Chapter 39
Ani
I wake to panic.
I can’t move.
Something is tight across my chest. My hips. My thighs. My back is on fire—no, not fire—cramping, throbbing, splitting in two.
I thrash instinctively, a scream ripping out of me before I can stop it.
“Let me go! Let me—”
Strong hands catch me before I pitch sideways off whatever I’m lying on.
“Ani. Ani.”
Szhe’ka’s voice. Close. Steady.
I blink. The hut swims into focus. Night air. Damp ground. The smell of water.
“Why am I tied down?” I gasp, heart racing. “What happened? My back—”
I try to twist and the cramp explodes again, shooting through my shoulder blades.
“Oh my God.”
Szhe’ka carefully pats me. “You have wings now,” he says.
I stare at him.
“…What?”
He moves to stand, then picks me up gently, Thivoll moving to the side so Szhe’ka can carry me out to where multiple people are gathered, staring at me like they have been holding a vigil.
After placing me down onto my unsteady feet, holding me so I don’t fall.
“We are going to have so much fun, Ani,” Kira drawls as she points at my back.
Something brushes the ground behind me. I turn my head slowly.
There are wings attached to me.
They’re folded awkwardly, heavy and sore, feathers still too new and too sensitive. When I try to flex them, lightning shoots down my spine and I hiss.
“They are fresh,” Szhe’ka says quickly. “Not strong yet. This is not the place to learn, but we can unbind them if you are back to yourself now.”
The panic drains, replaced by stunned disbelief as Ree and Thivoll step forward and use their claws to break the rough rope tied around me.
I’m trembling as I try to figure out how to communicate with this new, incredibly sore part of my body, groaning as they awkwardly elongate, shaking as they extend behind and to the side of me. I somehow bend them, tilting and twisting so I can get a better look.
I have wings.
Bright blue-green across the back. Red underneath, like embers hidden in ash. They’re beautiful.
They hurt like hell.
Kira is sitting on a low rock a short distance away, watching me with careful eyes. Drasuk stands beside her, tall and silent, scanning the opposite shoreline.
And there’s someone else.
A woman I don’t recognize. Bright green hair, standing just outside the circle of our little camp. She’s aloof, multiple arms folded, posture loose but alert. Close enough to intervene. Far enough to stay detached.
I swallow.
“Okay,” I say, breathing through the ache in my back. “Okay. I’m… uh… something. And not dead, so that is great.”
“No,” Szhe’ka murmurs, relief flickering across his face. “You are growing.”
That makes something inside me settle.
The new woman doesn’t offer her name and no one pushes her. She prowls the perimeter once, then plants herself against a trunk within sight of us.
A silent guardian. Or a wary observer. Either way, she stays.
Szhe’ka helps me sit now, hands steadying me when I wobble. The wings feel like foreign appendages. Too large, too present. Every small movement sends a tug through muscles that didn’t exist yesterday.
Ree approaches slowly, as if I might bolt.
“Hi,” she says softly.
“Hi,” I echo.
Up close, I notice the strain in her face. The shadows beneath her eyes. The tension she carries in her shoulders like a permanent weight.
“You scared the hell out of us,” she admits.
“Sorry,” I mutter, automatically.
She lets out a humorless breath. “No. I’m sorry.”
I blink.
“For hitting you,” she says. “Back on the ship.”
The memory flashes. Her hand across my face, the glass pod, the chaos.
“I thought they were going to kill you,” she continues. “You were screaming. They were angry. I didn’t know how else to shut you up.”
Her voice wavers, just slightly. “I’ve seen what they do when they lose patience,” she says. “I couldn’t let that happen.”
There’s no defensiveness in her tone. No justification. Just fear.
“I don’t think I’ve stopped being afraid since they took us,” she admits quietly. “I feel like I can’t rest until I have you all safe. Every one of you.”
She’s showing weakness and part of me responds.
There it is.
The urge rises automatically. The Bitch, sharp and cruel, ready with something cutting.
Oh, so you’re the savior now? That must be exhausting.
It would be so easy. It would feel safe.
Instead, I swallow it.
I look at her properly. Not as a rival. Not as a threat. Just… another woman who got dragged into this nightmare.
“I get it,” I say.
The words surprise both of us.
“I know what it’s like to think everything depends on you,” I continue. “To think if you mess up once, someone pays for it.”
Her eyes soften.
“You were trying to protect me,” I say. “It wasn’t pretty, but… yeah. I get it.”
There’s a long pause.
“Thank you,” she says finally.
And I realize something else. I’m not competing with her. There’s no casting call. No audition. No spotlight.
There’s no invisible scoreboard keeping track of who’s prettier, who’s more capable, who deserves to survive more.
We’re just women trying not to die.
The relief that realization brings is almost dizzying.
Thivoll joins us then, lowering himself to sit across from me. He’s massive, but there’s something grounded about him. Steady.
“You will fly,” he says, studying my wings with open curiosity.
“That’s hard to even imagine,” I reply, wincing as a muscle spasms.
“But not tonight,” Szhe’ka adds firmly.
I roll my eyes at him out of habit—then catch myself and grin instead.
“Not tonight,” I agree.
The new woman shifts against her tree, glancing at us briefly before looking away again. She doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t intrude. But she hasn’t left.
“Who’s the quiet one?” I ask.
“That’s Olivia. She takes a while to warm up to people. Don’t touch her without permission. She’s here because she had a similarly… violent transformation.”
I study her a moment longer. Not hostile. Not friendly.
Just… present.
I shift, testing the wings again. They ache, but they’re mine.
“Now, now, now…let’s see what we are working with,” Kira breaks in, ever ready to get straight to the point. “She’s got a heel claw, so some manticorid.”
A quick glance down to my legs confirms her observation. There’s a curved, wickedly sharp black claw coming out of the back of my feet.
Great.
“Pretty sure that’s drakonid hide at the tips of her wings right before the claws start there too,” Ree points out.
I lift a wing again, this time extending them enough that I can see the tips don’t end in feathers, but transition to a thick blue membrane with two thick claws on the very tips, one above the other.
The snap of Kira’s wings extending startles me, making me jump, and then groan as the movement sends another wave of agony through my wings.
“I don’t have those. What the fuck!” Kira hisses.
“Your disgusting wings aren’t fully grown yet,” Drasuk rumbles, still scanning the horizon.
“What. The. Fuck?” Kira yells, voice rising with each word. “Are you telling me I’m going to have claws on the tips of my fucking wings and you want to fucking bite them off? What the fuck is wrong with you? I—”
Ree cuts her off. “Not the time, Kira. Stow the foreplay until later.”
I cough out a laugh when Kira and Drasuk turn to each other, glowering, but with an underlying heat in their intensity. What an odd pairing.
Ree continues. “I only see drakonid and manticorid so far. I think Kira got too close at some point.”
Kira sputters, but keeps her mouth shut, arms crossed before a smile twitches at the sides of her mouth. As if she isn’t sorry in the least bit.
“I think she has Azoeul’s speed,” Szhe’ka adds.
I raise an eyebrow. “Well, I’m not feeling up to testing that just yet.”
“Tell me about when and how fast you have gone through your changes before this, Ani,” Ree urges.
I take in a deep breath, not really wanting to relive those times, but do it anyway, sharing quickly about my eyes, skin, and venom.
“So quick, painful changes after exposure to blood and venom,” Ree concludes.
“I took a blood bath,” Olivia breaks in, catching me off guard. “Right before zha and I… you know.”
“Zha?” I ask, confused.
“That’s Kroaicho’s pronoun. Zhasie don’t have gender,” Ree explains. “That can’t be it because Kira did something similar and her changes are pretty slow.”
“So what makes you two different?” Kira asks.
“It has to be something to do with the mind,” Thivoll answers. “Nanite function is tied to intelligence.”
“I remember you saying we must all be intelligent,” Ree says. “That the longer our cryo chamber stays powered, the more intelligent we are.”
I snort. “I am not smart.”
Thivoll rumbles low in his throat. “No, you must be very smart or they wouldn’t have chosen you, but intelligence doesn’t explain it fully. I thought it might be because Olivia’s mind is especially fast, but there must be more at work here. What’s different about their minds?”
“Are you autistic?” Olivia asks, looking in my direction, but above my head.
I glance behind me to see if she’s talking to someone else, but it must be me. “No.”
Her brow furrows and her glowing skin shifts from purple to blue. One part of my mind is galloping along trying to figure out what the colors mean, another is working through the mystery they are talking about.
Then inspiration strikes. “I have ADHD.”
Ree lets out a tuneless hum. “That might be it. Neurodivergence. Maybe however this transformation works, the different… brain pathways, or whatever it is that makes your minds different than ours… are a more efficient conductor of the transformation.”
I wince. “In this case, if you’re right, then efficiency hurts like a bitch.”
“This all hurts, I agree.” Ree leans back on her hands. “When this is over,” she says quietly, “I don’t know who we’ll all be.”
“People who survived,” Kira answers, voice firm.
My skin prickles when I hear them talk about identity, realizing I’ve been so focused on my own struggles there I haven’t considered that every one of us are facing the same question.
Who are we now?
I glance at Szhe’ka, who is watching me like I’m the only thing in the world.
I don’t know the answer, but I do know one thing. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like I’m fighting another woman for space.
There’s room here. For all of us. And that feels like it’s going to go a long way toward filling in the void of that lingering question. Maybe we are all asking ourselves the same question.
This might be the first time I’ve not felt alone.
“We have to do more than just survive,” Olivia adds.