Bree looked down at the strange blue string that apparently was invisible to everyone else, but she could clearly see that it was attached to her wrist where the now perfectly intact blue mate cuff was lovingly wrapped around her wrist. The floating string appeared as soon as she rubbed the cuff and said that she wanted to find her mate, like the evil dalmatian had told her to.
The string floated out from the mate cuff and floated through the air, leading to the man that she barely knew, but who had suddenly become her mate. She hadn't expected it, hadn't really wanted it. She knew that she had been the one to get the two of them in this mess in the first place. She had just expected a pre-marker to show up on him and then they could have taken their time in getting to know each other. A pre-marker was there to let the other shifter know that you were interested, it was essentially like asking them out on a date. That was quite a bit different than what actually happened when her traitorous body automatically made her married to him!
Still, what was done was done, and for better or worse, she knew that she couldn't take long to get herself a couple of mates, or the village elders would place a mark of slavery on her, and she would live the rest of her life as the village play thing. She only had one more shift before she would be capable of producing eggs and the mark of slavery would be placed on her. She didn't have the luxury of time to get to know a guy slowly or to continue to be squeamish because this whole thing was new and frightening to her. She had no way of knowing how long it would take before the last shift would occur. According to this world's rules, they could legally place the mark of slavery on her as long as she didn't have at least two mates by the time her last shift occurred and she was able to produce eggs.
For this reason, most mothers of little girls arranged two mates for their daughters well in advance with the families of young men or set up a tempting dowry early on to entice mates to their daughter before her last shift. If they were still unable to find two mates, it's not uncommon for a young shifter female to run away from her village.
Who knows what happens to her then. Maybe she's picked up by rogues, maybe she was stolen during the women swapping raids, maybe she simply died at the hands of a spirit monster or a random monster in the woods. Perhaps she just died because she was captured by a different village and was forced to produce so many eggs that is wore her out and she died from exhaustion and undernourishment. These were all strong possibilities.
Everything had temporarily felt like a game to her as soon as her 'Otome Gamer' power had appeared and she had been playing around with her menu. It had felt so familiar and comforting that she hadn't taken things seriously. But this wasn't a game, this was a frightening world where she had quickly learned the hard way that there were things much worst than death and frightening magic in the hands of sadistic children.
As she continued to push her way through the brush, more twigs and little thorns stabbed into her flesh and tugged at her barely decent clothing. Her clothing was holding onto her newly formed curves for dear life, she could almost hear the seams screaming. Her whole body was aching and cut up with little scratches and her hair looked like a birds nest with little twigs sticking out from it and more tangles than not. The parts of her hair that weren't tangled kept on flying into her face and poking her in the eyes. She was hot, dirty, sweaty, exhausted, sore, dripping blood, twisted her ankle almost beyond recognition, and felt murderous by the time she managed to extract herself from that overly dense forest.
As she stumbled into a clearing around a modest looking cabin, she lost her footing and tumbled into the grass. With her cheek pressed into the dirt she didn't bother pushing herself up and just laid there while breathing heavily. The slightly cool and fluffy grass felt heavenly while a light breeze blew across her body and sunbeams danced through the canopy above the edge of the forest.
Then she saw tiny chocolate brown little kids feet and little legs followed by a light purple dress made from what was once white leather. Bree looked up and met the large dark brown eyes of a little girl with shiny chocolate brown skin that has a sparkling golden undertone. Her long black lashes framed the big brown eyes. Her little nose was tilted slightly up and her mouth was open with the tips of two sets of fangs poking out from both her lips. Her shoulder length black hair framed her cute little face, while two long black pointy animal ears conspicuously stood on her head. It was obvious that they weren't cat or dog ears, but Bree couldn't quite place them, even though they looked familiar. The little girls fingers where wrapped around the handle of a basket woven from dried grass and full to the brim with juicy looking dark purple berries.
The little girl took a nervous step back while she looked Bree up and down, then her right hand glowed with a bright golden light. Startled, she let go of the handle of the basket and it tumbled onto the grass. Some of the berries bounced out and dotted around them. Neither of them took any notice because their eyes were riveted on back of the little girls right hand. Once the glowing diminished, there was a tiny golden bumble bee. The bee was just like Bree's mark, except that it was only about as big as a pinky finger nail. The little girl looked at it with wide eyes and rubbed the new mark on the back of her hand vigorously.
Then she followed the invisible string coming off of her new mark and met the eyes of Bree once more. Her eyes became watery while she bit her bottom lip, and then her mouth popped open, showing just how long her two sets of canines are. Then a loud cry burst out from her mouth and she threw herself at Bree and wrapped her arms around her in the first hug that Bree had ever experienced. Bree just laid where she had initially fallen while the little girl held onto her and her entire body shook with the force of her sobs. Tucked against the little girls back, were two black wings which didn't have even one feather on them.
Then out from between the sobs the little girl gasped out, "I finally have my mom. I knew someday you'd come for me, I knew it. I finally have a mom's mark. I have a mom's mark. I'm so happy! Don't leave me. Please don't ever leave me!"
Then from across the field of thick grass and wild flowers, Bree's new mate walked out from the front door of the cabin. He stood there as if he was frozen in place while he took in the scene in front of him. Then he let out a sigh and scratched the side of his head while a light frown appeared on his face. He squared his shoulders as if he were about to face a large army of enemies. Then he started walking towards them.