Chapter 15 #2
With nothing but willpower, Gweneth walked Jannike to the royal suite, thankful of Shiloh’s presence when they arrived.
“Camryn is having two babies,” Jannike said. “By Jupo’s teeth, I’m glad I am only having one. She bounces and kicks inside me. Never still. I need to pee.”
Shiloh smiled after his mate. “Thank you for saving my brother.”
“We saved each other.” Gweneth’s mouth opened in a yawn she couldn’t control. “Sorry. Mogens will contact us when the babies arrive.”
Shiloh nodded. “Go. You need rest.”
“Yes,” she said, and with a tired wave, she pushed her feet into motion.
The short journey down another corridor—the castle layout confused many visitors and Camryn called it a rabbit warren—past a suit of Peravian battle armor that glinted an unlikely pink under a spotlight and around a corner, she arrived at her suite.
The door slid open to her palm print and Gweneth headed directly to her gel-bed.
As she passed a looking glass, she paused to study her face.
The cuts had almost healed, but that wasn’t what made her stare.
She leaned closer to peer through blurry eyes.
The cat tattoo that had caused so many problems with her father had disappeared, leaving her cheek bare.
She blinked. Once. Twice.
The tattoo didn’t reappear.
She shrugged, the lift and fall of her shoulders squeezing a groan free. Grata, that had hurt. Deciding to ponder the peculiarity the next cycle, she dropped onto the corner of her gel-bed and struggled to remove her boots.
Each boot clumped to the floor, followed by her inner linings. Too exhausted to remove her clothes, she crawled into the middle of her gel-bed and sighed at the relief of not having to hold her body upright. Her eyes closed and she sank into sleep.
She dreamed of a cat. A lone black leopard—a male—stepped his way confidently through a forest. Gweneth didn’t know how she knew the leopard was a male, but she sensed it, smelled it, and accepted the instinctive knowledge.
Gweneth followed, slinking low, trying to follow without detection. The leopard stopped and turned to face her. Detected. Undeterred, she rose from her dropped position and stepped daintily across the forest floor to join him. She rubbed against his flanks, marking him with her scent.
Mine.
Mine.
A sharp pain cut across her awareness, making her freeze in the action of rubbing noses with the leopard.
Gweneth’s eyes flicked open, her vision wavering. Something burst within her chest, pushing, pushing, pushing while the ache and throb of her bones increased until she cried out with the pain of it. She groaned, too fatigued to resist the force that seemed determined to detonate her weak body.
She closed her eyes against the burst of brightness, the intensity of the colors and textures. Every one of her senses—smell, sight, touch, sound, and taste—cataloged impressions, bombarding her brain with information. So much information.
Intense pain burst through her arms, her legs, her torso, and she cried out, but that sharp jolt had done something, eased the pressure. The discomfort faded, and Gweneth took a deep breath. She opened her eyes and squeaked, instantly squeezing them shut again.
The squeak emerged as a throaty growl, and she froze.
Her throat worked in a swallow as she sought the courage to confront the truth.
She’d morphed into a feline.
That was what every clue told her.
Gweneth took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She jumped off the bed. Jumped.
Four legs. Paws. Black fur. A tail.
Cat.
The remnants of her tunic and bra draped around her chest and ribs.
Ah, yes. The clothes on the top half of a feline body didn’t survive a shift, while any clothing or footwear below the waist somehow melted into the skin.
She managed to wriggle free of the shredded clothing, irked because that had been her favorite bra.
At least the matching panties would reappear once she morphed back to humanoid.
The feline part of her ordered her to explore, to check her suite for safety.
Since she couldn’t fathom an argument, she padded a slow lap of her sleeping chamber, filling her nostrils with familiar scents and the underlying ones her humanoid nose didn’t catch.
She caught faint laughter coming from the public square outside the castle walls.
Gweneth padded to her reception room window and jumped to place her paws on the window to take a look.
The restaurant at the far end glinted under the whitelight.
Wow, she must have slept through the blacklight.
Several feline males sat around a table, relaxing with tankards of reeb.
At another table a Redd couple, their cinnabar skins gleaming beneath the whitelight, sat with a snack.
She stood too far away to see what they ate, but suspected their meal consisted of sticks of roasted meats, a specialty of the house.
Satisfied she wasn’t dreaming, and she’d truly turned feline, she pondered what to do next. No one would come to investigate while the focus shined on Camryn and her babies. Gweneth would need to shift back to humanoid on her own if she wanted to leave her suite.
Now, what had Shiloh and Lynx told Jannike? Picture her humanoid form in her mind. Hold it there and concentrate.
With a raspy feline breath, she closed her eyes and pictured herself, plucking the memory of her reflection in the mirror from her mind. For an instant, nothing happened, and a flash of panic caused hesitation. The image faded, and she plonked her butt on the floor.
No.
No, she could do this. Camryn and Jannike managed. So would she.
Gweneth tried again and a prickling sensation tickled across her skin.
She focused harder on her humanoid self and a dart of pain speared her ribs.
She cried out, the picture popping like an Earth balloon.
The pain—no, she thought. Not pain. More discomfort and bearable if she kept her breathing even and didn’t fight or tense her muscles.
With a whoosh, the black fur melted back into her skin, and secs later, she stood on wobbly legs, garbed in her trews, her chest bare.
“Yes!” She fist-pumped into the air.
Her com buzzed and she strode to answer the summons. The rest and the shift had done her good since the weird fatigue she’d labored with had faded.
“Yes.”
“Camryn and Ry have two babies, a boy and a girl,” Mogens said.
“That’s great. Are they all right?”
“Camryn is weak,” Mogens said. “I pray she will survive. The babes are healthy and vigorous.”
“I’ll come now,” Gweneth said.
Two cycles later
Gweneth waited for Mogens in the reception room of the medical suite. The rest of the Indy crew, plus Shiloh and Lynx, waited with her. A heavy silence filled the room, no one verbalizing their thoughts.
Things weren’t looking good for Camryn.
After three cycle portions passed, Mogens entered the reception room. His color hovered between charcoal gray and black. Everyone stood, silent, waiting for his announcement.
“Camryn is no worse. She is very weak and has woken just now.”
“Will she be all right?” Kaya demanded, her vibrant face pale.
“I will know more this eve,” Mogens said. “If she struggles through this cycle, I think she will recover, although she is exhausted. I go to rest. Ry will com me if he requires my aid.”
“Mogens, I will walk with you,” Gweneth said.
He offered a quizzical look but no comment, and she fell into step with him as he turned toward the exit. Once they were out of earshot, he glanced at her again. “Do you have a problem?”
“Two eves ago, I shifted to feline.”
Mogens stopped walking. “Your facial tattoo is gone. I thought you’d applied makeup to hide it as you sometimes do.”
“No, it’s vanished.”
“You have mated with Ellard?”
“No. We didn’t mate.”
Mogens frowned. “Another anomaly. The process varies with each feline. The Virosian felines are consistent in their behavior but none of the Indy crew reacts in the same way. Have you a tattoo on your back like Camryn and Jannike?”
“No.” She’d checked in the looking glass and seen nothing but bare skin.
He nodded. “Nothing else is amiss?”
“I feel fine and managed to change from feline to human on my own.”
They halted outside Mogens’s suite. “Com me if you feel unwell or anything else seems amiss.”
“I will. Mogens, do you…will Camryn recover?”
“I pray it so. A cloud reading will help, I think.”
Gweneth nodded and pressed an impulsive kiss to his cheek. A white swirl diluted the darkness from his features. “Rest well, Mogens. I will try and persuade Ry to take a rest.”
“Good luck.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Good luck with your intentions, child.”
Planet Narenda, Chieftain’s office
“What do you think?” Niran asked.
Ransom pushed away from his desk and stood to join Niran by the window.
The vibrant flowers in the gardens glowed like jewels in the foreground, the wild forest flora beyond another sea of color.
Predominantly green, but tinges of pink and red dotted several of the trees.
And beyond that, the terrain shifted to rolling hills, the very start of the mountain range where they found the raw materials to make their jewelry.
As a youngster, he and his brothers and friends had practiced flying in the fields on the other side of the trees and to prove their bravery, they’d flown close to the start of the chain of mountains—just to show they could withstand the resonance.
He snorted under his breath. Young fools.
A small hit of resonance in the form of stones didn’t hold much danger.
In some dragon shifters, the resonance caused drunken symptoms. An entire mountain range, however, could kill, sending them mad with the ringing in their ears.
Only a few of the much older dragon shifters ventured near the mountain range, and they never managed to stay long.