Blood Moons (26 page)

It was done.

As the pain slowly dissipated, Tristan breathed a sigh of relief. He'd done it.

His tongue felt different in his mouth and the mattress felt different beneath his paws. His claws were dug into it. When he tried to lift a paw, the mattress came with it a few inches, then tore beneath its own weight, leaving nothing but cloth stuck on the tips of two razor-sharp claws.

His head tilted at the sight. He flexed his paw and the claws retracted beneath fur and flesh, releasing the cloth.

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When his gaze settled on Amelia, she was staring at him wide-eyed, the tranquilizer clutched in her hand. He heard her heart racing; she was barely breathing. Tristan could scent her emotions—surprise and a light tang of fear.

Even the smallest physical cues were so much clearer now.

Her perfume, her own innate scent. Tristan picked up on something that puzzled him until his instincts deciphered the message. She was in heat. Or, as humans would call it, ovulating.

He wanted to laugh, and it came out as a strange bark-growl.

"Holy shit," he heard Amelia whisper from ten feet away.

You got that right.

Tristan pawed at the air above his head, getting used to his range of motion. He got to his paws clumsily, picking up each in turn, unused to the feel of standing on all fours. His new body felt foreign but somehow familiar. If there was such a thing as DNA memory, Tristan felt like he was remembering what the tiger had learned. He might not have learned how to walk or run on all fours, jump, swim, or hunt, but the tiger had. And its instincts were now Tristan's.

He stretched, feeling his muscles and bones settle into place as they should be and it was almost pleasant. He swished his tail far left, then far right, until he caught it in his jaws. His human mind explored every nuance like a little kid with a new toy. His animal body emitted a rumbling growl, almost like a purr, but far more dangerous. Tristan wanted to run. To test what this body could do.

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But Amelia was still staring at him and he could smell her growing fear. Of him, and for him. "Can you understand me?"

Her voice was soft, trembling a little.

Tristan nodded as best he could. He approached the bars of the cage and rubbed his head over them, pawing at them, asking to be let out the only way he could.

"Can you change back?"

He considered that. Having come this far and lived, he wasn't keen on attempting another change right this minute.

He was tired of the inbetween. The shift was painful, but once he was completely in the new body, there was no more pain.

And while Tristan was still like this, he wanted to go exploring. He yawned big and shook himself out, regarding Amelia through the bars.

She swallowed nervously. "I don't know what that means."

After a moment, she tore her gaze away from him to look at her notepad. "It took you twenty-two point four nine minutes to change. Your vitals are fine. Some bruising, but nothing major. It's 11:17 now." She looked at him again. "I'd like to run some tests, but frankly I'm afraid to open the cage."

Tristan made a gruff sound. It was still him, wasn't it?

Although he was starting to get a little hungry, he wasn't about to sink his fangs into human flesh. He wasn't
that
far gone. So he lay down on his side to put her mind at ease.

When she still hadn't opened the cage, he sought her again with his inquisitive gaze, moving nothing more than his head.

Though, to be fair, it felt enormous at the moment.

He felt movement along the floor, minute vibrations of approaching footsteps, and caught a foreign scent. He was on 236

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his feet—
paws
—instantly, sitting up at the cage entrance, his gaze fixed on the door.

It opened in seconds and a male human in a nurse's uniform came in. He started at the sight of a huge tiger in a cage inside the medical facility, and Tristan tasted his surprise and fear on the air. He made a face, not liking it at all. But beneath that odor, he caught scent of something familiar.

The nurse spoke to Amelia softly, yet Tristan was still able to make out some of his words. His mind made sense of them at the same time he identified the familiar scent.

Dara!

He reacted without thought, launching himself at the cage, frightening the two on the other side even more. His call came out as a roar. The cage was inescapable—he'd insisted on it. Now his instinct overrode his common sense and he attacked it again and again, trying to claw himself out of it and knowing he couldn't.

The nurse fled.

Amelia was yelling something at him, but Tristan wasn't hearing anything. He'd scented Dara. He'd heard another male talking about her. He wanted the fuck out of this cage!

Wanted to tear that little shit apart and take her somewhere else. There was a forest just outside. He could hide her there.

When he couldn't escape the cage, Tristan started pacing, sniffing at the concrete beneath and around him, looking for a way to dig himself out. He even clawed at the floor to see if it would give. Not even a little. All he managed to do was dull his claws. With no other way to vent his frustration, he attacked the mattress. Bits and pieces of material exploded 237

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all around him as he tore into it with claws and fangs. There was little left but fabric and synthetic snow by the time he was finished.

He could see Amelia from the corner of his eye, standing at a distance. She was too afraid to approach the cage to knock him out. Tristan wasn't hearing her words. He pawed at his own head, shaking it out, trying to get himself under control.

A strong mind. Stronger than instinct.
He had that, but wasn't willing to utilize it when his instinct made so much more sense. Tristan fought it. He thought of Dara, the pain he'd caused her with the same claws that now raked at the floor. He turned his paw to look at the underside. Forced himself to see; to remember the damage he'd done to her pale skin, her frail body. The sound he made was as much a whine of pain as a tiger was capable of.

Tristan fought the beast he'd become, forcing it back inside, struggling for control of his body. The beast had no words to speak with, but it comprehended what he was trying to do. Understood, but fought back for dominion. The man couldn't protect her. The beast could.

The beast hurt her!
he shouted back and the tiger in the cage roared his denial. Tristan grasped at the last strands of his sanity, squeezing his eyes shut and ignoring everything else but what he needed to do to change back to his human self.

If the shift to tiger had been painful, the shift back was doubly so. His concentration was broken up with instinct screaming for him to do something else. He bled through it, 238

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limbs shifting, joints popping and sliding back where they belonged. His body was shrinking and it felt as if he was trying to squeeze himself into a space too small. He ignored it. By the time he was human, Tristan was once again rendered motionless, a shivering heap of misery on the floor of a cell littered with the remnants of a mattress.

He couldn't speak, couldn't lever himself up to sit. His muscles felt weak and strained. His jaw might as well have been wired shut. Tristan felt caged by more than the bars separating him from Dara. He was imprisoned by a body that could never hope to be as strong and fast as the one he'd just left behind. It frightened him, the feeling of utter loss that made his human heart shudder inside his all too human chest.

Amelia approached then, one hesitant step after another.

She came to the cage bars and reached through to touch his face, then sought his pulse at his neck. "Your heart is beating too fast," she said. "Can you move?"

Tristan tried. The agony robbed him of breath, but he managed to shift his weight so he could sit with his shoulder against the bars. That was as far as he could get without help. He knew he'd just offered himself up to the tranquilizer, but Amelia seemed reluctant to use it.

"Here," she said, pushing clothes at him.

He eyed them, gave her a doubtful look, but tried anyway.

It took five tries and twenty minutes just to pull pants up over his hips and by then he was beyond even attempting to pull the shirt over his head. But the effort it took gave him a chance to get used to his human form again. His breathing 239

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evened out and that crushing vise around his heart eased a little. He needed to see Dara. Touch her. Assure himself that he was still human and could feel normal in his own skin.

Amelia entered the cage to help him to his feet. She wasn't strong enough to support him by herself, so he tried not to lean too much of his weight on her narrow shoulders.

Somehow they managed to make it to the gurney and Amelia hooked him up to an IV for the time being. She talked to him while she worked, keeping his mind occupied. He was tired, but didn't want to sleep. He ached, but didn't want to be lying down like an invalid.

When he tried to get up, Amelia threatened him with the restraints again. Tristan didn't mind those as much as that damned tranquilizer. So, naturally, that was her next threat and he had to relent.

Forced to bed rest, Tristan focused his wearied mind on the link he'd forged with Dara. He could feel it tremble, a fragile thread of awareness between them. He sought her, not to talk—he couldn't manage that much—but just to feel her with him. He needed her to make him feel human again, not an animal, not a science experiment, not a convicted murderer.

For years he'd teetered on the edge of losing his mind; had fought tooth and nail not to succumb to the madness that had ruled him. And he'd succeeded. Tristan had trained his mind to do what he never thought it could do. And when the animal had taken a foothold inside him, he'd fought that too. He'd tried to control the beast, tried to learn how to harness its 240

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strength as relentlessly as his mental abilities in order to save his humanity.

He'd managed to nearly destroy it instead.

Tristan felt Dara start at the contact he managed to establish. She hesitated and shrank a little with residual fear and pain. His eyes felt wet and the beast inside him howled wretchedly. He remained at a distance, close enough to sense but not to touch, leaving his fate to her mercy. Tristan was painfully aware of one truth: her judgment was the only one that mattered. She was the only salvation he had left.

And if she shunned him now, whatever vestiges of humanity he'd managed to recover would forever disappear.

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18th day of the 4th Blood Moon, 3028

"Safe to assume that Dara is the trigger, I think," Amelia said as he came to. Tristan didn't remember her knocking him out, but he'd somehow slept through the rest of the day and night. There was a clock on the wall just behind her that said it was 11:12 in the morning. "What is it about that woman that's got you so twisted?"

"Agents want her," he said thickly, levering himself up to sit. His entire body was one giant bruise.

"I know," Amelia said. "A couple of them have come by yesterday, asking about her. I told them the patient was in no condition to talk to anyone. What's going on?"

"Nothing that concerns you."

She made a sound that may have been a chuckle if it wasn't so bitter. "You're kidding, right? She's interfering with my experiment. Hell, by this point, she's more in control of it than I am. That concerns me."

"The
experiment
was shut down, remember?"

"Only officially," she returned and they stared each other down for a moment. Amelia looked away first, blowing out a frustrated breath. "Look, I'm not an idiot, okay? I know you're holding something back from me and I know it's probably the key to whatever the hell is happening to you to make you the first ever viable shape-shifter. Why can't you just tell me?"

One thing to mess with my body ... another to mess with
someone's mind.

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He wasn't aware he'd spoken aloud, but he must have because, Amelia being Amelia, she had an opinion about it.

"The body can't exist without the mind, but the mind can without the body. Is that your logic? Would you really
want
to have a mind if your body for whatever reason refused to function anymore?"

Tristan knew his eyes were glowing when he looked at her again because she moved a step away from him. "Leave it,"

he said, imbuing the command with as much persuasion as he dared.

Amelia shrugged, but it was not as easy a gesture as she wanted it to be. "I'll connect the dots eventually. I could probably ask those agents and they'd tell me. They don't care who knows what, as long as they do what they're told."

"Amelia," he said in warning.

"You've been protecting her from the first," she said. "Did you know her before New Alaska? Is that why?"

"No."

"Then why? What is it about her that makes her so special? What could one woman possibly possess that could turn a man like you so thoroughly inside out in a matter of weeks?"
And why wasn't it me?

Tristan went still, staring. Speechless. Was his mind playing tricks on him? He hadn't heard anything—hadn't tried to—since he'd started his new training routine. But that one thought had been so loud and insistent in Amelia's mind he'd somehow heard it without ever meaning to. He thought a few seconds back to make sure she hadn't said it out loud, but Amelia was much too careful for that.

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