Cheetah's Mate (Book 1)

Kyra Atcuian got up at her normal time of six A.M., had her normal breakfast of eggs, toast, and sausage, along with a cup of coffee. She could take or leave that, but since she was out of milk there wasn’t really another choice. It was simple and hit the spot. Uncomplicated like she wanted her life to stay.

She stood in the bathroom and gave a deep sigh. Kyra stood at five ten and weighed around one fifty, one sixty, but you would think she weighed one twenty. Her hair a dark-gold color and had bit of a darker undertone to it. Her eyes were an odd copper color which she liked. The reason that she sighed and felt a little angered was because today she started her heat. Heat? You might ask, yes heat.

Kyra wasn’t a normal person, wasn’t even really a human. She was a shifter, one of the handful that lived in the world. There were different types of shifters, everything from the normal wolves, to rare ones called the uni. At one time there had been a lot of them and now there weren’t that many left.

Most now lived among humans pretending there was nothing abnormal about themselves. Really there wasn’t, just the fact they could change into an animal. Plus magic and abilities, so maybe there was a difference physically and mentally. However that wasn’t what she was talking about, she had morals. Kyra cared about people, she wasn’t some monster that preyed on humans. She worked and followed the law.

Kyra was a cheetah shifter, and there weren’t many cheetah shifters left in the world, mainly due to the hunters. A horrible group of special humans that were faster and stronger than normal. They prided themselves on hunting down her kind and killing them. Like trophies. Here they were, these humans who thought that they were so much better, a superior human, but in the end, they were freaks just like Kyra was. Hunters in reality were just a shifter who couldn’t shift. It angered her that they could be so callous to their own kind. Then again, maybe they weren’t.

However, she wasn’t too worried about hunters. She lived in a city at the moment, and most of her brethren did prefer the country. The thing was that she didn’t have any family left, hunters had killed them. Kyra was very out of touch with her kind.

After that night she’d been raised by a foster family. She’d been old enough to know that she had to hide what she was from humans. From that day on she had lived under the radar. Hell she hadn’t even had contact with her own kind in years but that was okay.

Hunters looked for the odd signs and hunted them down. Those people who talked to magazines like the Inquirer, or Sci-Fi, and said they saw this person change into an animal. Or weird animal mauling in cities. They called those signs that her kind was present. Yeah because her kind went out and hunted humans down, leaving mauled carcasses behind.

Please, it was easier to get your food from stores nowadays, and while yeah it did happen sometimes, rarely. Mostly the shifters that did attack were provoked or sick in the head to begin with. She wasn’t going to lie sometimes she wanted to go out and hunt, and she had.

However it was always wild game, never a farmer’s animal, or the farmers themselves. The thought of that disgusted her a bit. She was after all part human. Humans always seemed to think that everything was out to get them. Bunch of paranoid weirdoes if you asked her.

That wasn’t her concern today. The fact that she was in heat was. Being a shifter her scent would call to the male populace. If a male shifter of her kind was near her it would be a neon sign calling them in. Oh joy, and her mood would swing all over the place.

From wanting attention to feeling like attacking the next man that talked to her. She couldn’t help it, and human women thought that they had it bad with their periods. Her kind had a whole different ball game when they hit their heat. That animal part calling out, wanting a mate. Kind of overrode the normal thinking a lot.

Kyra was unmated. She didn’t want nor need one, for the most part. If she did decide that she wanted to raise children she’d pick who she wanted. Not let her wild side go all crazy on her and decide on a whim. She was pretty much guaranteed twins or more with what she was.

Cheetahs tended to have around one to six in their litters. Shifters tended to follow similar patterns. Though perhaps six was a rare thing. God she’d shoot herself if she had six. Well that was a lie, she’d kill the father.

She could mate with humans, but it was very hard to get pregnant with a human. She couldn’t mate with a shifter that was outside the feline line. Though if she went with one that wasn’t a cheetah chances were that her offspring would be infertile, not always, but most often.

Look just because you were a mythical being didn’t mean that you didn’t follow the rules of genetics. Besides it was very unheard of for a shifter to go outside their species type unless they were human.

“There hasn’t been a cheetah shifter around here in a very long time,” Kyra said to herself feeling good about that.

Actually there hadn‘t been any shifter around for a while. If she got lucky she’d only ever run into a female cheetah shifter. Males of her kind tended to hang together. Especially brothers from the same litters, or bloodline. Another awesome thing to look out for in her opinion.

Kyra moved into the kitchen after spraying herself with perfume, trying to douse or tone down her natural scent. This happened to her once a month, she didn’t have periods like normal woman, she went into heat. It would last around a week to two.

She hoped this was a short one. If a male cheetah shifter showed up, it could cause her to stay receptive longer. Definitely not something she wanted, as it was in the next couple of days her sex drive would start to go up as well. These were the same thoughts she had every month.

She grabbed her purse and keys, along with her work badge with her name on it. The name on the badge was Kyra Keton, her adoptive name. Most people had no idea how to pronounce her real last name, it was At-coo-e-on. One of the older names to the shifters.

Her real birth last name was a red flag for hunters, so she couldn’t use it. Though, her last name had been changed with adoption. She hadn’t changed it back yet, but sometimes told people a different last name if needed. After all she wasn’t going to age the same and eventually she’d have to move and switch names. She was going to live far longer than a human.

Kyra left her small house and got into her silver Focus and drove to work. She felt a bit on edge for the drive, but that wasn’t unexpected. She just wasn’t looking forward to her day today.

She worked as a psychologist at the police station and small prison here. It was really more a holding spot or overflow. She didn’t mind her job most of the time. Though her patients were mostly pricks.

With her being in heat, she’d have to endure even more sexual comments than normal. Typically it wouldn’t really bother her. She was used to them, and she knew that they were doing it to get under her skin. She’d just give them a smile. She might not look it but she was strong, and damn fast. Faster than anyone that she had ever met. She smiled at that, oh the perks of being a cheetah.

Kyra pulled into her designated parking spot and looked around before getting out. Every day she had to wonder if perhaps a hunter would show up. Though she lived low key, so it wasn’t that big of a deal in her opinion. She didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. Didn’t shift anywhere that anyone could see, though shifting wasn’t something she did all that often. Only when she had built up energy. She wished she could do it more. It was so free to let her animal out, after all it was what she was.

She had heard some years ago that hunters weren’t just hunting down her kind to kill them anymore. They still did that, but they hunted them down and kept them like fighting dogs. Pitting them against each other in game like fights. She didn’t know where this was, or if it was true. It wasn’t something that she wanted to find out, nor did she want to find out if her kind was being kept and loaned out for other things. She knew that happened as well, it made her shudder.

Kyra didn’t doubt it, she figured that there was money to be made by trapping her kind. Using them as entertainment for those that were sick individuals, or even medical research. After all, hunters just called it animal cruelty. They weren’t humans so it didn’t count.

Kyra moved up toward the building to go in a staff entrance. She hit in a code, and scanned her badge, but paused slightly scenting the wind. It was habit, testing just to be sure, she might have had nothing happen in years. But she knew that it was only a matter of time. She hoped a long time, but it would happen.

For a moment she thought that there was a slight scent in the air. That of another shifter. As she whipped around and looked she saw no one, and the scent didn’t come to her again. She figured that with her hormones starting to bounce all over the place she would be looking for the scent of a male shifter. Always the phantom smells coming to her when she worked herself up.

With one more look around and pushing the door open, she went in. It shut with a click behind her and she moved down the hallway with no sound at all. She was light on her feet, and fast.

That was kind of a given seeing what she was. She sighed again, she wished that she could be outside in the beautiful weather. The warm sun and light breeze. However she was stuck here inside, well she had to get paid didn’t she?

Kyra hoped for a good day, that today would go smoothly and that there wouldn’t be any problems. Pretty much so she could go home early, she didn’t have any court dates. No one asking her to come testify. She hated testifying, being in a room surrounded by people starting at her was a nightmare. She wanted to bolt from the room, or start pacing.

To bad she wasn’t going to get her wish for a normal day.