Page 56 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Kitan

My skin itched. The Doc told me I shouldn’t risk a shift while injured, that I should be patient and let the bone fractures heal before I put strain on them again. Patience was never my strong suit, though, which was why I’d ducked into the cargo hold for some privacy to try anyway.

For nearly five years, I’d been forced to shift only when my owner felt like it.

I’d been forced to fight in my hybrid form most, kept in that state almost entirely—though sometimes I was sent into the arena in my fur-form or forced to receive punishment in my skin-form.

In many ways, I was lucky my owner didn’t understand the significance of my triple tail; a small comfort.

Like the itch to fly, the itch to shift was hard to fight.

Now that I had gotten my dose of flying during our high-speed escape from Xio two days ago, my entire being seemed consumed with the need to transform.

Sune spent the majority of their lives shifting between the three forms available whenever the mood struck them.

It was extremely unnatural to have been restricted as I had been for so long.

The cargo bay was dark and filled with haphazardly stacked crates and boxes.

A good amount consisted of dried food rations—or so Sunder had told me—but he and Tori had been working hard to catalog the other items, hoping that we could sell some of them or find a use for the rest. I didn’t need much light to see, so I made my way deeper into the bay, navigating between the mag-locked stacks to find a private place for my experiment.

I didn’t want anyone opening the door and seeing me, just in case someone happened to come by.

Hidden behind some of the tall stacks, I briefly wondered about the wisdom of this plan before giving in to temptation.

I unbuckled the leather kilt I wore and let it drop to the floor in a rush, shaking out my triple tail with some relief.

I was always careful when in this form to minimize the chance that someone would see my abnormality, uncomfortable though that was.

The loincloth I wore would stay on my body when I shifted into my skin form; it was made from a stretchy, flexible material.

The leather skirt would fall off, so I figured I’d dress again afterward when I’d managed to change my form.

Optimistic, sure. A male had to be, to get through these things.

I couldn’t let myself think about the pain to come when I tried this shift—if I did, I’d surely give up.

Trying to pep myself up, I had a habit of talking to myself, but it didn’t matter here in the privacy of the cargo bay. No words I spoke were going to make me feel better until I had at least tried to do this.

My ears swiveled at a small sound, and for a brief moment, I worried I wasn’t alone.

I had good hearing and tried to locate the source of the small sound, but I couldn’t hear a thing now.

Was I so worried about being caught that I was imagining things?

My guilty conscience tricking me? Probably.

There was no one there; I had made sure to pick a moment when everyone would be in the mess hall.

I closed my eyes and focused on the familiar feeling of calling on a different form.

It should be easy; I’d done these kinds of shifts dozens of times a day once upon a time.

It was instinct. It was! But it wasn’t right now.

My body didn’t want to transform when I had more than one broken and still-healing bone.

The groan escaped my mouth, unwanted. Pain tingled across my nerves, spreading through my body as I fought to force my fur to retreat and my form to reshape.

My body remained unchanged until I snapped my eyes open and looked at my unbroken arm.

For a brief, elated moment, I thought I had succeeded when my face reshaped.

But the pain in my arm was too much; the broken limb wouldn’t change shape.

In defeat, I groaned, my body snapping back into my hybridform with a shiver.

Immediately, my fur stood on end—I hadn’t imagined it.

I wasn’t alone. My eyes focused on the broken stasis pod across from me and sharpened when I saw a slight flash of movement.

The glimmer of a pair of pretty blue eyes.

THE END

Trickster Caught

Robin O’Connor