On the Prowl

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 Monère 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 Monère 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 Monère 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,