Page 39 of Old Secrets

“I no longer have to worry if she trips and falls into a puddle?”

I laughed, and knowing it would drive him insane, I said, “You might have to worry for other reasons now, Jake. You might not get me out of the puddle. I might just stay in the puddle forever.”

Through mouthing words, my mate informed me I would pay for my commentary later. Knowing him, I would enjoy every minute of it. Satisfied I’d won the round, I examined my mother nose to tail. Unlike most dinosaurs, she stood upright like a human although her body shape allowed her to adopt a streamlined running stride. Having witnessed her jump, I bore a healthy respect for her muscular legs, which were longer than a human’s and better designed for long leaps and ground-eating gaits. “If you were to race a cheetah, who would win?”

“The cheetah initially,” my father admitted. “But we have the endurance they do not, and we are not much slower when chasing. We can run on all fours in this shape, which is a little faster than when on two legs, but our agility is reduced. Cheetahs make excellent companions for us, and we spent many a year hunting with them when we roamed the world. It saddened us when catastrophe befell them, although I find comfort they managed to endure through the years, although so few remained then.”

Unlike a dinosaur, which had a powerful, thick tail much like a lizard’s, I determined my mother’s tail, thicker and more plush than any animal’s tail I’d seen, matched mine, although it was much larger and softer. “Will my coat soften like this, too?”

“Yes. The younglings have a coarser coat texture until they reach at least fifty.”

I nodded. “Can she speak in this form?”

“Yes and no. That is a magic you’ll have to learn for yourself. We’ve been having a conversation the entire time. She finds your curiosity pleasing, and she does not mind touch. Amrita? Did you warn our hosts of the sounds you can make?”

My mother nodded.

“I recommend you step back. She’ll demonstrate some of our offensive and defensive abilities. Be as soft as you can about it,” my father requested, and he covered his ears.

With a little more warning, I would have done the same, but my mother inhaled and issued forth a sharp bark, and the sound pierced through the air, stabbed at my eardrums, and burned within my very bones. I yelped, as did Jake. Without hesitation, she added to the barrage with a series of deep hoots, which resonated in my chest. I discovered she could, at her whim, dictate my heartbeat through the sound.

She took care with falling quiet, and she cooed at us, adding in a trill and a soft, rumbling purr.

My father chuckled and lowered his hands from his ears. “We have many more sounds in that shape, and you’ll find many of them are potent. We are also able to call mundane foxes to us.”

“Is it normal for the foxes to listen when we’re in fox form as well?”

My parents nodded, and my father came over, giving my shoulder a pat. “Just as it’s normal for a little one like yourself to find comfort in a vixen’s den when not around others of our kind. We heard that tale, and many others, of your time when little. That is not how we would have raised you, although we would have been harsh regarding some aspects of your care due to necessity.”

“Not biting people is important to learn,” I agreed.

“And when raised among us, your teeth would have been rather sharp and dangerous.” My father opened his mouth and showed me his teeth, gesturing to several of his, which were more pointed and with a jagged edge compared to a human’s. “When our nature is restrained, we can make our teeth appear to be more human. You were likely required to act like a human, and…”

“My adoptive parents,” I prompted. “What Ma did didn’t change the fact she was my ma for most of my life, even when the circumstances could be better. While I cannot erase her from the past, I am choosing to erase her from the future. She was not ideal, and I logically know that now. I did not understand that then, nor was I in a position to accept such a betrayal.”

Jake snagged me by the waist, pulled me to him, and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. “We’ve been worried because she seemed to have hormonal issues and odd growth spurts.”

“May my Amrita spare me from her wrath for this, but you have nothing to be concerned with. Our children are ready to have litters by the time they are seventeen, although most wait for a while and do not engage with a male for some years after. None of our children have had children; very few survived beyond the age of twenty-two or so. The world is a harsh place, and while they carried the gift of our longevity within them, we can be killed. It becomes harder to kill us as the years go by. By thirty, we are far more durable than the average human, but our children simply never have lived that long.”

Until now. “I’m the oldest child you’ve ever had?”

While both of my parents hesitated, they nodded.

“We allowed our children to run wild and free when the winds sang to them and they wished to go. We guarded them the best we could from a distance, but the world was not kind. It never has been. But then Yamāntaka came, and we counted the length of their lives in hours and days. Our grief has survived far longer than they. Yet that is the one thing we have not had, the chance to witness our progeny survive and thrive in this world. Our children are not a legacy or a prize for us to hold. Life is a gift, however long or short that life may be. Your wolf may live long and prosperous, much like we have lived long, although we have not prospered as we would like.”

How could they, with a group of child-killing bastards haunting their steps and holding them captive in what should have been their sanctuary? “Hey, Jake?”

“What is it?”

“Think the Inquisition will let us murder them all?”

“Considering they gave you your favorite gun, I suspect they’ll provide ammunition for it and look the other way while you artistically paint the landscape with their blood.”

“Maybe we should go to the shooting range for some practice. I don’t want to waste the extra rounds. I would prefer a one and done affair.”

“Do you really think you could hit them with just one round when using that gun?”

“That’s a good point. I better get a second gun, one with a sensible firing rate. How about a machine gun? I could go for a rocket launcher, too.”