The Lycanthrope goddess seemed to make a decisive choice on her next course of action as her sharp, golden gaze took in all of her surroundings one last time. Soon after, she shook her head again, the long coils of her hair coming to life as she did so. They began to slip silkily over her skin, wrapping her almost lovingly in their soft length. The spreading coat of hair became fur once more, only this time the form she became was half cat, half woman.
This was the shape of the Werecat, Siena's third and final form. Tall and beautifully shaped as the woman she was, but with the fur and claws, ears and face, and whiskers and tail of the mountain lion. Half woman, half cat, with the best of both worlds at her disposal. And that included the strength that would be required for her to lift the warrior into her arms.
The warrior, she noted to herself as she began to gather up his dead weight into her cradling grasp, was brawny and well muscled, weighing in significantly for his height of over six feet, even if he had not been completely unconscious. He had remarkably broad shoulders, almost too wide for her to encompass with her arm. There wasn't an ounce of lighter fat marring his trim waist and thighs. It was all the heavy thickness of a finely honed physique, muscled from head to toe, no part wasted, nothing of his structure resembling softness.
In spite of this impressive mass, she lifted him in her arms almost easily, drawing him close to herself as she began to stride across the field. Her sight was made for darkness, everything lighting up in sharp contrasting shades of black and white. It was bright as day for her as she carried her burden into the trees.
They might have presented quite a sight had anyone been close enough to see them, but a quick scent of the air assured the Queen that all enemies had retreated to places unknown, and all other living creatures had pretty much followed suit. They wouldn't even know that the mountain lion's scream came with a fear compulsion that was so powerful, it would force almost anything within its range to run in terror-even some of the more powerful Nightwalkers.
As the Werecat moved through the forest, picking her way with purpose of direction and leaving as little a trail as possible, she recalled that there had been more than humans in the party that had ambushed this warrior. She was aware of the renegade Demon females, mother and daughter, who had chosen to align themselves with their race's enemies out of a disproportioned sense of revenge, all for a tragic mistake no one could have prevented, not even the powerful Demons.
It had been nearly half a year ago, the eve of last Beltane, that the Demons' usually festive holiday had been shadowed by the aftermath of the war these traitorous females had begun. Siena was part of the Demon forces the day they had been forced into a massive battle in order to protect their own from a slaughter directed by the warped will of those females. It was this battle that had given her a glimpse into the capabilities of the great Warrior Captain. He had impressed her. So much so that finding him in this predicament was somewhat baffling.
Besides his fighting prowess, she had noted the Demon had been particularly affected by the fact that the female Druid who had been targeted had been pregnant at the time. The child she had carried was just as much the focus of retribution as she and her Demon mate were, and the warrior had been incensed to a personal level, though the child was not his, nor did he have any of his own.
Lycanthrope males did not usually feel this sort of empathy with children until they were fathers themselves, and even then it was just as common as not for males to go about their business and leave the rearing of children to the women. It was an instinct that was often determined by the natural behaviors of the animal the male transformed into. Changelings were a female-dominant society in any event. The females outnumbered the males almost eight to one. They had always been the dominant populating sex, but war had made them even more so. The male ambition for battle had driven their numbers down.
There were powerful matriarchal morals in a society of such proportions, and they were quite proud of that. As a whole, they rarely had motivation to seek out a battle other than the hunt for food or in self-defense. But even in the senselessness of war, the idea of setting out to hurt a defenseless and innocent child was completely abhorrent to her people. The vengeful behavior of the renegade females from the Demon warrior's race was a perverted form of a mother's protectiveness when her offspring was threatened.
Siena stopped abruptly, her ears twitching as she took in short whiffs of breath, scenting the area for danger. She felt animals scurrying beneath the remnants of deciduous vegetation on the forest floor, but other than that, there was nothing out of the ordinary. The silence was understandable, considering she was crossing the territory in this form, but the blood spoor trail the Demon was leaving behind could attract another predator.
They were over a mile away from the original battle site and there was a stream nearby. She could take the time to bathe and dress the rest of the wounds and cover their trail more efficiently, as was her instinct, to prevent them from being tracked. But the sun was already breaking through the trees, and once it began to touch her, she would become too sick and too weak to get them to shelter. Though a day lying in the shaded forest under the sun would not kill her, it would take her some time to recover from the resulting illness. It would certainly mean the death of the man who needed her to be in top shape in order to save his life.
Siena decided to risk being tracked. There would be water where they were headed and she was quickly running out of time. As she moved with remarkable speed for one so burdened, she continued to consider the Demon women who had perpetrated this crime against their former comrade. She knew about Ruth and her unhealthy relationship with her child. Siena had been part of those who had initially discovered the betrayal.
There was no animal on earth that stagnated its child's growth by denying it the liberty of leaving the den or nest to discover how to fend for itself. Somewhere in evolution there had been a mutation in bipedal humanoid societies that had allowed this to become possible and, sometimes, even the norm. Though evolution was a natural process, Siena had always felt this to be an unnatural mutation. But who could be completely sure? Humanoids were capable of a great deal of aberrant behavior that conflicted with the natural order of living in harmony with one's surroundings.
To be honest, this included her own species as well.
Though Lycanthropes were often considered by themselves and others to be more animal than human, they were still a society with flaws, laws, and free will. These ingredients, while bold and productive in many ways, could be a volatile combination as well.
For example, the race war between her changelings and his elementals. Had this been but two decades earlier, the idea of her helping to aid a Demon, especially this particular Demon, would have been not only inconceivable, but traitorous. Truthfully, there were some who still felt that way, even though their Queen clearly did not.
The previous war between Demonkind and the changeling race had been her father's doing. It had been an aggressive display of manhood that had begun over a small matter of principle and quickly escalated from there to an almost genocidal hatred toward Demonkind. A feeling that, over decades of provocation, the Demons began to reciprocate wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, Lycanthropes were as long lived as Demons, so her father's warring ways had plagued her people for centuries, giving birth to generations who did not understand that there actually had been a time when changelings had not actively despised Demonkind.
This had begun to change the moment she had been elevated to the throne.
Siena had publicly rescinded the declaration of war against the Demon race the moment the collar of her office had been latched around her throat. It had not been a popular decision at first, old and hostile feelings held to heart for so long proving a difficult barrier to overcome. It very well could have caused a massive rebellion.
Perhaps this was where being the female leader of a matriarchal society had its advantages. Her voice had the power to appeal to the large number of females who had never truly wanted to be a part of living and dying in battles that made so little sense. Their Queen had only needed to remind them of that, slowly, surely, day by day. And as peacetime went on, Siena's people began to remember what it was like to live life for something other than preparing for the next battle.
Siena could not, in good conscience, have done anything less. Even though she herself had been raised to mistrust Demons, lectured by a prejudiced parent and the tutors he had chosen for her, teaching her to hate them for the "evil, lawless creatures" they were, fate had intervened, sending her a very powerful lesson that had dramatically changed her perspective on Demons. Her morals and her feminine sense of right and wrong would not allow anything else but a full armistice once she had the power to demand it.
She could not truthfully blame her father's masculinity for all their troubles and poor behavior as a species, but his aggressive nature had done them no justice and she was now the one left to manage the results. Fourteen years of truce was a pittance of time when compared to almost three centuries of altercations.
Peace was an arduous task that could only be done in piecemeal, mincing steps of advancement. Any action done without the proper wisdom of contemplation could lead to an upheaval of the fragile harmony that was just beginning to bud in earnest betwixt them. And frankly, with all the Nightwalker races currently being besieged by these misguided, tenacious mortals seeking their extinction, they could not afford to waste resources fighting each other.
Saving the Captain of the Demons' warrior forces wasn't exactly a delicate step to take. But she would not allow petty politics to dictate whether this champion lived or died. Siena expected no gain and hoped for no ramifications. All she wanted was a cool, dark place to tend his wounds.
She found the cave she was looking for about an hour later, her speed greatly reduced by then because of not only her cargo, but the morning sunlight streaming through the bared limbs of the trees.
Almost immediately after the entrance, the cave sloped dramatically downward, the rock smooth, cold, and damp beneath her bare feet. It took all of her balance, strength, and even her claws to keep from skiing down that slippery surface and landing in the chilled underground lake of mineral water that began at its end. She quickly navigated the thin ledge that rimmed the water. The minute she left a wet footprint on a dry surface, she relieved herself of her burden by gingerly laying him down on the clean stone.