“Well, you didn't just suddenly put on half a foot for the first time.”
Drest inclines his head. “I have always been First. The shift is not a surprise.”
Jac cocks his head to the right. “I wonder if you can be gorillan, Paige?”
Drest shakes his head. “There is time enough for experimentation, Jac. In the now, our female must feed.”
With a sigh, I dip my weary head, eyes catching on the sight of the talons again, and shut them against the image.
Food would be good. Then, I'll consider the rest.
Starting with finding the nearest mirror.
Chapter 24
Roiel
R oiel awakens with a start as he usually does, heart racing, the feel of the ground beneath him a solid, reassuring weight in an otherwise treacherous, slumbering freefall. Spinning uselessly in the air but never landing. That is what plagues his sleep. That and the thought of a shank between his ribs.
It is a fearsome thing to live within a Mutable colony. He does not remember his mother, which is the highest commonality among Mutables. After all, most females were bred out and died after producing twins and sometimes triplets as most shifter females were wont to do. It is just biology, that inherent factor that allows multiple births.
Roiel understands he is a pervert and would like to hoof his own ass for actually muttering the words about a mating aloud. What on earth had I been thinking?
I'll tell you what: his secret perversion of wanting a mate, and some of the compulsions that accompanied the idea, were so much a part of his internal framework, the blurted question had been accidental, almost compulsive in nature.
Thankfully, Seiger had brushed it off for the moment, but not before he'd given Roiel the strange look the comment deserved.
Palming either side of his bedroll, Roiel takes a surreptitious glance at the hyenas.
They're all piled together, snouts out, in case there is a threat.
Roiel stifles a snort—fools. He's always been a quiet brayer, letting the clods in the colony make the noise and gather the attention.
Roiel is the strongest donkey, the most cunning. Those qualities were the only things that saved him at times. Being a rare albino shifter did not assist him. Had he been female, the beautiful pure white coat, mane, and blood-red eyes would have been attractive—striking. But as a male, his unusual looks were a bulls-eye for the wrong kind of attention. Then there was all the superstition attached to being an albino shifter. In his half-century of life, Roiel had only encountered one other.
Of course, he had been massacred.
Shifters and humans are alike in that respect: both species feel threatened by those who are different.
Then there's the matter that donkey is his primary form, and he has an alternate form, one he has kept under strict guard, for that form is albino as well.
Saber-toothed tigers stand to gather quite a bit of attention.
Being a donkey marked him as Mutable.
He would be killed before he could find his rightful place among the prehistorics.
He is not truly safe in either group.
The saber-tooth form must be used only when there is a great reveal that would alter his life forever—in a way that would not invite his slaughter.
With a wry twist of lips, Roiel stands. Lifting a leg, he begins taking a steaming piss with unerring accuracy, the small splatter droplets causing a sort of fan effect, landing as close to the sleeping hyenas as he could make it without actually drenching them in his strong morning piss.
The collective of dogs, as Roiel thinks of them, wrinkle their noses, first yipping uneasily in sleep, then waking.
What Roiel finds most pleasing is that they come awake like jumping beans, flailing about to escape the horrible smell of sharp ammonia; paws sinking into Roiel's precise aim.
Sometimes life gives opportunities for humor, and Roiel is quick to take those.
“Argh!” sounds the pirate shriek from one of the lead hyenas as though his ass has caught fire.
Narrowing his eyes at Roiel, he speaks though his voice is the half-growl of his animal. “Why in the name of fucking earth would you piss on us?”
Roiel gives a casual glance at his perfectly manicured hoof then drops it on the tramped grass, giving Travis a level stare. “Firstly, it's better than any alarm clock I've ever known. Secondly, it was great fun.” Roiel's chuckling bray cannot be mistaken for anything but disdainful amusement.
The hyena's paws elongate, going to half-human fists. “You fucking brayer.”
“Yes. Sticks and stones, dog,” Roiel says, sounding bored.
“Why you fucking...” his packmate swings his arm wide, clotheslining Travis.
His eyes narrow on Roiel. “Don't. He's baiting you.”
Travis's face swings to Roiel's, eyes slimming until the iris cannot be seen. “Why?”
Because I'm bored? No, actually, if he can beat down their leader, he will have so many fewer problems on this jaunt. Roiel is being systematic. “Just making sure that you understand Seiger's hierarchy.”
His chin gives a defiant jerk. “I understand.”
Roiel snorts. “Right.” Twisting his thick lips into an expression of disbelief, he continues, “Just so you understand how things will be. You will not run ahead and make decisions with your small brain. Let the donkey do the thinking.” He taps his head for emphasis.
Travis's chest heaves with his anger, and Roiel sights his future beating from the hyena. However, Travis's hesitation is justified, for last season, Roiel dispatched a cougar and bear who thought they would perform an assassination on a lowly donkey Mutable. They are not known for their savagery, but of course, his other form is quite savage.
He'd brained the bear and maimed the cougar.
Roiel had been so thorough in his defense they had not been able to heal from their injuries and subsequently needed to be put down. Of course, the prehistoric blood flowing through his veins aids his strength. But those cowards had never known what hit them.
Literally.
“You don't have to piss on me to prove you have authority in Seiger's stead.”
Oh yes, I do. “Technically, I didn't piss on you, just near you.”
“Uh-huh,” Travis gives a disgusted snort and walks off, marking his territory in the typical, hyena circle.
Roiel watches him for a half minute then determines he's been put in his place and bends, allowing his human form dominion so he can exploit the dexterity of fingers that nimbly roll, tuck, and bind his bedroll. Sliding that and his few items inside the pack, he shoots a lustful glance at the adjacent pasture as hunger beats at his insides like wings in flight.
Sighing, he slides a hand into the side pocket, and in a low voice, he calls out to Travis.
The other shifter slinks toward Roiel in the typical walk of a shifter who is hyena though they all have shifted to their human forms.
“We need meat.”
Travis jerks his jaw back. “You?”
Roiel nods, saving the situation by the narrowest of margins, “I like to partake, shake my system up.”
“I have never heard of a donkey chewing anything but its cud,” the other hyena starts the horrible high pitched laughter they are known for. He was only smart when he stopped Travis's earlier suicide lunge at Roiel. It appears as though that spark of intelligence was a fluke.
“Donkeys are not cattle, dolt.” Roiel lifts his brows, knowing they appear platinum while in his human form. Roiel is strikingly fair—though well within human norms. The only break he has ever maintained.
“Fine,” Travis says, giving a disgusted grunt to aid his answer.
“There's a human food store not far from here. I have sufficient credits to feed us all. Then we go half and scent Casek.”
“The mongrel,” the dim bulb beside Travis twitters.
“Why do you call him by name?” Travis asks as though he poses a casual question.
With an equally affected shrug, Roiel retu
rns the verbal volley, “Why not?”
A pet peeve, Roiel will have to return the First/Lycan mix to the colony. But a small part of him regrets the eventuality, for the “mongrel” is no different than Roiel. Yet, unlike Roiel, Casek is helpless to keep his Lycan form. He always defaults to gorillan, a constant reminder of his superior species to the lowly Mutable.
Therein lies the problem.
That could have been Roiel's lot. But it wasn't. As it were, he'd always been donkey by default.
Hiding in plain sight.
“Eat more slowly. You're attracting attention,” Roiel says in a low voice. A difficult volume for humans to pick up but easy for the hyenas.
“They're not looking at me, pretty boy,” Travis tilts his head back, sloppily licking each fat digit of the grease from the pork bellies they had ordered and consumed like locusts.
The saber in him had relished the delicious animal fats. That would sustain Roiel for some time.
Travis smirks, causing his grease-laden chin to shine with the expression. “They are looking at your handsome face.”
Roiel glowers. Accustomed to being the ugliest shifter in the colony, he must put up with being the most handsome when in human form. It helps in the humans’ realm.
The waitress walks over, and his ancient feline side detects her subtle female scent shift.
She lusts after Roiel.
Human females do not interest Roiel. Certainly, he'd bedded them because a male has needs. Seiger is aware of this basic fact and allows the colony numbers loose in staggered “leave” to partake in females.
Here, in the human realm, he does not have to rape females—they want Roiel. It is an odd and sometimes painful reality.
He'd received beatings for that as well, of course. One such beating had been because a donkey had been ready to fuck an unconscious human female, and something inside Roiel had snapped. The female was one of the illicit trade. They needed only to pay her credits, and she would spread her legs for all who would enter.
Instead, Dirk (of course, Dirk) had hoofed her so hard she had fallen where she stood.
He had then proceeded to tear the lower garment from her body and began to rut. All the while, the other donkeys had been braying encouragement.
In the end, Roiel had thought it unfair. Grossly.
He had moved behind Dirk and his plunging ass. Centering his hoof, he'd rammed it with enough force to bend the donkey's prick in the wrong direction, and Dirk had soundlessly rolled off the human whore, mouth open, drool falling out as he cupped his nethers and rolled about, to hurt to even bray.
It had taken four donkeys to hold Roiel for the beating he sustained from that event.
The act had been worth it, for when he woke and was broken, beaten and sore, the whore had returned. She had been terrified. Nevertheless, she had tended his injuries. Crying the entire time, never saying a word.
But her thanks had been heard loud and clear in her actions.
Roiel never forgot her act of kindness and had locked the emotion in a secret place in his mind, taking it out on occasion to dust off and dwell upon.
“Sir?”
He starts, so deep in his thoughts Travis kicks him beneath the cheap dinette to bring him back to present. “We'll take the check.”
Her heavily rouged face frowns, the pancake makeup causing an unattractive divided number “eleven” between her brows. “Check?”
Fuck.
Roiel slides a clear film from the pocket of the silky black athletic pants he wears and lays it over his thumb. Instantly, the film reactively and invisibly molds to his thumb. “Sorry—just an expression.” Withdrawing his right hand from underneath the table, he observes as the waitress (whose pulsebadge screams Kayleigh in a sickening strobe-like rhythm) stabs a pulse device forward.
Roiel depresses his thumb, bearing the molded and transparent sheath on the pulse doc.
“Two-hundred fifty-three credits,” Kayleigh says in a bland voice. Suddenly, her eyes brighten on him. “Wow—thanks for the tip.”
“No problem,” Roiel replies casually.
She walks off.
Travis leans forward, spinning a napkin around to face him. It has Kayleigh's number on it.
“Way to go, grandpa.”
“It's Lark, isn't it?” Roiel inquires with slow menace.
Lark is Travis's sidekick, aptly named. Where Travis is, Lark has his head jammed up the other hyena's ass.
Roiel allows what he's thinking to show on his expression.
“Well, fuck, you almost outed us with asking for the check—girl thought you were retarded.”
Elbows planted on the cheap dinette, Travis leans forward. “Lark, shut the fuck up. No one uses that word anymore. It's a holdover from the 20th.”
Roiel covers his smile by lowering his chin. They can bicker later. He has a female to find.
“She gave me her number. That is a clear sign that regardless of how ancient I sound, she wants her pussy pounded.”
Travis guffaws at my comment. Because it's a language he understands. Intimately.
A scent suddenly wafts in his direction, and though Jael is someone who Seiger has kept under wraps because of her importance, he had seen her once, from a distance. Hard not to. The flame of her hair is its own light. Beyond that characteristic, Roiel knows nothing else.
But he had been given a scrap of her clothing, and there is nothing wrong with the scenting capabilities of a saber. Earth knows they are weak within the donkey Mutable. Back ramrod straight, Roiel says swiftly, “I scent our prize.”
He has every eye trained on him, each one stiff with tension.
“Where,” Travis hisses, tossing his beady eyes in all directions but the correct one.
Hyenas, the bluntest of tools. “Listen to me,” Roiel says, appreciating the music of the other humans eating to cover his intense words, “The First is near as well.”
Travis pulls a face. “We are too many for even him.”
“Don't forget what he did to your compatriots.”
Their silence is a heartbeat or two's worth then Travis steeples his fingers. “They were but three. We are five, and I include you, my hoofed friend, for you do not fight like a brayer.” His eyes slim on Roiel, “But like something else entirely.”
Ignoring the potential inference, Roiel says, “We are not friends.”
“True, but you couldn't smell the girl even with the bit of fabric Seiger gave you. She's not ripe, she'll smell like the rest of the broodmares.” Travis wings a palm at the females within the eatery.
Shutting his eyes for a tired moment, Roiel reveals the information reluctantly because it will make acquisition more difficult by far. “She is mature.”
“What. The. Fuck,” Travis breathes out reverently.
Lark's eyes gleam, and Roiel stabs a finger in his direction. “Don't even think it.”
“Not thinking, not thinking,” he says quickly, pushing his hands in the air in a warding gesture.
But Roiel knows Mutable nature.
He is thinking.
Chapter 25
Jael
N ow what?” I dare to ask Casek. I thought I'd be safer out of the Mutable colony.
But we've been on the run as hard as we could, and still, Casek doesn't feel it's far enough.
Rising from the stream's edge, he has water droplets running over his bare chest where he just performed a crude bath with his bare hands to remove the worst of the grime.
Fine scars, some fresh, make the water shine as the rivulets transgress the uneven skin, gravity pulling the water to pool at his feet.
“Jael,” Casek says in a grave voice.
I jerk my eyes from his body. “Yes?”
“You're staring.”
My eyes shift away immediately.
“I've told you that you're beginning to mature, and that causes changes in your behavior.”
Casek is being so good.
I don't deserve it. Tears tremble at the
edges of my eyes, and I fist my hands, putting them over my eye sockets.
Suddenly, he stands before me, sinking to his haunches. “I do not blame you. Things happen in Mutable colonies that none of us are in control of.”
My hands drop limply to knot in my lap. “Seiger was in control.”
“Still is.”
“He'll get a new donkey—new soldiers,” I whisper.
Casek's stern face turns even graver than it was a few seconds before. “Absolutely.” His exhale is rough as he plows a hand through his disheveled hair.
Of course, mine is worse. Left long in my brief, three-cycle “childhood,” it's hopelessly tangled.
I need a comb—I need anything.
“I was able to steal from Dirk. He had a credit pulse.”
Brightening, I lean forward. “So we have money?”
Casek nods. “Credits.”
I blow that part off with a wave of my hand. “Where can we go to eat and get fully clean?”
Casek wears a small smile. “A luxury consideration.”
“We reek and stand out because we're gross.”
His golden eyes roam our filthy forms, lingering for a moment on the scabbed-over wounds that cover so much of him. “The relief of not having to withstand more Dirk beatings is profound. Being clean has not held much appeal before.”
Cleaning wounds day in and day out would hurt.
My throat is dry, and I scoop water from the stream, knowing that's probably not the greatest move, but I'm dying of thirst. “Why did Seiger treat you so badly?” I give a small laugh. “I mean, worse than the other Mutables.”
Casek lifts a massive shoulder, dropping it in the next moment. “There's a real hate for First Species. They're a formidable group. Superior, from what little information I've been exposed to.”
“I've heard Seiger make fun of them, saying: ʻthe first of us all.ʼ”
He turns to Jael, giving her a perfect view of his profile, strong jaw shadowed by the dense canopy of trees they find themselves beneath. Puzzle pieces of light lay scattered across his flesh, blending with the proof of historic abuse.
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