Pride

by Rachel Vincent

  My mom talked my ear off for the next five minutes, telling me she’d finally met Angela, Ethan’s girlfriend, and how often Manx’s baby was kicking now. Owen had sold the last of the season’s hay, and Vic and Parker were doing regular patrols. The only one she didn’t mention was Ryan, perhaps because nothing had changed with him, in his basement prison cell. But more likely, she was still trying to pretend her favorite-son-turned-traitor had never returned. And I could hardly blame her for that.

  When Michael emerged from the bathroom, I tossed him the phone, mouthed the word Mom, and went back to my book.

  “Hello?” he said into the mouthpiece, already heading into the kitchen to scrounge up some lunch.

  I didn’t even pretend to read as I eavesdropped. My mother hadn’t asked me about the hearing, though I knew damn well that was why she’d called, probably hoping I’d be the one to bring it up. But that wasn’t my style. If she wanted to know something from me, she’d have to ask.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t her style. My mother was more the hint-dropping type, at least with me.

  My mother and I had never been the best of friends. She was grace, and tact, and poise, while I was bruised, and blunt, and loud. But despite our differences, I’d recently discovered that she was the source of my steel backbone, and quite possibly the root of my own stubbornness—discoveries that both surprised and pleased me.

  Still, she was more comfortable discussing serious things with Michael, and, sure enough, as he dug through the freezer, Michael fended question after question, leaving me to puzzle out her side of the conversation on my own, because the rumbling of the ancient refrigerator blocked most of it out.

  “Guilty.” He held up a box of frozen lasagna and a pepperoni pizza, asking me silently to choose. I pointed to the pizza, and he shoved the lasagna back into the freezer. “Not yet. Uncle Rick’s buying us more time.” Another pause as he closed the microwave door on the pizza and pressed some buttons. “Yeah, she did. It was really…interesting. Didn’t look much like the last time.”

  She was asking about the partial Shift—not my favorite topic at the moment. Fortunately, when the microwave dinged, Michael begged off the line, promising to have our father call her back later.

  While we were eating, Jace padded downstairs, clad only in a pair of blue plaid pajama bottoms cinched around his narrow waist. He mumbled a groggy hello on his way into the kitchen, where he nuked five frozen burritos and started a fresh pot of coffee, his eyes still half-closed. Minutes later, the scent of coffee brought Marc out of his coma, looking irritatingly fresh and alert.

  I’d slept ten out of the last twenty-four hours and still felt like crap thanks to painkillers and the constant throbbing in my stomach. Marc had only had four, and looked like he could climb Mount Everest without breaking a sweat. The claw marks on his arm were little more than puffy red scars now that he’d Shifted into and out of cat form twice.

  When he and Jace had Shifted, they headed off into the woods for a four-hour session to relieve one of the teams out looking for the human hikers. Marc and Jace returned around five-thirty, exhausted and disheartened at having made no progress.

  The human hikers had been missing for three days. Brett Malone had been mauled twenty-six hours earlier, and we’d found no sign of the strays we suspected were responsible for both. And to top all that off, I felt completely useless, because my stomach still hurt like hell.

  As I watched Marc pop open a can of Coke after his shift in the woods, my gaze fell on his newly healed wounds and I knew what I had to do.

  It was time for me to Shift—the sooner I healed, the sooner I could get my butt off the couch and into gear. My eyes slid briefly to the closed bedroom door next to mine, behind which my father had finally fallen asleep.

  I should probably ask him first. But I didn’t, because he’d tell me to wait until the twenty-four-hour mark. Instead, I dug my cell phone from my pocket. While the guys watched, Michael frowning in disapproval, though he couldn’t have known what I was doing, I speed-dialed Dr. Carver’s cell, which we all kept programmed for medical emergencies. He’d talked the guys through more than a few tourniquets over the years. And a couple of broken bones, as well.

  “Hello?” Dr. Carver answered on the second ring. “Faythe? What’s up?”

  “I’m going to try Shifting.”

  Silence settled over the line for a moment, and in the background Brett asked if it was supposed to hurt when he inhaled. “Give me ten minutes to get done here.” The doc’s voice held no doubt or judgment of any kind. I heard only acceptance of my decision and a willingness to help, which was a really nice change.

  My father was awake by the time Carver arrived—I strongly suspect Michael woke him—which meant there were four extra sets of eyes staring at my stomach when Dr. Carver examined my lacerations beneath the fluorescent fixture in the kitchen, the brightest source of light in the cabin.

  “Excellent needlework, if I do say so myself.” The doc leaned forward in one of the dining chairs to peer closer at my stitches. “Well…” He sat up, making contact with my eyes this time, instead of my abs. “It’s not going to feel good, that’s for certain. Are you sure you’re ready to try? It won’t hurt to wait one more day…”

  “I cannot sit on that couch doing nothing for the next twenty-four hours. All I want to know is whether or not Shifting will actually accelerate the healing. Is there any chance it could tear the skin more?” The very thought of which was enough to make me sick to my stomach.

  Dr. Carver blinked, then glanced at my father before answering me. “It would have done more damage than good if you’d Shifted last night. But a few hours can make a big difference. You’ve already started to heal, and with any luck, the stitches will hold.” He shrugged. “If you’re feeling up to it, I say give it a try. Assuming that’s okay with the powers that be, of course.” And with that, his gaze slid back to the Alpha.

  My father frowned as he studied the earnest hope surely plain on my face. I knew what he was thinking: Malone would never go for it. The tribunal didn’t want me to Shift because they knew that if I decided to run, they probably couldn’t catch me. I was the smallest—therefore the lightest—cat in our cabin complex, and I’d spent my entire life outrunning my four brothers just to emerge from childhood intact. That, plus my recent enforcer training labeled me a huge flight risk in their eyes, and no matter how often or sincerely I promised them I wouldn’t go, they didn’t believe me. The real bitch of it was that considering my history, I couldn’t really blame them.

  But now that I was injured, things had changed. I couldn’t outrun an armadillo with four holes in my stomach, not to mention the ones in my chest. Surely even Malone would understand that.

  Finally my father exhaled slowly, and the mischief sparkling in his eyes lent youth to his features. “Danny, are you saying Faythe needs to Shift to facilitate healing her lacerations?”

  Wide-eyed, Dr. Carver nodded eagerly, clearly catching on. “The sooner she Shifts, the quicker she’ll heal, thus the faster she’ll be ready to continue with the hearing.”

  “We don’t really have a choice, then.” A hint of a grin peeked through my father’s typically stern expression. “Faythe, you’re going to have to Shift for your own good, and you may as well get it over with now, so the tribunal doesn’t accuse us of trying to delay your hearing.”

  Jace scratched his nose to hide a smile, but I didn’t bother. I’d only been allowed to Shift once every two weeks—currently considered the bare minimum for a werecat to maintain good physical and mental health—and even then I’d been heavily supervised. I was nearing the end of my two-week cycle of abstention, and the thought that I might have to leave the mountains without experiencing them on four paws was making me almost as crazy as the accusation that brought me there in the first place.

  “I’d like to observe your Shift,” Dr. Carver said. “In case anything goes wrong.”

  “Fine.” As badly as I hated havin
g my Shift ogled, I was not going to give up my chance to frolic in the woods over something so trivial.

  My father nodded, and it was official. “After you Shift, you have half an hour to exercise. Make sure everything still works.”

  “I’m injured, not eighty,” I complained, but he ignored my interruption.

  “The strays are still out there, Faythe, and the fact that they’ve abandoned their hideout means they probably know we’re looking for them. Stay close to our cabin and away from the main lodge. And stay within sight of your escorts at all time. Escorts?” My father’s eyes roamed the room, and no one was surprised to see Marc and Jace each raise one hand silently. “Fine.” His gaze returned to me. “After your half hour, come back here and let Danny watch over your Shift back. And Faythe?”

  “Yes, Daddy?” I stared up at him with my innocent face fixed firmly in place. He wasn’t falling for it. He never had.

  “Don’t do anything stupid or dangerous. Understand? You are not fully healed, and you won’t be after a single Shift. Doing too much too fast will only hurt you worse. No tree climbing, no long-distance leaping, and no hunting. Just a little light exercise. Got it?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  Of course, like “be good,” “mind your own business,” and “play nice with the boys,” “light exercise” was open to interpretation. Right?

  Twelve

  Stretchy red boyshorts slid down my legs to land inside my pajama pants, already pooled on the ground around my feet. Tempering my eagerness with a slow breath of caution, I stretched my arms over my head, pulling my pajama top along for the ride. It landed with my other clothes, and I shivered as the frigid breeze brushed my goose-pimply skin. It wasn’t every evening I stood naked in the mountains.

  On either side of me, Marc and Jace were well into their respective transformations, writhing on all fours among dead leaves and cold dirt.

  Teeth chattering, I glanced over my shoulder at our cabin, easily visible through gaps in the bare branches. We’d stopped a few feet into the woods so that if anything went wrong, the doc wouldn’t have to go far for help. In fact, he’d only have to shout, because my father’s silhouette was clearly outlined in the front window, holding a mug-shaped shadow.

  “Ready?” Dr. Carver asked, and I turned to face both him and the Shift that was starting to make me nervous, in spite of my earlier bravado and enthusiasm. I nodded, and he smiled supportively. “Now remember, if it hurts too badly, you can always reverse the Shift and wait another day. Or even a few hours. And if you feel any unusual ripping or popping sensations in your stomach, stop Shifting immediately and let me take a look.”

  I nodded again, too nervous to speak. After more than a decade of Shifting on a mostly regular basis, I knew what was normal for my body and what wasn’t. “If anything goes wrong, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Good.” He made a sweeping gesture at the ground. “Have at it.”

  Marc had fully Shifted by then, and he sat on his haunches next to the doctor, where they could both watch me carefully. Jace was entering the final stages of his own transformation, so I lowered myself carefully onto my knees next to him, distracting myself from the painful tugging sensation in my gut by breathing deeply to take in the recognizable yet different scents of an unfamiliar forest.

  As I put weight onto first one hand, then the other, I mentally cataloged the scents of pine needles, which we had in East Texas, bear dander, which we didn’t have in East Texas, and some kind of sweet, winter-blooming vine I wish we had in our private slice of nature.

  Something crackled through a pile of leaves on my right, and my nose twitched, easily identifying a mouse fleeing from my scent even as I discovered his. If I had paws, you’d make a good snack, little mouse. As if the thought triggered my Shift, the first surge of pain rippled across my back and down my limbs, convulsing my major muscle systems in a graceless dance of agony.

  I gave myself over to the pain, letting the Shift choose its own path through my body, as I’d learned to do more than a decade earlier. If I tried to force it in one direction or another, I’d pay the price with more and prolonged pain.

  For several minutes, as my body ripped apart and restructured itself, the sharp bolts of pain in my bones and joints overshadowed the throbbing in my stomach. My spine bowed. My hips and shoulders popped in and out of their sockets. My elbows and knees made hollow cracking sounds, accompanied by vicious spears of agony.

  Dry grass pricked the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet as they swelled into paw pads. My nails thickened into hard, sharp claws. I let my mouth go slack when the Shift reached my head, distorting my face in a stream of excruciating bulges and new hollows. A moan escaped my disfigured throat as my jawbone rippled with the transformation of my human teeth into long, sharply curved points. My tongue tingled when several hundred tiny barbs sprouted from it, arcing toward my throat.

  My skin began to itch as fur rippled across my back, surging to cover my extremities before flowing rapidly over my face. And last of all, just when I was starting to think Shifting with an injury wasn’t so bad, the irregular line of fur surged down my sides toward my stomach.

  My body had saved the worst part for last, when it was too late for me to turn back.

  I screamed as my torn flesh stretched, burning unbearably as new hair follicles opened and sprouted fur. My stomach throbbed, muscles bunching and expanding to support my restructured physiology.

  Then, finally, it was over.

  I lay panting on the ground as if I’d just run several miles. The sharp pulse of pain in my stomach had dulled to a mild ache, a reminder of what I’d been through, as well as a promise that things would get better. Soon.

  As always after a Shift, my new body felt awkward—stiff, like I’d just woken up and needed a good stretch to settle everything into place. To ease the bad-weather ache in my joints, I stretched my front paws toward Jace, who now sat on his haunches beside Marc, both of them watching me for any sign of a problem. I sank my claws into the winter-cool earth and stretched my belly carefully, hindquarters in the air, tail waving slowly toward the mostly bare branches overhead.

  I felt a sharp twinge in my stomach, and the tug of the stitches, which seemed to have survived my Shift pretty well, so I eased out of my new-body stretch and into a sitting position, very pleased to note that the pang faded immediately.

  A hand landed gently on my head, scratching behind both my ears at once, and I arched into the touch as Dr. Carver’s scent washed over me. “Turn over and let me take a look at your stomach, please,” he said, scratching his way down my neck to that hard-to-reach spot between my shoulder blades.

  Happy to oblige, I lowered myself to the ground and rolled onto my right side, my tail swishing among the fallen leaves, a purr rumbling softly from my throat as Marc rubbed his cheek against mine, and Jace did the same with my exposed left flank. Dr. Carver knelt beside me, shining a flashlight on my underbelly. He combed his fingers carefully through my thick black fur, and I huffed, the cat version of soft laughter. I hadn’t realized I was ticklish in cat form, probably because no one had ever touched my stomach so softly before. It was nice, in a cozy, reassuring way.

  So different from the touch that had necessitated the stitches.

  “Well, the stitches survived, which is good. These new, thicker sutures make it so much easier to Shift while injured…” His voice trailed into silence as he peered closer at his handiwork, parting my fur with a single cold finger. “The skin has mostly mended everywhere but this one deep cut, and hopefully that one will seal itself when you Shift back. But the muscle beneath will take longer.” Dr. Carver rocked back on his heels, then stood, which I took as my signal to roll onto my feet.

  “Remember what your father said. No climbing, no tackling—” he glanced at Marc and Jace on that one “—and no long-distance pouncing. Give yourself a chance to heal.” We all nodded obediently, which Carver surely knew to disregard completely, as he gla
nced at his watch. “You have thirty minutes. Make it count.”

  He could pretty much put money on that one.

  As Dr. Carver picked his way through the thin strip of trees and into the yard, I headed in the opposite direction, tempering my ingrained need for speed with fresh memories of pain and ripping flesh. If I overdid it now, it could be weeks before I saw the woods again through cat eyes.

  Marc and Jace walked alongside me at first, giving me very little space, as if they might lose me forever if I wandered more than three feet away. But the truth was that there was very little trouble to be found so close to the cabin complex, where our combined Pride-cat scents surely worked as stray repellent. Especially considering that the last stranger who’d wandered near had gotten his brains bashed in with my meat mallet. The scent of his blood—now soaked into our front yard—was pretty good advertising for an ass kicking.

  After several minutes, I began to test my limitations, and the guys stepped back to give me more room. Jace played alongside me, swiping at pinecones for me to bat away and sniffing out field mice for me to pounce on—carefully, of course. But Marc stayed on my far side, keeping me between himself and the cabin to stop me from wandering too far as I grew more bold and more confident in my healing body.

  Unfortunately, as my father clearly knew, half an hour wasn’t enough time to do anything too adventurous. It was just long enough to realize what I’d been missing over the last two weeks—namely, fresh game. Well, the thrill of the hunt was what I really craved, but since such strenuous exercise was off-limits, I’d settle for a little fresh meat.

  And when I caught the scent of a rabbit as I nosed through a pile of dead foliage in search of a pinecone Jace had swatted, I made up my mind. I was not leaving the woods without a bite to eat. Period.