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Lillian
Iwokeupina cell with a pounding headache. In the cell next to me was a massive lion with an impressive mane. I’d seen my ex’s lion before, and this guy made him look like a kitten. He paced back and forth in the tiny space. Across from the lion was a tiger. It, too, was pacing.
What the fuck was going on?
I took stock of the room. For a place that was full of cells, it was awfully fancy. The floor was tiled in an alternating pattern of plain marble and a darker stone with iridescent, mother-of-pearl inlay. Even the antique gold-colored bars of the cell I was in were capped with decorative filigree at the tops. I doubted their delicate appearance made them any weaker; they were probably made of tough stuff underneath.
I was literally in a gilded cage. It reminded me of an image of the world’s most expensive stable that I’d seen online. This place was designed with the comfort of those outside the bars in mind, not the horses.
“Ahh, our new snow leopard wakes at last.” A middle-aged white man wearing a polo shirt was sitting in a chair in front of my cell. Next to him was a blonde woman who looked very much like him. “I can’t believe we had such a rare shifter as a snow leopard living here in Darlington the whole time, and I didn’t even know it. I finally have a pair.” He turned to the younger woman. “Great job, Avalon. I was annoyed that you cost me part of my collection before, but this completely makes up for it. I always knew you were my favorite daughter.”
“Does that mean I get my bigger allowance back?” the blonde asked with a whine.
“Of course, dear. In fact, have these.” The man handed her something shiny. My engagement and wedding rings! I saw red.
“Ooooh, pretty.” She beamed. “Thanks, Daddy!”
I let out a feral-sounding growl. That was my physical connection to Gunnar.
What the fuck was going on here? A “collection”? I looked at the other cats in the cells and a dawning realization made me want to hurl. Those weren’t just animals; they were shifters!
“Hey, I know you. You’re that social media starlet who was caught trying to imprison shifters!”
You’d have to have been living under a rock to have missed that. They’d freed her small collection, but I didn’t remember how else she was punished. Looked like she never was. Typical. Avalon, Avalon… Didn’t her dad have a related name? Damn it, now I wished I did more than just read the headlines of whatever newspaper was on the break table at work.
Blondie just rolled her eyes and walked away, my rings jammed onto her pinky finger.
It was the older man who spoke. “Andthey seized her collection. Well, my collection, really, since it all belongs to the family. But it seems I’ve had a stroke of good luck. It is so good of you to make your existence known, my dear. And you gave us a perfect scapegoat, too. The whole world is going to blame those snow leopards for your disappearance. There are already eyewitnesses swearing up and down that they saw that Shen guy loading you into his Bentley.” He grinned, shaking his head, and his smile made him look genuinely evil. “My, my. People are so gullible.”
He stood from his chair and approached the bars. “Now, to figure out why you didn’t shift after we gave you the shot. What powerful magic are you hiding?”
“Magic? None,” I lied. He didn’t need to know I could make plants grow. “I didn’t shift into a snow leopard because I can’t.”
“Lies. The snow leopards don’t consider children who cannot shift to be leopards at all. The White Claws would never want you for their breeding program if you were already proven to be a dud.”
A dud? Great. That was one name for it.
“That proves how much you know,” I spat back at him. “I can’t shift. Never have been able to. All I have are mittens.” I made my mittens, which came out fast and easily, the claws super sharp, since I really,reallywanted to claw this guy’s face into fettuccini.
“Mittens?” The guy looked very pissed and more than a little incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I am. I tried my whole life to shift and failed every time.”
His eyes focused on the charm around my neck. “No no, you can shift.” He opened the cell door, stomped over, and ripped off the necklace. “This has magic. Some sort of illusion spell.”
He held something out to me, and I only registered it for a fraction of a second before I felt the stabbing of the prong. It was like being stabbed by two white-hot knives. Every muscle in my body spasmed uncontrollably. My brain felt like it was being rattled violently in my head. The shock had me writhing on the floor.
The asshole just tasered me!
The big cats in the nearby cells, already tense to begin with, growled and hissed.
My hands turned into paws, and from the tingling on my ears, I was pretty sure those had become fuzzy too. But a second later, I was fully human again.
“Shift, damn you. I demand that you shift.” He made to tase me again.
I braced for the impact, but the lion threw its entire body against the cell bars and roared deafeningly, and the man stumbled back. Instinctively, I crawled closer to the lion so that I was pressed right up against the bars. They were wide enough apart for the lion’s paws to reach through, and that was enough to dissuade the man from getting any closer. I bet both the tiger and the lion would kill him in a heartbeat if given half a chance.
Hell,Iwanted a miracle so I could shift and do the honors myself. But no such luck.
