Patricia Briggs - On The Prowl

I'm still eating tofu, even though my twin is heartily sick of it. At least that's what I've been blaming all these new cravings on. I haven't resorted to grocery shopping at the pet store yet, but steak is starting to sound really good. Rare steak, with pickles.

And maybe some hot sauce.

The moon was full and round in the sky, a perfect circle of illumination. It called to us, rose some restlessness within us. Sap rising is what they called it in trees. In humans, they called it spring fever. In the Monere – the children of the moon – it was simply the time for Basking, a time to call down the moon's rays and bathe yourself in the renewing light. Only Queens could call it down and share it with others. That was what I happened to be, a Monere Queen, albeit not the usual kind. Not only Monere blood flowed within my veins, although that predominated, three-quarters of it. The last remaining quarter, however, was human blood. I was what they called a Mixed Blood, the first one ever to be a Queen.

So much had changed in such a short while. Not long ago, I had been alone in a sea of humans, an ER nurse on the lonely island of Manhattan, crowded with people, only not mine. Now here I was in Louisiana, ruler of this territory, ruler of these people – more than four hundred Full Blood Monere constituents. Surrounded by my people. And yet still alone.

Moonlight silvered the room, large and empty. Gryphon's room, my Warrior Lord. The first man I had loved, the first lover I had lost. He was dead now, although not completely gone. He'd had enough psychic power to make the transition to demon dead. But he existed now in another realm, far from my immediate reach.

His scent still lingered along the pillow, on the clothes that hung yet in his closet. But it was faint, so faint now. Almost completely lost in the month I'd been gone when I had lost myself in my other shape, my tiger form, roaming the forest to escape my grief. Had I been purely human, I would not have smelled that last barely there musky fragrance that had been my love. It made me grateful then, in a sad way, for my far acuter Monere senses. But soon, acuter senses notwithstanding, that last whiff of him would be completely gone. He'd been beautiful, like a dark angel, a wicked cherub fallen from the sky, tumbled to earth. White, luminous skin, hair dark as midnight, eyes blue as a summer sky. Would his face soon blur in my memory's eye? Would that fade from me also with time, lost along with the hope of a living remembrance of him?

My hand spread across my stomach, my empty womb. I'd just finished my monthly flow, my red blood spilling down the toilet along with my hopes and dreams of a child from him. But it had been a faint hope, at best. The Monere are not a fertile people, and children are few and far among us.

"Milady."

I whirled to face the man standing in the doorway. Whereas Gryphon had been dark, this man was light, with hair as bright as sunshine, his eyes jade green instead of blue, his shoulders broader, his body more heavily muscled than Gryphon's lean, graceful physique. Whereas Gryphon had been beautiful, this man's features were too masculine, too bold for delicate beauty. He was handsome, strikingly so.

Like a Greek god of old. And he was more than just a pretty face. He was my new master of arms.

"Dontaine."

"Milady. It is almost time for Basking."

"Yes, I know. I feel the moon's call. Is it almost midnight?"

He nodded, his eyes falling to where my hand unconsciously rested low over my belly.

Face flushing, I dropped my hand away, embarrassed to be caught drifting like a ghost in my lover's empty room, mourning my empty womb.

I moved toward the door but he did not step away, allow me to pass. I stopped a mere foot away and looked askance at him. He seemed to be struggling for words. "Did you wish to say something to me, Dontaine?"

"Milady, I know you do not desire my touch, nor particularly my gift." He stopped abruptly, laughed harshly. "Speak truth... you abhor my gift." His gift was the rare ability to arrest his change halfway between man and wolf, his other shape. They called it a Half Form. I'd called it monstrous.

"Dontaine, what I said..." I spread my hands open helplessly. "It was said in the heat of emotions – "

"And after my touch made you lose control," he said deliberately, like one intentionally prodding a sore spot. His power affected me oddly when he was in his Half Form. If I touched him when he was in his half-shifted shape, it called forth my own beast – something that used to terrify me because my beast took me over completely then, but not any more. He'd been careful not to physically touch me since that first accidental triggering of my beast.

I reached out my hand, laid it over his forearm. To prove to both of us that, See, it won't hurt us . Only it backfired. I'd forgotten that his power, his normal power, affected me differently, too. It was like shocking little jolts of electricity danced upon my skin for a moment. Pleasurable in an odd kind of way, but with a hint of sharper, edgier pain if it continued longer. Dontaine didn't exactly flinch at the contact and the reaction, but his jaw tightened, and his face became granite hard. Gently, he stepped back, pulled away from my touch, stopping that odd dancing sensation across our skin. "I know you said that you would never sleep with me. Ever."

I flinched, hearing my words repeated back to me, verbatim. Words that had clearly been seared into his memory. And it hadn't even really been his fault. At the time, Gryphon, my lover, had been trying to throw me into Dontaine's bed so that I might acquire his rare Half Form ability. Another oddity of mine. When Monere men mated with a Queen, they usually gained some of her power, and if lucky, some of her gifts. It worked that way with me, too, but went the other way as well. I tended to gain some of the men's power and gifts, as well. I was like a sexual vampire sucking up gifts instead of blood.

"Forgive me," Dontaine said, seeing the expression on my face. "I did not wish to bring up painful memories for you, though I obviously did so in my clumsy attempt at explanation. What I am trying to say is that I come from a line that has proven fertile. Not just my sister and I. My mother Margaret had two brothers, and her father had a sibling as well. If you desire a child..." He stopped speaking and looked at me, his eyes pained by my rejection in the past, yet generous enough to offer this when he'd seen my need.

"Dontaine – "

"Please, before you rebuff me yet again, let me explain that what you feel will only grow stronger with time."

My eyes widened upon hearing this. "What do you mean?"

"Your yearning for a child. It comes to all Monere women of child-bearing age. An inbred instinct, a need that will grow even stronger with each passing year."

"Oh. I'd thought it simply part of my grief for Gryphon, not an in-built species propagation thing. Though I shouldn't be so surprised by it." Lots of other in-built goodies to ensure that our people spread wide and proliferated. It had worked, up to a point.

"I can give you a child," he said.

I looked at him, this extraordinarily proud and handsome man, humbling himself to offer me this tempting gift. But I could not take it. And he saw that answer on my face even before I spoke.

"Thank you," I said, my voice soft, husky. "It is a most generous offer, but – "

"But you still have another lover, Lord Amber."

"And Halcyon," I whispered.

"Ah, the Demon Prince, too." He was quiet for a moment, obviously searching his memory for when Halcyon and I could have come together. "When you helped him return to his realm," he finally said.