Stolen

“You are so full of yourself, so arrogant,” Selena said. 

Her palm print burned against Rapheal’s cheek. She towered over him. She had short wild brown hair with black and red strands, black painted fingernails, and feral hazel eyes. She was a force of nature.

Raphael was shorter, with snow white hair and summer blue eyes, luminous and confused. He wore a black suit, a single diamond earring, his short nails a variegated opal color. “You hit me!”

“I’m going to do more than that for you, you spoiled little shit,” Selena growled. “You’re not better than me! I’ll make a better sovereign than you ever could!”

“Except you’re not in line of the succession,” he said. He was more concerned with academic publication than interpack politics. He loved his parents with all his heart. They’d always been good to him and someday he would be king. He would rely on advisors and care for all the people to the best of his ability. In the meantime, he was Professor Capet who specialized in the middle ages of the human world.

Selena had her masters in political science.

Raphael had always imagined she would be one of his favorite advisors, his sister and his most fierce warrior. And then she punched him in the face. Black stars sprayed backwards over his vision and the only good thing in the world was the memory of Balam calling his name.

Blood was hot and too present from his broken nose. It dripped into his mouth when he snarled back, “He’s going to find me! Balam will come.”

“Good,” Selena said, “I can put a bullet in his brown fucking face! You’re a swan prince with a linage that goes back to Rome, but you’re not worth it! You’re weak and decadent! Your idiot Mexican jaguar is going to die for thinking he had any right to touch you!”

“He’s Mayan and he’s going to rip your throat out you fucking barn owl! You’re not fit for the crown!” “I’ll have the crown resized,” she said before giving him a kick to the ribs. “Don’t worry little brother, you’re getting a different crown. Blackbeak is going to be here any moment. You’ll get a throne, at least until she eats you.” “I am not going to marry Eden,” Raphael growled, a hand holding onto his broken rib. “I already have Balam’s pack bond! Mom and Dad approved of him!”

“All the more reason they’re unfit and I understand it’s going to hurt a lot when they break that bond. I regret that I won’t be able to witness the ritual,” Selena cooed. “Maybe they’ll send me a video of you rolling around helplessly on the ground calling out for your probably dead lover.”

Raphael sat up, hand on his side, irritated by the red spreading across his very nice white shirt, both from where it dripped from his face and his side where her heel had broken skin as well as bone. Even still, he could not imagine raising a hand to hit Selena. “You’re my sister! How could you do this? We took you in! We have never treated you as anything other than family!”

“My parents were owl royalty! My father gave his kingdom to your worthless, soft lump of etiquette of a father! My father was a raptor! Your father is a pretty goose! I’m taking both kingdoms back! Maybe Eden will lay her eggs in your ripped open chest cavity!”

“Kingdoms must be wooed, not taken,” Raphael said. He could feel his shift coming on, which would heal his ribs and maybe he could find it in himself to just smack Selena until sense returned. He reached to Balam through their bond link.

Balam turned on the palace’s alarm system. As soon as it rang, Selena turned it off.

Raphael’s shift took him and he spun up off the floor a little like a Magical Girl, white feathers brushing through the air as his hair turned midnight black and he threw himself at his sister, meaning to knock her on her ass, to restore sense! Her shift was as fast, but less flashy. She was smaller in shifted form, but had great big claws, which she drove into his snowy white chest. They both screamed. His huge wings beat at her, but he was already falling, her riding him down as her beak slashed at his throat. “I’m not the traitor,” she growled, back in human form as he lay bleeding on the library floor. His pain throbbed through the link with Balam and he thought at him, “Run, Bae! I’m dying! Selena killed me!” Balam’s presence in the link was warm, strong, like a purr, the purr of a cat the size of a small car. “I love you. I’m coming.”

On his side, Balam worried. Jaguars weren’t really big on family dynamics. He understood predators though and he was not going to let anyone hurt his boyfriend!