Stray. Rachel Vincent

      Away at school, I Shifted when I had to, or when an irresistible opportunity presented itself, like my yearly camping trip with Sammi’s family. While slinking undetected through a forest swarming with humans is exciting in a forbidden kind of way, it can’t compare to the sense of belonging I felt each time I hunted with the members of my Pride.

      And it’s been so long, I thought, watching Marc and Jace writhe, each in the grip of his own Shift. Far too long.

      Six

      By the time Marc and Jace stood, their Shifts complete, I was ready to greet them on four legs. I weighed a healthy one-hundred-and-thirty-five pounds, which is slim, with ample allowance for curves on a woman my height. As a human, that’s not very impressive. But a one-hundred-and-thirty-five pound cat always gets a second glance—and usually a panicked scream.

      But if I was impressive as a cat, Marc was downright scary. Including his tail, he was just over six and a half feet of sleek black fur, sharp claws and jaws powerful enough to split the back of a deer’s skull with a single bite. He was a two-hundred-and-forty-pound mass of graceful, rippling muscles, just waiting to pounce. And few things pounced on by Marc ever got back up.

      My father theorized that in cat form we have occasionally been mistaken for so-called “black panthers,” a term used to refer to melanistic jaguars or leopards. In short, black panthers don’t exist, but we do. All of us, regardless of our coloring as humans, have, as cats, the same short, solid black, glossy fur, completely devoid of stripes or rosettes. Length and weight vary with each individual, of course, but in general we are somewhere between the size of a jaguar and that of a small-to-medium lion.

      Finished with his own Shift, Marc circled me slowly, stopping several times to sniff my fur in specific places, and once to give my nose a quick lick. Finally satisfied that all was well with me, he rubbed his cheek against mine and nipped tenderly at my neck. I let him. Social guidelines were different in cat form, when it no longer mattered who’d left whom, and why. As cats, we were part of a whole, like littermates.

      Jace stood back, letting Marc have his way, because just as some rules changed, others stayed the same. Marc walked the length of my body, letting his tail drag across my back. Then he sat on the ground in front of me and roared.

      My heart leapt to hear it. I hadn’t heard a roar other than my own in years. Ours is not the distinctive roar of a lion, though it’s nearly as deep and clearly feline. It sounds like a series of low-pitched bleats, rising and falling in volume, each blending into the next.

      Deeper in the woods, the playful romping stopped as the others froze in place to listen. Marc had called, and he was their leader in my father’s absence. As the last of Marc’s roar faded from my ears, it was replaced with the sounds signaling their approach: snapping twigs, crunching leaves and deep breathing. Cats could be absolutely silent when they chose, but rarely bothered when there was no need. The guys weren’t stalking; they were responding to a summons.

      In moments, Parker burst through the brush, followed by Owen and Ethan, three dark blurs soaring through the air in front of me to land with delicate, easy grace. Except for one. Ethan landed not on the ground, but on Jace, who rolled over onto his back at the last second. He caught Ethan’s throat between enlarged canines and the vulnerable flesh of his attacker’s stomach with exposed rear claws. They were only playing, so Jace neither bit nor slashed, but had it been for real, it would have been bloody. And it would have been over in a heartbeat. But then, if it had been for real, Jace would never have heard him coming.

      Jace tossed Ethan to the ground, where he landed on his feet, hissing with his fur standing on end. They both joined the others in greeting me. In cat form, even more than as humans, our greetings were very physical. I found myself at the center of a writhing, purring mass of black fur and whiskers, tails curling over, under, and around me. The mingling of personal scents was both comforting and invigorating, as were the memories tumbling over one another in a bid for my attention.

      When my patience dwindled, I nipped at whatever came near my mouth. I got a whiff of hay and dry soil as I bit down gently on Owen’s tail. Jace’s ear came with the faint scent of the Granny Smith he’d finished for Ethan. But no one paid any attention to my warnings until I growled, and even then they were slow learners. Marc came to my rescue, which I thought was the least he could do, since it was his fault they’d converged on me in the first place. And since even the smallest of them—Ethan—outweighed me by forty pounds.

      Marc hissed, and I turned to look at him across someone’s back. He stood several feet away with his neck straining forward and his jaw open to expose a mouthful of sharp teeth, ears flat against the top of his skull. He wasn’t really mad; he was just posturing to get their attention. It worked.

      All eyes were on Marc, and since I was never one to pass up an opportunity, I launched myself over Parker and through a thin clump of brush. The chase was on.

      I heard them behind me, pursuing me for the thrill of speed, and not because they had any hope of catching me. Surely they knew they had no chance. Maybe in a car on a long stretch of highway, but not in the woods where I’d grown up. And never on four paws.

      My pulse racing, I darted between trees and vaulted off fallen limbs, sending small creatures fleeing ahead of me. Everywhere were the sights and sounds of the woods. The undergrowth grew thick and green, and pine trees soared to over one hundred feet high, with the red birches not far behind. My ears were on alert, catching and instantly cataloging the various nocturnal forest creatures as I passed them. Mice squeaked, owls hooted, and possums waddled off in search of safety. I ignored them all.

      For fun, as my heart beat a syncopated rhythm against my rib cage, I climbed a broad oak tree, gripping the trunk with my claws over and over again, leg muscles tensing and relaxing as they propelled me upward until I gained a low, thick branch. With a glance at the ground below, I leapt onto a limb extending from a neighboring trunk. From there, I worked my way along, leaping from branch to branch, tree to tree, until I finally thumped to the ground, already running.

      My eyes were perfectly suited to roaming the forest at night. They made good use of generous pools of moonlight pouring through gaps in the canopy of leaves and heavily laden pine branches above. Light reflected from the eyes of potential prey, and I could easily distinguish the dark coats of nocturnal animals from the shadows nestled in every niche and crevice, and hiding beneath curtains of fern and blankets of poison ivy. Dry leaves crackled beneath my paws and thorns tugged at my fur as I sprinted, my lungs relishing the luxury of such fresh, fragrant air.

      Our forest was home to any number of woodland creatures, the largest of which were deer. But we were the biggest predators around for miles. Dogs—and especially cats—knew to avoid our territory thanks to Marc’s obsessively organized system of scent marking. We had the run of the forest, and we liked it that way.

      On my right, something slithered beneath a pile of leaves, but I didn’t pause to identify it as I ran. The only things I chased that night were my personal demons. Or rather, they were chasing me. For the first time in years, I felt the hot breath of my past on the back of my neck. It was the carnivorous spirit of everything tradition demanded I become, and the only way to escape was to run, to beat the ground with my paws, in a furious race for the right to control my life. And I would not lose. Not again.

      Finally, when my lungs burned, my legs ached, and every muscle in my body insisted that I must stop or collapse, I had to admit that at least for now, the demons were only in my head. My pursuers were my fellow Pride members, and they only chased because I ran. It was a cat’s instinct to try to catch anything that moved, like a kitten pouncing on a piece of string trailed across the floor. And I’d trailed my string all over the forest, practically daring them to come get me.

      I slowed to a stop, listening between ragged pants as I calmed my racing heart. The guys had fallen far behind, and the evidence of their pursuit faded into the symphony of shuffles, rustles, cracks, hoots and squeaks that defined the forest at night. Satisfied that I’d proven my point, that I could outrun them all, I sank to the ground to rest at the base of a pine tree. I glanced around, taking in even the most minute shift of leaves in the warm night breeze.