Taken for the Tiger

by Annabelle Winters

  20

  “You have to come back!” came Lacy’s voice through Tracy’s pain, through the mewling of her bobcat, which was trying desperately to push its kittens out into this no-man’s land. “We’ve been trying to find you for years, Tracy! We thought we’d lost you forever! You need to come back! We’re losing the battle here! We need you and the tiger to complete Magda’s circle of power, to give her magic the energy she needs to stop Sinesta!”

  “Stop Sinesta?” said Tracy, feeling the sweat roll down her cheeks as Everett stroked her hair. “But . . . but we saved Sinesta! We put her back together! Reunited the splintered parts of her soul with her dragon! Murad was the threat! A threat we should have neutralized once the she-Dragon’s balance was restored!”

  “Except the she-Dragon’s balance wasn’t restored!” snapped Lacy, and now Tracy could see her sister’s face clearly in her vision, a vision tinged with dark red like it was bleeding!

  Lacy looked like she’d aged, but not in a natural way. She had lines on her face that shouldn’t be there. Her eyes were bloodshot and weary. In the background Tracy could see Lacy’s kittens, and she gasped when she saw that the kids were walking upright already.

  “Ohmygod, how many years has it been?!” Tracy shrieked.

  “Five years, you moron!” said Lacy, finally smiling, her eyes tearing up. “Five years we’ve been trying to stop Sinesta, but her rage is only growing.”

  “I . . . I still don’t get it,” Tracy stammered. “When the dragon swallowed us it said it was seeking balance, that it was all Darkness and so it was yearning to devour Light! It said reuniting it with its human would bring it balance! We went to the Light and found Sinesta’s human soul, Lacy! We dragged it back to its dragon! Reunited the dark dragon with the Light of its human!”

  “Except Sinesta’s human soul had lost its Light,” came Magda’s voice, and Tracy blinked as the dark witch’s face came through clear. “And that was the dragon’s last hope at finding balance. When it emerged into the world, its fury was unbridled. Its need to devour Light was like an unquenchable thirst. It was full of hate, madness, the need for revenge. It killed Murad over the Mediterranean Sea, blasting him out of the skies with fire so hot the sea itself started to boil! And then it went on a rampage, devouring humans in its savage quest to consume Light! Human souls must have looked like specks of Light to the mad dragon.”

  “Five years?!” Tracy gasped. “But wouldn’t it have destroyed the world by now? Eaten every human on Earth?”

  “It would have, but a year ago it calmed down suddenly,” said Magda, squinting as if she could see Tracy. “Wait, are you . . . is that . . . oh, God, Tracy! That’s it! That’s why Sinesta has calmed down! It feels you giving birth inside its belly!”

  “What?” Tracy muttered, blinking as she looked down at herself and then at her surroundings. It was only then that she realized they were back inside Sinesta’s belly! What the hell?! “Why?”

  “I don’t know why,” said Magda, her eyes darting left and right in despair. “I can’t see into Sinesta’s soul. I don’t know what’s driving her.”

  “I do,” Tracy whispered, a sudden clarity coming to her out of nowhere. “I’ve looked into Sinesta’s eyes, Magda. I’m the only one who’s looked into Sinesta’s eyes. I’ve seen why her human soul lost its Light. I understand why the feeling of giving birth would bring the Light back. She’s a mother, Magda. A mother who turned on her child and never forgave herself for it. She thought she could let go of it on that slice of heaven, that she could dance away from all the worries of the flesh. But she couldn’t. Heaven isn’t an escape route. You don’t get to run away from yourself, from your conscience, from your soul.”

  “Nobody’s running away,” came Everett’s voice. But the voice was deep, throaty, and when Tracy turned to her mate, she saw he’d Changed to his Tiger! “This ends now. It ends in blood.”

  “What are you doing?!” Tracy screamed as Everett went up on his hind legs, his massive claws shining in the eerie darkness, his jaws opening wide as he faced the living walls of Sinesta’s belly!

  “The Tiger is the only beast that can kill a dragon,” Everett roared, his eyes blazing with his beast’s power. “There’s no hope for Sinesta to regain balance in the world of flesh and blood. And I’m sure as hell not letting you give birth to our kittens in her goddamn belly! Her mate killed her in the flesh. When she returned to the flesh, she killed her mate in return! These two overgrown lizards deserve each other, Tracy. Let them roam the universe together for eternity! Let them join our own parents, all of whom made choices that defined their future.”

  “And our choices will define our future!” Tracy screamed, feeling her bobcat again try to push out its kittens. “We have to choose life, not death! This is all a test, Everett!” She turned to that vision of Magda. “What happens if I give birth here, Magda? Will my kittens die? Will they be consumed by the dragon in its quest for Light? And if Everett and I return to the world, will our kittens come with us, or will they be left behind?”

  Magda’s eyes were wide, and she just shook her head. “I . . . I don’t know, Tracy. Oh, God, I just don’t know!”

  Tracy once again felt the pressure of her impending delivery, and she groaned as she thought her head might explode. Suddenly she realized it was all on her. Everything depending on her choice. She’d always been the younger sister, protected and coddled. Now she was about to be a mother, about to make a choice that might save the world but sacrifice her kittens!

  She looked up at her mate, a Tiger blazing orange and black, claws of deadly gold, teeth of gleaming ivory. It looked frozen in time—in fact everything looked frozen, like the spin of the universe itself was waiting for Tracy to decide what to do next!

  Tracy cocked her head and frowned as she looked at the Tiger. Didn’t it want to see its kittens born, just like her bobcat was yearning for her to push them out of her womb? Did its blood-lust overrule the need to see its own offspring come into being?

  No, she realized with a slow smile. It’s Everett the man controlling his animal, redirecting its energy towards violence, giving me time to make my decision! The Tiger wants to see its kittens born, but Everett believes that I shouldn’t give birth in this place. I want to do what my mate wants, what my man wants. But I also believe that our animals have a right to want what they want! That was the whole point of everything we’ve gone through, wasn’t it? The whole point of everything we’ve all gone through!

  Tracy felt a lazy smile break on her face, and as the tears rolled down her cheeks, she saw everything laid out before her, all the couples that had come together, fated mates fighting to find balance within themselves, within each other, then as a crew, finally turning their attention outward in an effort to bring balance to the world itself. Everything had built up to this moment, and Tracy nodded as the answer came to her.

  She had to find a way to balance everything. The needs of their animals, the needs of their humans, the joy of the Light, the pull of the Darkness.

  “Sinesta is not some ghoul or demon that wants to devour our newborns,” Tracy said, thinking aloud as the Tiger moved in a slow motion attack. “She just needs to regain that feeling of childbirth, something that was made dark and violent for her because she was killed while giving birth. She just needs to feel it, and the Light will return to her. She’ll understand that a mother’s fate is to love her child, good or bad, monster or saint, human or beast. So I’ll share that feeling with her. Mother to mother. Remind her what it feels like to be a mother. How the love of a parent for a child is what humans and animals have in common, will always have in common.”

  She nodded as she made her choice, relaxing her body and gasping as she felt her kittens slide out of her with ease as natural as riverflow, as beautiful as birdsong, as perfect as any picture of paradise. She saw Everett roar in the background, his claws about to rip into Sinesta’s
body from the inside.

  Then she felt Sinesta . . . really felt her.

  And she knew she’d made the right choice.

  Tracy wept as she felt Sinesta getting put back together by what was playing out in slow motion in the theater of her belly, in her own womb, with Everett’s tiger playing the role of the monster in Sinesta’s belly while Tracy shared the beauty of childbirth with Sinesta’s ravaged soul.

  She wept as she heard Sinesta’s dragon wail in horror as Everett’s claws pierced its flesh.

  She wept as she felt Sinesta’s human cry out in joy as Tracy pushed out the last of her seven kittens.

  And then she wept when everything froze again, the Tiger turning away from its attack to gaze upon its newborns, Everett the man unable to stop himself from basking in the beauty of fresh fatherhood.

  “What have you done?” he screamed, Changing back to the man and dropping to his knees, gathering his mate and their seven kittens in his big hands. “Tracy, if they’re born here, they won’t be able to go back to the world with us!”

  “They aren’t born yet,” Tracy said, smiling as she looked down at the glistening cord that still connected her babies to her body, an umbilical cord that was glowing with energy of both Light and Dark, branching out in seven directions all at once. “They’re gonna go where we go. Now hold on. We’re about to get—”

  But her words were lost as a rush of sea air blasted them, and with a scream Tracy felt them being pulled up along the dragon’s gullet like they were on a slip-n-slide!

  “Wheee!” she screamed, watching her kittens get pulled along with her, her mate desperately trying to hold them even though Tracy knew they would be safe, that the cord wasn’t breaking. “Look! No hands!”

  21

  Everett pushed himself up with his hands, coughing out a mouthful of sand as he took gulping breaths and squinted in the sunlight of the Moroccan coast. He was naked and wet, and he felt the need to roar out loud, like he’d just been born himself!

  Desperately he looked around for his mate and kittens, almost collapsing in relief when he saw them alive and safe on the beach just a few feet away. All seven kittens were clinging to Mommy like little monkeys, fighting for access to her big red nipples, which were oozing with fresh milk.

  “About time Daddy woke up,” said Tracy with a smile.

  “What?” said Everett, grinning as he clambered over to his family, kicking away a big rock, tossing a fat crab out of his path. “How long was I out?”

  “Five years,” said Tracy without missing a beat. “Talk about being a deadbeat dad. I know I shouldnta married a head-in-the-clouds intellectual. But that Tiger’s butt is mighty hard to turn down.”

  Everett swallowed hard before bursting into laughter. “Shouldnta? That’s a travesty even for an uneducated American mountain-girl.” He kissed her on the forehead before bending down and kissing each one of his new babies, four girls and a triple-set of boys. One of them tried to bite his nose, perhaps thinking it was a nipple, and Everett growled playfully at his son before kissing his mate again. “Wait, did you say married? Did you make me sign something while I was passed out?”

  Tracy laughed and shook her head, and Everett was about to kiss her again when the sound of wings and the scent of Shifter blood made him jump to his feet, ready to Change into his Tiger in case he needed to protect his family.

  He stared up into the skies, tensing up as the massive outline of a flying dragon popped into view.

  “Sinesta,” he growled. “You should’ve let me finish her off when I had the chance. Now get back behind those rocks. Protect our children. Don’t come out until it’s over.” He turned to her fiercely. “Until it’s over, you hear? No matter which one of us is left standing.”

  “My, aren’t we feeling heroic! What are you, some mythical beast in a Greek epic? This is a romance story, not a tragedy!” Tracy rolled her eyes as she sniffed the air and shook her head. “You’re losing your sense of smell in your old age, honey. That’s not Sinesta.” She sniffed the air again as the dragon grew close enough for them to make out some shadowy figures on the dragon’s massive back. “That’s our happy ending, Everett. What does it smell like?”

  “Smells like a bunch of mangy furballs riding an overgrown lizard,” growled Everett, his heart leaping as he watched Adam Drake’s green-and-gold dragon swoop in for a landing. On his back was a cluster of Shifters, all of them in animal form, all of them grinning wide as they leapt off Adam's back and raced over to Everett and Tracy.

  “Careful who you call mangy,” said Darius the lion, sniffing Everett and pretending to turn up his nose. “You smell like seawater that just got puked up by a dragon.”

  Everyone laughed, and then the crew of Shifters gathered around Tracy and her kittens, each one welcoming the newest members of their extended family: Ash and Bart the sibling Bears; Bismeeta the Leopard; Caleb the Wolf; Magda the Fox; Darius the Lion; and of course, Lacy the bobcat.

  “Speaking of dragons,” Everett said after the cooing and purring and cuddling had died down enough for him to get a word in. He turned to the open sea and scanned the horizon. “Where’s Sinesta?” He looked around and frowned. “And where the hell did Adam go?”

  “He needs a moment,” said Ash, Adam’s Bear-Shifter mate. “A family moment.”

  Suddenly the skies went dark, and Everett craned his neck upwards, once again standing over his mate and kittens in a protective stance. “Holy mother of God,” he muttered, staring along with the rest of the Shifters as they watched Adam’s green-and-gold dragon glide through the skies.

  Behind Adam flew two young dragons, one green and one gold, both of them flying strong and hard, in perfect formation behind their father . . . flying directly towards their grandmother!

  “Sinesta!” Tracy whispered, clutching her heart as she felt the love in the air, the love of a mother reuniting with her son, seeing her own grandchildren for the first time. “Oh God, Everett! Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Everett felt a lump in his throat as he sank down into the sand, pulling his mate and children so close he could hear all their hearts beating together. He lay his head back, letting the beauty of the moment sink in as he watched Sinesta fly alongside her son, shoot friendly little fireballs at her grandchildren until they screeched in pleasure. The dragons dipped and dived together, rose up to where they looked like specks, descended back down with screaming speed, pulling up just before hitting the ocean, the force of their afterburn sending waves crashing into the shore, splashing all of the laughing Shifters with warm surf!

  “Bloody overgrown lizards,” Everett muttered, but although he tried to sound aloof, he couldn’t hold back the true emotion in his voice, and Tracy just looked up at him and cuddled closer to her mate. They lay together and watched the show of dragon-love unfolding in the skies above, but then Everett frowned as he saw Sinesta’s wings flicker with light.

  “What’s happening?” said Tracy, frowning and then turning toward Magda. Immediately Tracy went quiet, her body relaxing with a strange sigh.

  Everett felt the hush ripple through all the Shifters, and then he heard Magda’s voice. It was a low whisper. Words he couldn’t understand.

  Then he understood.

  The circle was complete. Each Shifter with its true mate. Each Shifter with a complete bond, their animals in perfect balance, happy with having found their fated mates and producing their offspring. Magda’s magic now had the power she needed, and she was sending Sinesta back to where she belonged.

  Back to her true mate.

  “Sinesta’s dragon was never part of this world,” Magda said in a low voice when the spell was complete and Sinesta faded into the distance like a song approaching the end. “Its fury at its mate has been satisfied, and now it is free to live in eternity with its true match.”

  “Brutal,” said Everett grimly, folding his hand
s as he watched Adam’s dragon screech out a goodbye high above them.

  “Why, thank you, brother,” said Bart the Bear, breaking the sadness with a quip that made them all laugh.

  Of course, they laughed because they all knew there was truth in what Bart had just said. A Shifter’s nature was brutal. But so was the universe’s nature, wasn’t it? The universe’s energy was an energy of eternal destruction, wasn’t it? Death of the old. Birth of the new.

  Tracy nodded as she looked up into the stars, glancing back down at her Shifter friends and family and then back up at the heavens. They’d all lost parents to what lay out there. But they had all been blessed with new life. New life that was connected to the old.

  A cosmic circle that would keep on spinning.

  Spinning forever.

  Always and forever.

  ∞

  The End.

  EPILOGUE

  “This isn’t the end of it, you goddamn lizard!” roared Bart the Bear, struggling wildly against the magic-infused chains that were holding his massive body pinned down in his chair. “I just wanted to go to the bathroom!”

  Adam snorted, standing up from the long dinner table in the Great Hall of his lair in the Caspian Sea. All the Shifters giggled as Tracy and Everett stared in wonder. Adam nodded at Magda, as if thanking her for trapping Bart the Bear. Then he turned to Everett and Tracy, letting out a slow sigh and reaching beneath the table.