Lynn hadn’t been sure about shifting alongside Ken. She wasn’t used to spending time around very large predators.
And the other predatory shifters she had spent time around—well, either they’d been her family, other lynxes like her sister and grandmother…or they’d been the local mountain lions and wolves, and Lynn tended not to get along with them. Being around them, knowing that they had the strength and power to give her a tough time if they decided to bother her, put her on edge.
So she’d been a bit worried that if she was in her lynx form, she’d be too wary of Ken’s lion form, or that she’d be instinctively aggressive toward him.
Which would…not be ideal. She was starting to realize that, more than just finding him interesting, she actually liked Ken. She was actually enjoying these private mornings together, alone in the encroaching dawn, surrounded by silent forest on all sides, talking softly with one another.
She definitely hadn’t anticipated this.
And, as it turned out, she hadn’t anticipated how she’d feel when Ken shifted, either.
All of a sudden, there was a truly enormous cat next to her. Lynxes were medium-sized big cats, not tiny by any means…but her size was absolutely nothing compared to his. When he padded up to her, she had to sit back on her haunches to look up at him. His physical presence was—was there a positive version of menacing? Like she could feel his heat, his lion’s breath, the long fur of his mane, all of it taking up what felt like the entire clearing, but it wasn’t frightening at all.
Because her lynx wasn’t upset about the nearby lion in the least. There was no fear, no aggression, not even any wariness or tension.
Nope. Her lynx was delighted.
Look at him, she purred. Look how big and powerful. Do you think he wants to play?
He’s working, Lynn said severely.
But her lynx was eyeing the lion in a thoughtful way. He’s so large. He could catch us fast, if we were running. He could catch anything.
Lynn had never heard her lynx even hint at the idea that being caught, or bested in any way, was a good thing. Normally she was even more wildly fierce than Lynn’s human side.
He could protect us from anything, too, her lynx considered.
We don’t need protection, Lynn told her firmly. She stood, twitched her ears at Ken, and started off at a trot into the woods. Clearly sitting around here and thinking wasn’t doing anybody any good.
Ken followed quickly, and Lynn found that her awareness of him wasn’t lessened at all now that they were on the move. In fact, it was the opposite. He was quiet, able like all big cats to move swiftly and silently when the need arose, but she could feel the air displaced as he moved, his quick breaths ruffling her fur when he got too close on her tail.
She made herself focus on her surroundings. She led him through clearings, through areas where the forest had come back as dense as ever, through the occasional spot where the underbrush had taken over before the trees could grow back, leaving a thicket of bushes open to the sky.
They did a circuit around the area that had been logged. Lynn wondered what the land here had looked like, a hundred years ago. Similar, probably, but the feel of it must have been so different—no offroad vehicles, no trails to get people back to town, almost no towns. Hardly any people at all.
A shifter, back then, would’ve felt like a real wild animal, with no fear of or dependence on human civilization at all.
A nip on her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts.
It didn’t hurt at all—it was just a little playful bite, the barest touch of teeth. But she whirled anyway, to find Ken sitting on his haunches, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. His ears flicked twice, and then suddenly he was up and bounding away.
Before she could think too hard about it, Lynn had leapt up and was chasing after him.
She quickly realized that a lion wasn’t totally guaranteed to be victorious over a lynx. She almost caught him twice before he turned the tables and started chasing her, and she found that she could wriggle through thickets and dodge between close-growing trees more easily than he could, with his greater bulk.
On the other hand, he could bound and leap further than she would’ve thought possible, and if there was an open stretch of ground, their game of chase went in his favor very, very quickly.
There was a moment when she’d hauled herself up a tree by the force of her claws, and perched in the V of two branches, looking down on him, where she wondered, What on earth am I doing?
Playing! her lynx growled back, a playful growl rising in her chest as she stared down at her adversary, pacing around the trunk of the tree.
I don’t…play, Lynn thought. And it was true. She enjoyed herself, sure, but it was usually either quietly, sitting and appreciating the wilderness, or productively, hiking around with clients.
Expending so much energy purely for the sake of…fun…was a foreign idea to her. She wondered when she’d lost it—she’d definitely known how to run and play when she was a kid. But somehow, over the years, it had faded away.
Now, though, she was caught up in the sense of gleeful competition, this idea that she and Ken were locked in a no-stakes combat and no matter who won or lost, it was just a good time.
So she crouched on her tree branch, feeling her butt start to wiggle as she prepared to leap. Ken’s eyes were locked on her, and she stared back—right up until the last second, when she shifted her gaze to the next tree over, and sprang.