Elijah. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      She sat down beside him, more than a little out of breath, drawing her knees up so she could rest her aching arms on them. She needed to help him, the urgency of that was beating at her, but she also needed to give herself a minute to shake off the blinding headache the sun had given her. She was nauseated from it, her eyes and her fur itching from their solar photosensitivity. She was lucky. She could bear it better than most because her strength and power were unparalleled among her people. By all rights, she ought to have been violently ill at that point. Now, if she ventured out too soon after this, she would be even more susceptible.

      The Werecat padded on all fours to the lake, sniffing around herself cautiously for life forms before finally using padded fingers and palms to splash water onto her fur. Feline or not, Siena loved to be clean and perfectly groomed, and that meant water and СКАЧАТЬ