaking his head, he disagreed, “No. I think there’s a huge risk that your powers will also be weakened if you go down there where they are. You’re just going to have to concentrate and try to do this on your own. If you really want to help them, then you have to rely on yourself right now. I know you can do it, Val.”
“Your faith in me might be very short-lived when we end up in some other galaxy.” I had visions of ending up in a land far, far away. “What will we do if that happens to us, Twi?”
With a loud laugh, he answered me, “We’ll walk right back into the portal and then you’ll close it before anyone else can use it.”
Putting my hand on my hip, I tapped my foot with irritation. “And how will I close it?”
“I think you can open one by moving your hand in a clockwise motion to the right. I’ve seen it done that way. So, I think the way to close it is by moving your hand in the opposite direction. It makes sense.” Picking me up high, he slid my body back down his until our faces were at the same level. “Come on, baby. You can try, can’t you?”
“You’re turning me on, Twi.” My pussy pulsed as it grew hot and juicy. “Put me down before I can’t control my urges, please.”
He did as I said. “I need you to try to open a portal as you think about the place we left. That’s the most recent place you were, so I think that’s the best place to start.”
“Maybe you’re right.” I had no reason to believe I could do this. But I had to try because I didn’t know how we were going to save everyone there was to save if we didn’t have help and lots of it.
“Move your hand like this.” He ran his hand in the largest circle that he could. “Close your eyes and think about the forest we left behind.”
“Okay. Here I go.” I closed my eyes and began moving my arm in a circular motion. “The Lake of the Woods. Right where we were before we stepped into the green glowing circle that brought us here.” Round and round my hand went until my shoulder ached and I stopped.
“Wait!” Twi shouted. “I saw something just before you quit.”
“You did not.” I rubbed my shoulder. “Come on, Twi. You can’t open a portal and you were the one who bit me. I don’t think I can open one either. That makes more sense than some old as shit polar bear – shifter blood giving me that power.”
Taking my hand off the shoulder I rubbed, he rubbed both of my shoulders as he looked me in the eyes. “I swear to you that I saw a light green glow just before you stopped. This has to require tons of concentration. You’ll have to shut every other thought out to do it.”
“But my mind has never been so full of thoughts,” I whined. “Maybe that’s why fox-shifters can’t make portals in the first place. Maybe we can’t quiet our minds enough to do it. You try if you think it can be done.”
His eyebrows shot up as he stopped rubbing my shoulders and stepped back. “You might be onto something, Val. You’re a genius!” He closed his eyes and began moving his arm in circles as I took a seat on the ground to watch him.
It seemed like forever before he stopped. “Did you see even a hint of green?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “Were you able to quiet your mind completely?”
“Nope.” He took a seat next to me. “I’m a full shifter. You’re a bitten one who most likely had some polar bear in you too. Out of the two of us, you’re the one who has the best chance of pulling this off.”
“Can you explain to me why we’re immortal, but my arm began to hurt?” My ideas of being immortal must’ve been wrong. “I thought I wouldn’t feel any pain.”
“Oh, you’ll feel pain. You’ll feel everything.” Moving his hand over my breast, I felt the nipple get hard right away. “See, you can still feel everything. But don’t let that bother you or get in your way of figuring out this portal thing.”
“Am I going to get tired?” I asked. “You know, need sleep?”
“You won’t need sleep to survive, the same way you won’t die if there’s no air to breathe. But breathing air feels comfortable and sleep feels good. And sometimes you might feel tired. Again, emotions have a lot to do with it.” Getting up, he reached out for my hands. “So, ready to give it another try? There’re some shifters and other creatures depending on us now that they know we’re out here.”
I didn’t think about that. “I guess with Mist’s arrival and Codut having read his mind, everyone down there knows about us. And they’ll be hoping that we’ll come through for them.”
“And that we’ll do it in a timely manner as well,” Twi added. “See what we need to hurry now?”
“I do.” Looking up at the stars and moon, I took a deep breath then closed my eyes. “Here it goes.”
Going slow, I made the shape and pictured the forest I’d left. Nothing else came into my mind. Not even the sounds of the forest were allowed in. I blocked everything.
My arm began to ache, but still, I kept on going. I had to push past the discomfort to get to what I needed. My body began to tingle as the edges of my vision began to glow green.
The sound of thunder jerked my mind out of the solitude, and I felt hands on my waist as Twi grabbed me and began running carrying me. In the distance, I saw a line of fire raining down as thunder boomed. “It’s Codut.”
“It is.” Twi ran as fast as he could while carrying me.
I had no idea why he was carrying me though. “Put me down. I can run as fast as you can.”
He let me go and I ran beside him. “I don’t know where the hell we’re going to go, Val. We might just have to keep running indefinitely.”
That didn’t sound like a thing that could be done. Plus, I was pretty damn sure the enormous wings of the dragon would eventually catch up to us. We had to find a place to hide. “We’ll have to go back to the castle somehow. There’s no place to hide out here.”
Looking over his shoulder, he shook his head. “We can’t go back the way we came.”
The orange glow of fire the dragon exhaled filled the night sky in a way that left it with an eerie glow. “Yeah, you’re right. I just don’t think we can run forever. I doubt he’ll give up and turn back. Do you think he found us because of me trying to open a portal?”
“I would bet that’s it. You were pulling one up pretty good and then he came out of nowhere.”
“I was?” I had a slight idea that I’d begun making one but wasn’t sure.
“Yes, you almost had it. The green mist was moving all around, and it had begun to spiral. He must have the ability to see very far away if he saw that.” Twi’s grim expression said it all. He didn’t see how we were going to get out of the realm he’d followed me in to.
“I’m sorry I got you into this, Twi. I really am.” I felt terrible for making him feel so hopeless about things. “If you hadn’t come after me, you’d be happy right now instead of running for your life and worrying about your cousin.”
“Don’t think that way. Just try to focus in front of us and do your best to open a portal so we can escape through it.”
He looked at me as I kept up with him. “That would be awesome if you did that, Val.”
“Wouldn’t it?” I laughed and snapped my fingers. “By the power of the polar bear, I bid a portal to open now!”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” he said with a grin. But guess what I see?”
Training my eyes where he looked, I saw the slightest bump on the otherwise flat ground ahead of us. “Do you think someone else got the digging idea I had earlier?”
“I sure as hell hope so.” He sped up, getting in front of me. “Let me go in first. We might find things that won’t be eager to accept us into their little home. And we can’t go in as humans either. You’re going to have to shift on the fly, Val. There’s no time to stop. He’s getting closer. I can feel the heat of the fire already.”
I could too. And that heat made me do the impossible. Picturing myself as a white fox, I suddenly found myself flying end over end then coming up on four paws.
Twi’s red fox was right in front of me. But I couldn’t see the place on the ground that I’d seen when I was tall and in human form.
“Dive in!” Twi sent me.
But I couldn’t see a thing.
Where do I dive into?
21
Twilight
Only the slightest hint of an underground burrow was all I’d seen. The ground was of straight terrain, so the little hump stood out to me. And I’d thought Val had noticed it too. But as I slid in, nose first, I found she’d stayed behind.
The narrow tunnel was a thing I was used to. Val had no idea about how to maneuver in such a tiny space. A claustrophobic fox would not do at all.
“Come on, Valentine!” I sent a telepathic message to her.
“I can’t,” she sent back. “He’s made a line of fire between me and the opening. I can’t get through. I’ll try to run around it to find another opening.”
“I’m sure there’s no other opening,” I let her know. Whatever made this had had a devil of a time. The walls of the tunnel shimmered with what looked a lot like diamond dust. The creatures who carved out the tunnel had left their claw marks behind as a testimony to the hard job they’d done.