“Better,” he muses, releasing the hold. “But predictable.”
I whirl and aim a kick, clean and fast. He sidesteps, effortless as always.
Fucking show-off.
He is testing me. Not just my body, but the margin where hesitation sits. He pokes at every reflex I have, waiting to see which one fractures.
“Come on, Hellcat. Where’s that rage?”
I narrow my eyes. “You want me to be angry?”
“I want you to stop thinking so much. Just act.”
Fine.
I let thought go. I move like a thing that does not plan consequences. I use speed, not strength, and it surprises him. He shifts to block, but I twist at the last heartbeat and my leg sweeps beneath him. He stumbles, one second of imbalance. That is all I need.
I grin. “Gotcha.”
Bastion rights himself before he hits stone, but the gold in his eyes flashes a smile. “Not bad,” he rumbles. “Maybe there’s a fighter in you after all.”
The praise is a spark. Something inside me answers.
A warmth, faint at first, unfurls from my center. It is slow and deliberate, like a creature waking and stretching inside the hollows of me. Power rolls through me like fire under skin, licking along my limbs until the air around me thickens. It hums with a dark current I have not fully learned to name. Sound sharpens. Colors sharpen. The world cuts itself into edges and I am a blade.
I bare my teeth without thinking. A feral sound bubbles up from my ribs. Bastion moves again, faster than I expect, aiming to pin me the way he always does, but this time I do not only react.
I shift.
A snarl rips free of me, raw and animal. Heat roars down my spine like blood. For a heartbeat my hands blur into claws, something primally shaped and terrible, before the image recedes and the world rights itself. I smash into him mid-motion and the impact sends him down.
For the first time, Bastion falls.
He hits the stone floor with a heavy, satisfied sound. I am on him in an instant, straddling his hips, my fingers pressing into his chest to keep myself anchored. My breath comes in hard, ragged pulls. His golden eyes widen not with fear and not with surprise, but with a darker thing. Something pleased. Something hungry.
“Well, fuck,” he breathes.
I blink as heat rushes through me. His tone is different, yes, but it carries admiration threaded with a desire I did not expect.
I open my mouth to say something, to gloat or to mock, and then pain coils at my temples. A pressure, low and grinding, forces its way inward. Something in me shifts, the sensation urgent and ancient. My skull does not split. It changes. The world tilts in a new key.
I stagger and my hand flies to my head. I turn toward the glass doors and my reflection stares back, stranger and truer.
Horns.
They are small, not the massive wicked curves of a lord of the deep, but they are sleek and black and cruel as a blade. Two dark crescents rise from my temples, sharp and living. I reach up, trembling fingers brushing over them. Heat shivers beneath my skin. They are alive. Mine.
A grin spreads across my face that feels a little like a threat. “Well, look at that.” The sound of my own voice is different now, threaded with a new note I do not yet own.
Bastion’s hands find my hips, fingers digging in as his cock stirs beneath me. “I’d say that was a successful first transformation,” he says, amused and approving.
“I don’t feel any different,” I say, because I want to measure the change with something besides marvel.
“You just took me down. I’d say that’s different,” he replies. His voice is a warm blade. His eyes track my movements like a man cataloguing prey and promise.
A purr rises in my throat, low and pleased and not entirely human. It surprises me with its depth. Bastion tightens his grip as if he, too, feels the new radius of threat and desire around me.
I roll my hips, a small, testing motion, and his breath catches. A growl threads his chest. The way he watches is not fear. It is hunger laced with the willingness to be eaten.
