Cat on the Fence (11 page)

“What do you plan on doing with this creature once you find
it?”

“We will deal with it as humanely as possible.”

“Why? It should be put down,” said Rao. “It’s not a normal
animal, it’s some kind of monster or some other anomaly. It can pretend to be a
man, and it’s got my girlfriend fooled.”

“Who is this?”

“I’m a concerned citizen,” Rao said. “I can tell you where
to find this tiger.”

Sitting in the car as a human during the ninety-mile drive
to Starved Rock Park, where the Pride was currently in the tail end of their
quarterly retreat, was uncomfortable for Alex. He found himself fidgeting
constantly in the seat. Alex normally enjoyed long car rides but his condition
these days, physical and mental, was anything but normal.

Before they left Chicago they’d grabbed all of the books and
manuals Karabi had at her place on the Pride and Weres in general. The activity
of reading while learning more about his kind seemed to help keep him grounded
and from wilding out into crazy Cat, so he energetically thumbed through pages
while Karabi drove.

“Did you know there was a Werecat-owned community near
almost every large city in the country?” Alex asked, looking up from the page
over at Karabi.

She nodded slowly. “I did.”

“Apparently Forest Gardens, the townhouse where I live in
out in Evanston, is one. How crazy is it that I would just happen to end up
moving there, of all places?”

“I know,” Karabi said. “I grew up there. Remember? We had
this conversation.”

The vague memory of their car ride to her place the day he
escaped from the zoo came flooding back. They’d been discussing where he lived,
just before he lost consciousness due to the Werewolf bite flaring up. “Wait—so
I didn’t imagine you telling me that your parents owned Forest Gardens?”

“Nope. You didn’t imagine it.”

“I guess I should have suspected it all along, though,” Alex
said. “After all, her last name is the same as yours.”

“Whose is?”

“The pretty old lady who owned the place. She’s the one who
told me about the open financial consultant position at the zoo. No wonder she
always seemed so genuinely interested whenever she asked me about how things
were going at work. Hey, careful,” Alex said as the car swerved into the other
lane.

Karabi veered back properly between the lines, exhaling
loudly through her mouth. “She recommended you apply at the zoo, huh,” she said
dryly. Then she chuckled, shaking her head. “Really, Mother.”

Only then did it become clear to Alex why they never met up
at his place, just hers. Soon after that the full gravity of the situation
struck him like a bucking horse. “So wait a minute… You live just barely more
than a half an hour from your parents? But you haven’t seen or spoken to them
at allin
years
? That’s crazy!”

“I already told you why we don’t get along.”

“So? My aunt Rochelle hates me, yet even she manages to call
me every few months demanding help with her computer or her car. You on the
other hand are pretending as if the parents who loved and raised you don’t
practically live down the street.”

“Hey, it’s not all on me,” she scoffed. “It’s not as if
either of them has put forth much effort to try to contact me, either.”

Alex hunched his shoulders. “Then all three of you are
something else,” he said. “Good god, you’re all as stubborn as…as stubborn as—”

“Cats?” Karabi completed the sentence for him.

He snorted and shook his head before returning to the book. After
reading for another ten minutes or so he paused and looked up again. “When did the
Pride retreat at Starved Rock start?” he asked.

“On Monday,” Karabi answered. “The first quarter retreat is
only a week long, so it ends in a couple of days.”

“How long are we staying?”

“However long it takes to find out what you need. Hopefully
that means only tonight.”

“I’d like to stay for the rest of the retreat,” he said,
thinking out loud. “Get to know some more Werecats. Meet some other Late
Bloomers, if there are any. Find out if other males go through the stuff I’ve
been going through. Learn how to really master separating the man from the Cat.”

“You won’t be able to stay if you’re not a member,” Karabi
told him. “I’m not even completely sure they will help us Strays.”

“What does it take to become a member?”

“Well, most Werecats are born into the Pride. Like I was.
Both of my parents are members. But you have to stay active in order to remain
in. I haven’t participated in anything related to the Pride in over a decade,
so I’ve been booted. Although every quarter I still get an invitation to the
retreats.”

“You can rejoin if you wanted to?”

“I suppose I could, but why would I want to?”

“Suppose I want to?” Alex asked.

Karabi threw a doubtful look his way. “Then you’d have to
attend your first retreat, where the members can meet you. As a healthy,
young-to-middle-aged adult, you’d be expected to fully participate in all the
Pride’s events. Including the Mating Ritual they have every night, for everyone
of child-bearing and rearing age. As a young, single, heterosexual male, you’d
be expected to have sex in their orgy every day with the intent of knocking
someone up.”

“Sounds like a damn good time to me,” he said, clapping his
hands.

She scowled at him. “I know you’re a horny devil, but I didn’t
think you were the type who’d find impregnating random women ‘fun’.”

Alex raised his brows. “It has to be random? I mean, can’t I
do it with you?”

She laughed aloud at that. “You’d be expected to mate with any
of the female members who choose you. And only them. Which would exclude me
because I’m not rejoining the Pride.”

“Not even for me?” he asked. The fragility in his own voice
startled even him.

Karabi was quiet for a moment. When she answered, the tone
of her voice was less confident than before. “As a fertile female, I’d be
expected to have sex with more than one partner at the same time.”

“A threesome?” Alex perked up. The image of him banging
Karabi from behind while some other hot chick was kissing her and fondling her
breasts sounded like a naughty fantasy come true. “Not to sound like a complete
perv or anything, but I don’t think I’d have any issues being with you,
bringing another woman to the party.”

She sighed heavily. “You’re still not getting it,” she said.
“Werecats are rare. We’re a dying breed. The purpose of the Mating Ritual is to
encourage reproduction. There is no room for homosexual activity in the Pride. As
a Queen, I’d be expected to mate with two different Toms.”

Alex grimaced. Sharing her with a man? No can do.
Hypocritical as it might be, there was no way he could imagine himself
tolerating his Karabi even
kissing
another male. If that was how it had
to be, maybe she was right in swearing off the Pride after all. “So Werecats
don’t recognize monogamous relationships? Aren’t your parents married?”

“Yes, my parents are married,” she said. “They are also
collared, and too old to try for more children, so they aren’t required to
participate in the retreats at all anymore. And yeah, the Pride does recognize monogamous
couples, but only in the form of those that are collared and-or married.”

“Collared?”

“Collared couples are those that complete the Claiming
Ceremony. Basically, it means having sex on a pedestal and putting a collar
around each other’s necks while everyone in the Pride watches. They wear the
collars all of the time, while human and while Cat, so everyone can see that
they are claimed.”

Alex imagined himself collaring and claiming Karabi and her
doing the same to him. He could picture her wobbling around, fat with his baby,
and the images made him smile. “I would gladly claim you,” he said before he
could stop himself.

Karabi frowned. “Are you serious?” she said. “You haven’t
even met them yet, and you’re ready to conform to their silly customs?”

“Is it silly even if I wouldn’t
mind
being collared
with you?”

“You’ve only known me for a little over a month,” Karabi
said. “Would you normally tie yourself down with a woman this fast, if it
wasn’t for the Pride rules?”

“I don’t know…” He laughed, embarrassed. “Never mind.” No,
Alex wouldn’t have normally even thought about settling down with a woman so
soon. But nothing about this relationship was “normal”. Nothing about either
one of them was “normal” either. He wasn’t sure if there was anything wrong with
wanting to mark his territory so soon but he knew how Karabi felt about being
tied down.

So he dropped the subject and once again went back to
reading. Neither one of them said much more than a few words to the other for
the rest of the ride.

* * * * *

Karabi tried her best to keep her mouth from forming into a
sneer as she and Alex sat in silence at a rectangular table. They were facing
the five council members of the Pride, who sat at a separate table at the front
of the room, writing and passing notes to each other and whispering. Karabi
knew who all of them were, having met each of them at least once before, yet
she didn’t really
know
a single one of them. It felt unsettling to be
closed in a room, preparing to be judged by familiar strangers.

It had been a long time since Karabi had been at Starved
Rock Park, the most beautiful natural preserve in the state. She would have
much rather been out there—as her cheetah or human self—showing Alex the
gorgeous waterfalls that were frozen this time of year, or how to chase an
eagle, race with him in the woods.

But instead they’d been made to sit in this room for hours,
waiting for the council members to finish doing whatever the hell it was they
were all doing and come to this room to meet them. It was now almost nine at
night and still they were stuck in one of Starved Rock Lodge’s corporate
meeting rooms, staring at the handful of Werecats that had the power to
determine the fate of everyone in the Pride.

Karabi hated that. Seriously—why did anyone at all get to
rule over others? Whether or not Alex would get the help he needed from them
was about to boil down to if these five decided it was worth their time and
effort. It made Karabi sick to her stomach.

Alex sat next to her with his hands folded in his lap. He
looked extremely tired, though it was only five o’clock in the afternoon, and
he’d even napped for the last twenty minutes of the car ride. Karabi figured it
must be taking everything in him to remain calm and patient while fighting that
wild, angry tiger inside him. What was taking these Cats so long to make up
their minds? What the hell were they writing and whispering about?

They sat there waiting for so long, Karabi’s mind began to
wander. She reflected back to the conversation she’d had with Alex in the car.
I
would gladly claim you
, he’d said. Her heart did somersaults again just as
it did at the time he’d said it. She imagined them together, making love on a
stage in front of a hundred Werecats. She let her thoughts take her further
into the future and imagined running around a gated park, chasing two little
ones while Alex chased her. She and Alex were wearing matching black necklaces
with lion-head pendants—a symbol that they were a claimed couple of the Pride.

Karabi coughed to clear her throat and her mind. How silly
to think so seriously about a man she’d met just a little over a month ago.
She’d only been there for a few hours and already her resolve was wavering. She
steadied herself and vowed to stay true to her principles. If she were indeed
ever going to settle down with Alex, it’d be on her own terms. Without the
influence of the rushed, primitive traditions of the Pride.

Finally the hazel-eyed brunette turned to focus on Karabi
and Alex and beckoned them with her hand. “Please approach our table.”

They got up and walked to the front of the room and stood
before the Pride Council.

“I’m Cassandra Kennedy. This is Justin Finland, Ava Mayer,
Marcus Thorton and Nadia Malaysay. You are Karabi Minstry, defected Pride
member and daughter of current members Sreedhari and Rohini Minstry. I
understand that you have befriended the Stray here, Alex McClellan, who is
developing unusual effects from a Werewolf bite he suffered fourteen days ago?
For which you are seeking our help?”

“Yes, that is correct,” Karabi replied.

“Are you also seeking to reinstate your membership?”

“No, I am not.”

Cassandra cocked her head. “You are not a member of this
Pride, nor do you intend to become one, yet you come here to ask for our help?
You do realize it is not customary for us to provide assistance and support to
nonmembers and non-initiates?”

Karabi took a deep breath before answering. “Alex is a Late
Bloomer who just became aware of his Cat nature two weeks ago. As the one who
triggered his first shift, which led to a Werewolf bite, I felt it my
responsibility to bring him to you for assistance. I am not here for my own
benefit, but for a fellow Werecat who is in need.”

“He’s not in the Pride, so he is not yet our fellow,” the
one named Justin said with a smirk. He looked Alex up and down before
addressing him. “Do you intend to become an initiate?”

Alex shifted his weight from one foot to the other
uncomfortably. He glanced quickly at Karabi, then at the faces of everyone in
the room before turning back to Justin. “Um, to be honest, the only thing I
have on my mind at this moment is getting well.”

“What exactly is wrong with you?”

“Well, I—” He licked his lips and ran a hand through his
hair. “I have to fight to keep my tiger at bay, and it’s getting harder every
day. I’m extremely horny, all of the time. I’m having a hard time drinking
water, yet I’m always thirsty. These past couple of days, I’ve been hungry, but
food doesn’t satisfy me. Just this morning, I shifted involuntarily, and almost
hunted down a woman jogging near the lakefront.”

Justin scoffed. “What makes you think we can fix all of
that?”

“I’m almost certain that the Werewolf bite has had an effect
on me.”

“Werewolf bites don’t have an effect on Werecats. What
effect are you talking about?”