She stopped when there was a tap at the door, but didn’t get a chance to say anything before it opened.

  Delight came and stood by her seat, looking down.

  “Not your fault,” the agent declared. “You offered them a partnership. They chose to steal what they should have paid for.”

  The woman’s face took on a grim look. “And now we have what we need to nail them.”

  She tapped the screen. “This was posted before they filed any claim on this world. We’ve checked their other sources. They don’t have anything on file that matches this, not until six days after the raid…which is half again the time it takes a message torp to skip the distance to their closest facility.”

  Tika flinched as the agent patted her shoulder.

  “And Odyssey controls the comms array servicing that. I’d say your colony is about to become very well-funded, indeed.” The agent said that like it was a good thing, her grim smile turning to puzzlement when Tika didn’t respond. “What’s wrong?”

  “The kit…”

  Delight’s puzzlement grew deeper. “What about the kit?”

  For a moment, Tika wondered if it would be better to not remind the agent of what she’d promised to check, but before she could withdraw her question, Delight’s face cleared.

  “The kid’s off the hook, although I still say the little demon needs his tail paddled so he can’t sit down for a week,” and here, she glared at Pritchard as though that event not happening was all his fault.

  “And the male?”

  “Might have been in trouble if it wasn’t for two things,” Delight replied. “Firstly, he needed to make sure there were enough transgenics in your system for the cub’s bite not to kill you by starting a reaction it couldn’t finish.”

  “And secondly?” Tika asked.

  “Their medic was correct. The only way for you to survive the internal injuries you’d suffered during the cave-in was to make you a shifter.”

  Tika remembered she’d been a month in the tank. “But it wasn’t enough, was it?”

  Delight stilled, then shrugged. “It gave us enough time to get you into a tank, but because they waited so long, your body couldn’t heal the damage…not even as a shifter.”

  “So, it’s permanent.” Tika didn’t know whether to be happy or horrified.

  Delight gave her a sharp glance, and gestured at where Donovan stood at the door beside Pritchard. “Like werewolves but without that garbage about being tied to lunar cycles.”

  Donovan looked faintly offended, and Pritchard leant his head against his hand.

  Delight continued as though she hadn’t noticed. “Not all wolves are born. Some come about the same way you did. They’re made.”

  Tika glanced at Donovan, wondering, and he shook his head.

  “I had fur when I entered this universe,” he told her, “And I hope to have fur leaving it.”

  Well, that answered that question.

  “And you still stink of cat.”

  Tika’s eyed widened. Was the wolf teasing her?

  Delight followed her look and glared at Donovan, but her wrist comm chimed before she could say anything.

  “Now?” she murmured, glancing at it. “We have to do this, now?”

  She tilted her head, glancing around to catch Pritchard’s eye. He returned her gaze with a solemn nod, and Delight looked at Tika.

  “In the meantime,” the agent told her, “You are needed in the conference center, since it appears the karovi require two things from you.”

  Tika’s heart lifted to her throat. “And that is?”

  Delight’s lips curved into a mysterious smile. “Come and find out.”

  Tika wanted to protest that she didn’t like surprises, but she was also as curious as any cat that had ever been. After all, how bad could it be?

  Not too bad, she discovered.

  The first thing the karovi wanted was to welcome her to the pride, recognizing her clan and the family that had brought her in. These were gifts she had to accept.

  “We cannot replace the pride that was stolen from you…or give you back the form you once had, but we offer you a new pride…to match the form we offered to save your life, and we welcome you.”

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  There had been no words for that, so Tika had accepted the offered hands and allowed her body to follow theirs in a shift guided by a gentle presence in her mind—the female with cinnamon fur.

  “How else do you think we knew your intentions were benign?” the she-cat asked. “I read your thoughts. Had your intentions been otherwise, we’d have left you in the rubble. We are glad you are pride.”

  Fur flowed through Tika’s mind as they returned to human form, accepting the robes held aside to cover their nakedness.

  “We cannot go into the next conclave clad in only skin,” one of the other karovi told her, his mouth curling with amusement.

  Morrow, as he’d been introduced, was the colony’s leader.

  “We are sorry for your loss,” had been his greeting, and Tika still hadn’t worked out if he meant they were sorry for the loss of her parents and colony, or her humanity. It didn’t seem like the thing to ask.

  Now, she questioned him, “Why not?” earning a look of amusement from the big male and shock from some of his companions. One of his guards bristled as though ready to avenge the insult.

  Morrow laid a hand on the man’s arm. “Human,” the pride leader explained.

  “Pride,” the other had snarled, and Morrow had lifted his lips in return.

  The guard backed down, and Tika relaxed. Morrow turned to her as though the exchange had never happened.

  “Humans require clothing for their ceremonies of treaty, and you are the leader of your colony, now.” He cocked a head at Delight. “Should she wear something less karovi?”

  “There is not the time,” Delight had snapped, her tone implying it was something he should have thought of. Again, the guard bristled, and Delight cocked her head and tossed him a challenging glance.

  That might have ended badly, if Pritchard hadn’t intervened.

  “They are waiting,” he informed them, solemnly, and they followed him to a second meeting room where a conference table stood before a screen. The screen showed the colonists aboard the Explorer’s Dream, Tika’s siblings among them.

  A lump formed in her throat, and tears prickled her eyes. She swallowed hard, aware of warmth around her, and in her head. She was not alone.

  To her surprise, Anton’s face showed relief, and Valerie looked close to tears, herself. Brant, the head of the second wave gestured they should all be seated, and smiled, first at her, and then at Morrow.

  The next three hours were the most grueling Tika had ever had to bear. Colonial rights, shares, governance, citizenry, dating, mating, who offered and owed their world protection, precedence…

  By the end of it, Tika was ready to go furry the second she set foot on the world. She could slide into the undergrowth and vanish and leave them to their so-called civilization and its stupid rules. She could…

  “All colonists will learn the art of defense.” Morrow’s words cut through her thoughts like a hot knife through butter.

  “You mean self-defense,” Brant argued.

  “No,” Morrow informed him. “I mean defense. Defense of the home, the colony and the world. We do not have a standing army, and the universe has fired its first shot across our bows. All colonists should know how to defend against such attacks.”

  He glanced at Delight and Pritchard, then waved a hand at Donovan. “Odyssey will not always be so close to call.”

  Delight smiled. “About that,” she began, and indicated Donovan. “The wolves of Lunar One seek refuge.”

  Tika stared at her, and another two hours of wrangling ensued.

  By the end of it, agreement had been reached: The two colonies would become a single colony of three, all colonists would learn defense; Odyssey would provide security in return for permission to establish a joint-research facility; and Tika would learn to fly.

  “What?” she asked, the announcement shocking her from meeting-induced fatigue to full wakefulness.

  “I apologize again,” Morrow told her, and indicated the door, which obligingly slid open to reveal an overexcited bundle of yellow fur in the cat-medic’s arms.

  As he stepped into the room, the dark-eyed doctor lost his grip on the cub and Gerra launched from chest height. Tika and the cub’s mother leapt to catch him, and became twin statues as he unfurled two glittering wings and glided to the floor.

  “Mama! Mama! I flew!”

  The cinnamon karovi knelt to gather the cub in her arms, her voice husky with emotion. “Yes, son. You did.”

  Tika closed her mouth and looked from mother and son to the dark-eyed man in the doorway. In return, he gave her a sweet, almost sad smile and shifted—but not into the were-cat she expected.

  The darkness in his eyes should have warned her, but she’d never heard of dragons the size of ponies or the color of jet—and, judging from the gasps behind her, she wasn’t alone. He moved into the room, flared his wings and then tucked them behind his back as he shifted into a man-sized hybrid with wings and claws and a hide that glittered with ebony scales.

  And then he shifted again, taking the form of a man and accepting the robe tossed at him through the conference-room door.

  “We’d have mentioned it earlier,” Morrow told her, glaring at Delight, “but we’ve only just learned of it, ourselves.”

  He indicated the cub, now sitting on the floor, wings furled as he refused to take human form.

  “Karovi have been blessed with a somewhat flexible genetic system, but the dragons…” Morrow rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “Well, legends are all we have to go on. However, my understanding is that they make our genes look rigid by comparison.”

  “But…” Tika began. She’d been intending to ask what all this had to do with her, and Morrow smiled.

  “The cub bit you, did he not?”

  Tika’s legs turned rubbery, and she glanced over her shoulder as though expecting wings to sprout from her back. They didn’t, and she looked from Morrow to the draconic doctor.

  “How long?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Gerra is four and this is the first time they’ve formed. Only time will tell.”

  “But they will form…” Tika pressed, and he glanced at Delight.

  She nodded.

  “You knew?”

  “Not until Skanth commed me,” Delight told her, “And I had to represent Odyssey’s interests in this venture. Your DNA results were…very interesting.”

  Tika swayed and Pritchard came alongside her, tossing Delight another scalding glance. She rolled her eyes at him and watched as he helped Tika to her seat.

  “You couldn’t have told me before?” Tika managed when she was sitting.

  Delight shook her head. “Not without postponing the meeting, and the Explorer’s Dream has a schedule to keep. Odyssey will be assisting in the colony set-up to get them back on track.”

  She turned to the gaping contingent on board the colony seed-ship.

  “I take it that’s acceptable?” she asked, her tone warning them it might be too bad if it wasn’t.

  They nodded, their expressions stunned, and Delight gave them a predatory smile.

  “Very good. If you’ll all sign and add your thumb prints to the documents on your screens, we’ll adjourn for the evening, and reconvene tomorrow.”

  Again, she received dumb-founded nods, and they did as she asked.

  As the last of them finished, Tika saw their eyes shift to the end of the conference table, and slowly, she followed their gazes just in time to see Gerra—and who else would it have been, but Gerra—gold-furred, fluffy, and full of excitement as he leapt from the table’s end and spread his wings.

  “Mama! Mama! I can fly!”

  “And, on behalf of Odyssey,” Delight told the contingent on the screen, “I promise this colony will receive all the aid and protection it needs in order to be able to fly, as well.”