Bethany jerked awake and then held very very still. She tried to get her bearing without drawing attention to herself. As confused as she was, she still knew she was in danger. She looked around her, searching the dark, looking for anything familiar, anything to ground herself.
It was night and she was outside, that much was clear to her right away. She crouched against a red-brick wall in a damp, musty alley. Broken-down cardboard boxes labeled, "New Eden" reminded her she was hiding behind her favorite plant nursery. She let out a relieved breath and took inventory of her body. Her muscles ached. Her stomach growled. A large dumpster blocked anyone walking by on the well-lit street from seeing her in the alley. Still, she felt exposed when footsteps echoed down the narrow lane.
A scratchy male voice erupted from the darkness, loud and abrasive. "Fuck, man. This night has been nothing but shit."
"I hear that. No booze. No weed. No action," another guy replied. Close, just at the end of the alley. Too close.
Bethany shivered and shrank into a tighter ball, but her lioness hated that, demanding she lift her head and evaluate the danger. It was becoming harder and harder to control the animal that now lived inside her, more and more difficult to leash the urges…the foreign instincts of the damn lioness.
Silently, she scooted a few inches away from the dumpster to get a good view of her uninvited company. Unbelievably, she could see the two young human men as clearly as if they were standing beneath a bright light, which they were not.
They talked in shadow, taking long drags off cigarettes. Slouching, their baggy clothes did nothing to hide the fact that they were small, smaller than her, no more than eighteen or nineteen years old, and—her cat thought—easily defeated.
The tips of her fingers tingled. Her mouth watered.
No! She slammed the door on her cat and inched back, trying to maintain control, trying to keep herself sane. She wasn't safe. She needed to leave. Oh, she knew why she had come to New Eden when she'd panicked and ran. With ceilings that dripped with string of pearls, pothos, ferns, and spider plants and row after row of every common and not-so-common landscaping plant, New Eden was Bethany's favorite safe place. She'd been afraid to go home so she'd run to her sanctuary. The lion-man and his friends knew where she lived.
The frantic hours after her escape, came back to her in flashes. She had run for hours, reviewing her short list of friends, trying to think of one she could trust with the insanity that had taken over her life. Sadly, there were none. When she'd run out of friends and stamina, she found herself outside of her favorite store. She'd been here for two days. Eating old herbs and badly bruised fruit out of the dumpster that belonged to the little organic grocery that shared the alleyway. She drank and washed using a spout near the side entrance of the store. How long could she live like this? Like an animal? If she shifter to lion, maybe a long long time. A whimper escaped her lips.
"What was that?" The guy with the greasy black hair turned, saw her, and smirked. "Looks like our luck has changed."
She hissed. Bethany had been too much in her head and had exposed herself.
The other one male, with wiry limbs and a sad, sparse mustache, laughed. "Here kitty, kitty." He made little kissing sounds. "We won't hurt you. We just want to play."
Wonderful. Here she was trying to cage her cat and these morons were calling for her. She struggled with her cat while the men approached her. The men getting way too close pushed her fear to the surface and the leash she had on her willpower snapped. With smug confidence, she straightened her spine and lifted her head. Smoothly, like a ribbon unwinding, she stood. Her lioness had usurped control.