Chapter 2

Somewhere in the US (we think) – present day!

Neeeeeeveeeer!

NEEEEEVEEEER!!!!

Never ever in a million years ever---

Piss. Off. A. Witch!

Especially not the crazy and probably borderline psycho "I can do real magic"-kind of witch. Don't go near them. Don't talk to them. Don't even look at them! And for everything you find holy, don't look at their supposed boyfriends!

Kat Weldon had learned that the hard way!

Until that fateful night, Kat had had a semi-normal life. She was a cat-shifter, a bobcat to be precise. The only thing remotely special about her was the fact that unlike most bobcats her fur was as black as night. Something she used to brag about when she was a child but had stopped long ago.

Hell, it wasn't even her shifter ways that had turned her life upside down that night 5 years ago.

It had been her 21st birthday and she was going out with her friends. They'd been to all the clubs enjoying and celebrating that they all now could legally get waisted. And she'd thought even less about the boys she'd hit on. She'd danced with a couple of them. And when she realized that they had as much chemistry between them as two rocks, she'd politely rejected the offer of a second go and headed off the to next person.

She'd never considered herself a homewrecker. Or a boyfriend stealer. Ok--- there was this one time in middle school where the boy she was crushing on dated the most awful person ever and she'd simply seen it as her duty to inform the boy that his girlfriend was cheating on him.

Ok, she wasn't, but she might have been!

And while that drama ended with her crush giving her, her first kiss, they never actually ended up as a couple. She realized that boys with no brains weren't her thing and had quickly gotten over that fling. Her next crush, however, wasn't stupid by any means, but he was rather oblivious to anything outside of a textbook. So she made it her mission to cultivate the poor unfortunate soul…

What she created, however, was a monster!

He went from being sweet to swag and then a complete moron! Hell, when she told him she wanted to wait, he took that as an open invitation to find someone who wasn't as eager.

Someone like her best friend!

With that bust under her belt, she headed off to college. New friends and finally a boyfriend who didn't seem like a total butthead, life was looking good. Until she found out that the guy she thought she knew was an immortal mage, who sold his soul to some underworld creature and if he wanted to continue to live forever, he had to sacrifice a virgin every once upon a blue moon.

Or something like that.

At that point anyway she'd been so raging mad she'd shifted and attacked him. Considering he hadn't known she was a shifter, she'd had the advantage of surprise when she clawed his balls off.

(And just served him right if you ask me…)

So, with rotten luck of finding the right guy, Kat decided to wait for her mate. All shifters had them and while waiting for your mate was considered untraditional in modern culture, Kat didn't care. She was tired of all this "could be/could not be" game she decided to wait until her perfect match walked up to her and swiped her off her feet. And while she wasn't expecting any gold "Prince Charming", she did find herself daydreaming about him from time to time.

What he'd be like. What he'd look like. What he would say to her? What he'd do to her…

That part especially had her reaching for her vibrator on late lonely nights.

But as she was no 21-years-old and still hadn't met Mr. Mate, she was starting to wonder if he might be out there. She's already met every shifter in her pack and while sometimes shifters mated with non-shifter, stories about how some people gave up on looking for their perfect one and settled for a chosen mate instead sneaked into her mind.

Had her fated mate given up on looking for her and chosen a mate instead? Was that why she couldn't find him?

Deciding that if she didn't meet her mate on the night of her birthday, she was going to give up and start looking for Mr. Chosen Mate instead.

But not tonight!

Nope!

Tonight was all about having fun. So when a handsome strange walked up to her and introduced himself, she hadn't even had thoughts of boyfriends or mates anywhere near her brains. She hadn't even thought about sex, since the guy wasn't her type at all. But he'd offer to buy her a drink and since she was finally legal, she'd accepted.

And that's when things had started going downhill!

After knocking down a drink she suddenly felt someone yank her hair. Screaming in pain as well as surprise, she barely registered what the bitch pulling her hair was yelling at her. But she could make out the base like.

"Bitch, get away from my man!"

Kat wanted to tell her that her "man" had offered to buy her a drink and not the other way around. Hell, she hadn't even approached the guy. He came to her! But before Kat could get her claws out and scratch the bitch's face-off, the guy – the same guy who bought her a drink – came between them. He was yelling because psycho-girl apparently had been stalking him after he broke up with her.

No surprise there.

She looked like a real piece of work. But it was the look of utter and total hatred the girl sent Kat, that had sent chills down her spine. Kat wasn't good at spotting other supernaturals – which was a skill some possessed while others didn't – but she could have sworn that she saw the woman chanting something as the bouncers dragged her away.

The rest of the night had gone off without a hitch.

She hadn't seen the guy again and since she was the only one of her friends that couldn't get hammered, she was the designated driver and got everybody home safely.

Then she went home herself.

That night, she'd had a terrible dream. It was the woman from the bar. And she was chanting and laughing. Telling her, this should teach her a lesson about stealing other people's boyfriends…

Kat had been so scared at that point she'd cursed and screamed from the top of her lungs. But the more she fought the weaker she became. Her heart racing and tears stinging in her eyes, she then resorted to begging. But it didn't even phase the psycho. She continued chanting.

That's when Kat realized she was in deep shit!

"Shed her skin, shed her soul. Take away what makes her whole. And be like that until the full moon rises, and her true mate her purity takes."

Kat had no idea what the crazy woman was talking about. But as the woman continued to repeat the chant over and over again, drawing something inside a suspicious-looking circle that reminded her scary much of a pentagram, Kat was terrified.

And then began the pain!

She screamed and screamed as her bones broke and reshaped. It felt like going through her first shift, only a million times worse. Every bone, every muscle, and hell, every tendril in her body seemed to snap and break at once. The agony made her vision blurry, and darkness threatened to take her under. But she was too afraid. Too scared that if she closed her eyes, she'd ever open them again…

And then---

She woke up in her bed.

Panting…

But there was no crazy witch. No one was chanting or writing in crazy circles. And best of all, she was home. Safe in her bed…

Relieved to realize it had only been a dream, she got out of bed to fetch a glass of water. And that's when she realized that she was in her bobcat form. Thinking she must have shifted while she slept, she reached inside of herself to pull out her human shape. Only to find---

Nothing!

Her human form wasn't there! She couldn't shift back! Panicking, she grabbed her phone--- which of course just fell flat on the floor under her cat's paws. She wanted to scream as more panic sat in. But all that came out of her mouth was a loud cat-like hiss.

Forcing herself to remain clam, she jumped for the windowsill and clawed her way out. Luckily she always slept with her window slightly ajar, because of the heat at this time of the year. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop, and balancing on crisscross wires, she made her way to her parents house, hoping they could tell her what was happening.

But the second her parents sat eyes on her they--- well, they treated her like a pet!

"Mom! DAD! I'm serious," Kat called out, knowing that all shifters could communicate even in their animal form. "I need help!"

But they couldn't understand her. It was as if someone had taken everything that made her a shifter and whipped it away. She was just a big cat now.

Nothing more.

Nothing less…

Depressed, she stayed at her parent's side for a while. She watched on, as the police showed up, because her friends had reported her missing. She watched, as they did everything, they could to find her. To find out what had happened to her. For a while, she also did everything in her power to help them realize that she was Kat! That she needed help and they had to go find the crazy witch that did this to her. But all that ever did, was get her tossed outside on the balcony while they kept looking.

The final straw was seeing her parents give up and finally admit she was gone.

It broke her heart to see that happen to her family. To know she was right here, screaming for them to see her, yet they didn't. In the end it was too much, and Kat couldn't take it anymore.

She ran away.

She ended up anywhere and everywhere a bus or a train would take her. She lost track of time and place, as neither of it really mattered to her. She hunted her own food in the form of mice and small birds. And was smart enough to avoid animal control. Which was actually why she ended up stuck in a drain. She'd ducked under the storm drain to take cover from some big goon with a net, when she lost her balance and fell into the water. For a heartbeat she went under, but quickly resurfaced.

Only to realize that she was stuck!

"Like a duck with no luck," she muttered to herself, but as always it only came out as a hiss as her cat's vocal cords weren't meant to form such words. She tried to find a way out of this mess, without letting the rising panic inside of her take over. But as time passed and every attempt to get out of this failed, she realized that panicking wasn't such a bad option anymore. Because there was no way out of this, without the risk of drowning. But if she stayed here any longer, she'd be too exhausted to keep herself afloat any longer and she'd drown anyway.

Well, at least it couldn't get any worse…

But as if wanting to prove her wrong, she heard thunder somewhere in the distance. And only a few seconds later, it started to rain cats and dogs. And the irony in that statement wasn't lost on her either.

"Why me," she sighed helplessly, sure that if she'd been in her human form, she'd be crying right then. That's also when she started to reminisce about her life and who to never piss of a witch. Because what else did a person – or in this case bobcat – do when face with death?

Suddenly she heard a car somewhere close by. Doors slammed and people were running to get out of the rain. For a split second, desperate hope bloomed in Kat's chest. She didn't want to die and so with her last exhausted breath, she inhaled deeply.

"HEEEEEEELP!!!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. But all that came out was a cat's "meow" that was easily drowned in the pouring rain.