King's Throne(20)

And there in the mirror was Mitch. A newly minted white tiger.
 
Mitch couldn’t quite believe what he thought he was seeing. He looked okay in the bathroom mirror. He’d put the pads of his front paws on the vanity so he could reach upward to look at his face and as much of his body as he could in the mirror that started about waist-high on a human.
From the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, he had lost his golden color. He couldn’t see all of his mid-section, but judging by the way Gina was staring, he thought he was probably bleached out there too. He was still striped. Only the black and gray stripes were on a field of pure white instead of his usual orangey-gold color.
Holy shit.
He looked at Gina and a sound of distress came out of his mouth. Even his tiger half was confused. He’d known it when he first started to shift. It felt different. Not bad, but somehow easier. More natural. Not at all painful and very, very magical. Mitch had always been a strong Alpha, but now he felt like he could take on the world. It felt like the shifter magic was shooting through his paws and down deep into the earth.
And he was…aware of things...on a whole new level. He felt the pulse of the earth coming up through his claws and into his body, aiding his shift. As if the magic that made him what he was came from the Earth Mother Herself. Gaia. The Goddess. The Mother of All.
Mitch couldn’t get over it. He was tigre blanche, and he thought he finally understood what it was about these rarest of tigers that gave them domain over all others. Magic. Incredible magic.
Would it last? Was it some temporary gift of the blood Gina had given to heal him? And most of all…what did it mean?
One thing was for sure, the tiger was mostly in control at the moment and would not allow him to shift back to his human form. Now that was odd. Mitch hadn’t had to fight his tiger for supremacy since he was just a youngster learning how to shift. He and his animal side had a nice partnership going on and they had nurtured each other through many escapades and deadly situations over the years.
But something was different now. The tiger was stretching. Becoming.
The tiger wanted to go out into the snow and practice blending. Stealth. He wanted to try out his new stripes and see what they could do in this best of environments for a white animal. Snow. The only thing better would be ice fog. For now though, the cat wanted to play in the snowpack and frolic in the flurries.
And he wanted Gina’s cat prowling alongside him. Forever.
What was he thinking? Thoughts like that were all too tempting—and forbidden. Gina was a princess. Royalty.
He nosed past her, prowling with determination toward the secret passage. The door was still open. He’d figure out how to get out on the other end. It couldn’t be too hard, right? It was designed for people with paws, after all.#p#分页标题#e#
Something was calling him. Making him go outside. To be in the snow. In the ice. In touch with the earth.
Here in the mountains, the early season snow was thick on the ground. It hadn’t yet snowed in the city at its lower elevation. The concrete jungle had almost completely stifled Mother Nature with its steel and asphalt. Only in small green places did She show Her face.
Not like here. High in the mountains, well north of the city that never slept, there was only one road and a few gravel lanes leading to the dwellings that were built of wood and natural stone, part of the earth and its creatures. Part of the heartbeat he could feel under his paws. The slow, steady, strong beat of Mother Earth.
She was fire and She was ice. She had hidden depths where lava flowed and sparks danced with untold energy. Up here on the surface, She was sometimes tranquil, as now, and sometimes the tempest itself.
He could feel all of that through the pads of his paws. He felt it in his newly awakened heart. In the beast-half that had always been closer to nature than his human form. He felt it in his soul.
As anticipated, the latch to get out of the secret passageway wasn’t hard to operate with paws. There was also a tiger-height display that let him see what was waiting on the other side of the door from four different camera angles. He checked it before he opened the door, noting the squirrel gathering nuts in the upper right quadrant of the screen and the birds pecking at some kind of hardy berry in an evergreen bush on the lower left. The small animals weren’t disturbed by anything and he couldn’t see any obvious threats, so he proceeded to open the door and step out into the sun.
Mitch had only walked a few feet into the forest before the white tigress joined him. Gina. She was so beautiful he had to blink a few times to clear his vision. She sparkled in the sun, the crisp winter light reflecting off her white fur and dark stripes as it reflected off the snow and ice melting and dripping all around them.