Page 8 of Shifted Existence

Talon nodded. “I have no disdain for the mates our warriors have brought with them when they returned from the hunt. They are feral and wild; it is the females from the training facility and the males of this world who I find pathetic. Not one of our she-wolves who came from this place has failed to be a credit to her mate and our pack. I was called to a female here in the Conquered Realm. She is buxom and fair, with long dark hair and ivory skin. She is fierce and wild, and I will take great pleasure in siring my offspring.”

The men all chuckled and his explanation seemed to answer any questions they had. Each of the men headed out, most of them casting and sniffing to pick up the scent of a female. The wolves of the Storm Rift Pack were said to be born with the scent of their fated mates in their nostrils. Talon hoped the mirror had not played him false. He had long ago dismissed the notion, even though he was certain he would recognize her sweet scent.

With his first breath he inhaled ram’s head orchid mixed with jewelweed, neither of which was abundant in the Eclipse Province, but he detected her scent almost immediately. The mirror and the woman that had been reflected in the surface of the water had been here, and not more than two days prior. Talon raised his face to the bright sky and howled—a warning or an announcement to his mate that her time as a feral was almost at an end.

Talon divested himself of his clothing, bundling it together so that he could easily carry it in his wolf form. He called forth his great wolf—the swirling, crackling, shimmering mist surrounded him like a maelstrom. The mages said there was no magick in the ability to shift, but Talon wondered how anyone could behold the controlled chaos of a shift and not think it was a special kind of magick. He could feel his body coming undone and then coming back together again. It was not painful or disconcerting. It just was.

When the haze had fallen away, Talon looked down at the shadow of his wolf that was cast upon the bare cliff face. Wolf-shifters were, by nature, larger than their purebred counterparts. His dark brown fur was mixed with cream, black, and brown, with an inordinate amount of his coat tipped in the same golden color as his eyes.

The air and earth were different in this realm. In the Eclipse Province they were clean and organic. Here, both ground and sky smelled of chemicals and waste. There had been some discussion amongst the Council that for the Conquered Realm to remain viable, measures were going to need to be imposed. It seemed that those of this backward dimension had yet to learn to care for their environment. The people of this reality had already begun to construct and inhabit large domed cities with artificial biosystems and had yet to address the problems that necessitated them.

Talon shook his head. No good had ever come of trying to isolate people in small areas. Classes divided, schisms between the inhabitants formed, and privileges and freedoms were given only to the wealthy and powerful. In every single instance of this happening, there had been uprisings where the lower classes had rebelled against their overlords, destroying the cities and returning to the ways of their ancestors. In most cases it was the humans who initially subjugated the shifters, but in the end, it was the apex predator shifters who had prevailed.

In the Eclipse Province, it had been several of the large cat shifters and the wolves who had risen to power, with the wolf-shifters claiming the northern land mass and renaming it the Eclipse Province. The various big cat-shifters had claimed the other continents. Within the Eclipse Province, there were a number of large prevailing packs, as well as smaller, nomadic ones. The Eclipse Province had an elected body to ensure that differences of opinion did not get out of hand. For the most part, their entire reality lived in relative peace, but occasionally disagreements became skirmishes and so the world-wide Council had also been created to ensure peace and tranquility—as much as their kind could endure, that is—prevailed.

Ignoring the foreign feel of the hard packed earth beneath his feet, Talon breathed in his fated mate’s scent. He dropped his bundle where her scent lingered and rolled in the dirt he found there, covering himself in her distinctive aroma. It wouldn’t mean much to her, as humans didn’t believe in scent marking, but he was not human, and she had best begin to embrace what it was to be wolf. Shaking himself as he stood, he picked up his clothing bundle and began to track her, using both the faint remnants of the footsteps she had left behind and her scent trail.

His mate was intelligent. As he ran back and forth along the face of the cliff that rose up from the banks of the river, it was apparent to Talon that she was leaving a false trail while trying to disguise or remove her real one. Many of the women who those of the Conquered Realm called ferals tried to keep moving almost constantly to elude their pursuers. Eventually they were run to ground as exhaustion took its toll. The smarter ones had learned to hide. He suspected his mate was one of the latter. Her trail might seem chaotic, but Talon believed there was a method and purpose to her frenzied trail.

Talon tracked her for the remainder of the day. As the sun began to set, he considered making camp, but decided it was easier and he was less difficult to spot if he remained in his wolf form. Finding a large fallen tree by the fast-flowing river, he hollowed out a sleeping space and lined it with moss and leaves from nearby to make a suitable bed for the night. He ventured into the water and snagged a large succulent fish and made a dinner of the creature. Then, as night fell, he curled up in the tree, wrapping his tail over his muzzle and falling asleep.

As she had every night since the mirror had shown her to him, his fated mate filled his dreams from the moment he closed his eyes.

“Talon,” she teased.

“Come back to bed.”

She shook her head. “Catch me if you can.”

“I assure you, beloved, you are mine. I will run you to ground, bring you to heel, and teach you what it is to be mate to the alpha.”

He was able to grasp her long, flowing dark hair and use it to gently drag her back beneath him. She closed her eyes as he brought his mouth down on hers, his tongue engaging in a seductive duel with hers as he spread her legs and settled himself.

Her primal instinct kicked in and she opened her legs wider, inviting him to knot and tie her to him. Talon guided his cock to the entrance of her core and shallowly penetrated her, hearing her moan in need and acceptance of his dominance. He drew back and entered her again. Time and again he repeated the same movement, each time pressing in just a little deeper. She writhed beneath him as he continued to tease and taunt her.

As Talon felt a powerful orgasm begin to take hold, he surged forward with one strong, powerful thrust, breaching her with his knot, driving to the depths of her sheath. His mate cried out in a mixture of pleasure and pain, her nails raking down his back. He stilled himself and guided her legs up to wrap around his waist as her body accommodated his, the knot swelling to seal her to him.

He began to rock gently within her, establishing a rhythm his ancestors had gloried in with their own mates. A rightness and ecstasy that he had never known before suffused his system as he felt her surrender to him, accepting his dominance and authority over her as he rocked her with an ever-increasing speed and power.

She climaxed again as he continued to drive his knot into her, causing her to begin to experience orgasm after orgasm with barely time to catch her breath. He growled sensually, reveling in how she felt as her pussy spasmed rhythmically not only along the length and breadth of his cock, but around the knot, as well.

Finally, he grasped her buttocks as he ground against her, flooding her cunt with seed.

Talon came awake with a start, using all of his senses to confirm he was still alone and that it had just been the intensity of the dream that had brought him from the depths of sleep to the cold reality of hunting his mate. He came out from the tree and looked at the night sky. The moon was high and wafted through the clouds as if it, like his mate, was playing an elaborate game of hide and seek.

Let her play. This was a game he meant to win.

CHAPTER5

Bailey prowled through her cave and the escape tunnels. Sleep had been elusive. She was exhausted but she knew she needed to sleep only in brief snatches and stay alert. It was the only way to remain free… at least, that’s what they said. But more and more, the idea of escaping the reality of the Conquered Realm and finding a different way of life in the Eclipse Province had taken hold. She had considered the New Moon Expanse, but it seemed too civilized, too formal, too boring. The wolf-shifters she had seen from that dimension were pale imitations of those from the Eclipse Province. And she was convinced that the “training facility” the Expanse used turned women into automatons. Bailey knew she might be wrong, but she wasn’t willing to risk it.

Nevertheless, the idea that there had to be a better way had taken hold and would not be denied.

She couldn’t continue on like this until she either grew too old to bear children or died. And even if she was able to manage to keep her freedom until that point, what then? Was there a place for those who had defied the authorities and kept themselves free? She doubted it. The ferals were not seen as heroes and were treated as pariahs by their own kind. They were called feral for a reason, and it wasn’t a complimentary one. They were considered outcasts and most likely always would be.

The only thing Bailey really risked by finding another way was death. And wasn’t that preferable to the life that had been afforded her by those in power in her own realm? It had all been so unfair. The men in power had sent armies out into the vast lands to find those who either were of breedable age or would be within the next twelve months. The women were given a choice: enter the training facility where life would be easy, and they would be taught the ways of the wolf-shifters, or be thrown literally to the wolves—not at that precise moment, but thrown into the wild to live or die by their own wits and skills. No person or town could offer a feral support or a place to hide without risking annihilation.

The old men in power had struck a deal with their conquerors to provide them with women that the wolf-shifters could turn into mutant hybrids and breed their mutant spawn on. The women would never be allowed to return. They would give up everything—their families, their homes, their friends… their very humanity, but the old men who had lost the war to begin with would be safe. The women of her world would pay the price for their failure.

---