Page 40 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
“Other colonies?”
He stopped abruptly and turned to her. She halted and stood eagerly awaiting his answer while brushing tendrils of hair, mermaid damp and curling, off her forehead.
“Who, what, when, where, and why,” he said, debating. “Ever the reporter, aren’t you?”
A wry quirk of her lips. “Don’t forget ‘how.’?”
Ah yes, as in, how much should he tell her? He wondered what Alejandro would have to say about him divulging this kind of detailed information to a woman who wrote for one of the world’s largest newspapers, then decided that Alejandro could go straight to hell. If he didn’t want humans knowing Ikati business, he shouldn’t have come up with this stupid plan in the first place.
“Five total, including mine. But only three of the other four have relocated here.” He turned and began to trudge ahead. She followed, right on his heels.
“Why hasn’t the fourth one relocated?”
“Because they’re ruled by a group of unusually stubborn males, that’s why.”
“So you—your kind—are ruled by groups of males?”
He chuckled. “No. Until recently, as a matter of fact, each colony was ruled by a single Alpha, chosen by Bloodline or the winner of a ritual power challenge. The males of the—” Hawk almost blurted out “Roman colony,” but caught himself in time. It would be sheer stupidity to give away specific locations. “The colony ruled by the group of stubborn males is an anomaly. Their Alpha was killed, and his personal retinue of guards decided to rule as a united council instead of selecting a new Alpha. But that’s not the norm for the Ikati. We’re very hierarchical. Something like your military, with everyone having specific positions and orders coming down from the top. We’re not a species prone to democracy,” he added sourly.
“You said ‘until recently.’ What happened recently?”
Sharp as a tack. No wonder she made a good reporter.
“Recently,” Hawk drawled, ducking under a tangle of vines hanging down from the thick stand of trees that flanked them, “we crowned a half-Blood Queen with a fondness for more . . . progressive ideals.”
“What’s a half-Blood?”
“A crossbreed. Half human, half Ikati.”
Jack stopped dead in her tracks.
He turned to look at her, and she was staring at him in utter astonishment, her eyes popped so wide he could see white all around her irises.
“Yes, we can breed with you,” he said in response to her obvious shock. “And to answer to your next question: no. There aren’t many half-Bloods. It’s forbidden for us to mate with humans, as a matter of fact, but it does occasionally happen. Doing so is punishable by death, however. Actually, strike that,” he amended, thinking of the Roman colony who had an entire caste of half-Blood soldiers bred by the murdered Alpha. “The one colony I mentioned that’s ruled by the stubborn males?”
Her head bobbed.
“Their dead Alpha didn’t see any problem with mating with humans.” Hawk’s voice turned dry. “He didn’t see any problem doing a lot of forbidden things. Then again, he didn’t know they were forbidden. Not that he’d have cared,” he added as an afterthought, and turned and began walking again, knowing Jacqueline would follow, which she did.
“Why didn’t he know? Why wouldn’t he have cared? Can the half-Bloods do what you do? You know, turn into a . . . a . . .”
“Panther?” he supplied when she faltered into silence.
At her small, hesitant sound of acknowledgment, Hawk smiled. He’d have loved to have seen the look on her face when she viewed the video of him Shifting. “The ones who survive the Transition can.”
They walked in silence for a moment, listening to the rain pattering on the leaves and the calls of the birds high up in the canopy. Then Jacqueline said, “You don’t really need me to ask, do you?”
I just like hearing your voice.
Startled by the thought, he didn’t answer for a moment. He held the words in his mind, turning them over and over like an interesting artifact he’d unearthed from some ancient tomb.
What a strange revelation: he liked the sound of her voice. He liked her northeastern American accent, the broad a’s and tensed o’s and taut pronunciation, the way she said “fahrest” instead of “forest,” the way “Mary,” “merry
,” and “marry” would all sound alike. It made her seem exotic to him, like a rare species of bird, China white and crimson red and freckled.
He tried to remember ever noticing or caring about the particular cadence or tone of a woman’s voice, but couldn’t.
“The Transition is a do-or-die event for half-Bloods that occurs at the age of twenty-five. No one knows exactly why, but human and Ikati blood is ultimately incompatible. They survive for a while, but just like a clock ticking down to zero hour, there’s an expiration date for those of mixed Blood. Which is one of the many reasons it’s forbidden: having a halfling child is basically condemning that child to an early death. Only every once in a great while, it isn’t. The half-Bloods survive their Transition—their first Shift—and they go on to lead a normal life with their Shifting abilities intact.”
