Nikolai met her gaze, and nodded.
“Strip,” she ordered. “And I will take your amulet. I will return it to you when the time is right.”
Nikolai’s hand closed over the only link to his mother—the one thing he had owned since his birth. But something in Cara’s gaze had him pulling it over his head. He looked down at it, and his heart froze.
The answer had been there all along.
The amulet had never been a horse. The wild mane tossed around a distinctive spiral horn.
How had he missed that all these years?
“I will keep it safe, Nikolai.”
He met her brilliant blue eyes, and he believed her. He handed the amulet over, and then he stripped, folding his ratty clothes and putting them in a pile before adding the boots to it. He gazed down upon the last vestiges of his old life. Standing naked, he felt horribly self-conscious in front of all these women.
“What now?” he asked.
“Close your eyes,” she said. “And let us take you there.”
So hard to trust that much. Did she sense his panic, his desire to run? He scanned the other Watchers, who stood with glowing hands raised, ready to bind him to a form he’d never taken.
Cara’s blue eyes reflected sympathy as she offered him a small smile. “It’s okay, Nikolai. Just let us do our thing.”
“But—don’t I have to do something?”
She shook her head. “Most shapeshifters have to both visualize and embrace strong emotion to change form. But Liberis are different. For us, it’s all about energy. I’ll show you the way.”
He swallowed, and shut his eyes. The Watcher’s life essence surged around him, but he picked Cara’s out from it. Powerful, she was powerful, and her blue and green energy washed over him.
Cara spoke in a soft, calm voice that helped anchor his panic. “We tap into the life essences to shift form,” she said. “Liberis tap into them for many purposes. You are different in that you have the ability to tap into something much deeper, more primitive. But right now, just follow my lead.”
Nikolai let her fold her emotions around his own, and lead him. A part of him plunged deep to touch the place he’d reached earlier. And as before, the sense of immense power nearly took his breath away.
Cara interceded, her power cutting him off and lifting him away from it. “No, Nikolai. You do not need that for this. Just breathe, and absorb the surrounding energy. Open yourself to the power and visualize yourself as a beast. A horse, with a horn, if that is easiest for you.”
Nikolai followed her lead, letting the life essences flood into him from the plants in the meadow and the creatures that lived within it. But visualize himself as a Unicorn? He gritted his teeth and tried. He pictured the Bellatis as they stood there. Imagined himself as one of them.
And everything started to change.
He was aware of himself expanding, his shoulders and hips changing their orientation to accommodate running on four powerful legs. His hands and feet altered, the middle fingers and toes broadening and lengthening, the nail forming a hoof that wrapped around the tip. The other fingers and toes retreated until they were merely bony support along the wrist and ankle, setting him up to gallop at speed across any kind of terrain. His wrists became the knees of his forelegs, his ankles, the strong hock joints.
Nikolai arched his graceful neck and shook his gray forelock out of his eyes. His vision had changed as his eyes were now on the side of his long head. Seeing straight ahead was more difficult, but he now saw all along his sleek sides—sides that weren’t steel gray, but so glossy a black that the hair gleamed with purple highlights.
He looked down upon them all, even the Bellatis. Why was he so much taller? And black, rather than gray?
“Perditor.” The tall Watcher breathed the word, and there was a tremble to her voice. “We must finish this.”
“Yes.” Cara straightened. “Nikolai, we will now bind you to your animal form. Do not be afraid. We will be psychically etching runes into your skin. It may sting a little.”
He snorted and shook his mane. “Okee,” he said. His mouth wasn’t adapted to speak the same way as a human mouth.
“Here we go.” Cara raised her hands, and the other Watchers stepped closer. His gaze drifted over them—their expressions varied from wary, to resolute. A couple refused to meet his eyes. One, a slender wisp of a woman, met his gaze boldly. And smiled.
It distracted him as the glow from their hands merged, and they began to hum.
The blue-green power rose, swirling like a fog around his hooves, and then higher, up his legs, in bands surrounding his throat. Everywhere it touched, it stung, like thousands of tiny insects, and in its path silver tracings were left against his dark hide. When he tilted his head to look closer, he detected each was distinctly shaped. Runes?
With every etching, a part of him was muted, as though someone wrapped him in a thick blanket of fog. So incrementally, that at first he wasn’t aware of it. His fear diminished, followed by frustration. And then his rage. But it also took the other things, too, that he wasn’t so willing to let go—pleasure. Joy. Love.
