Prey Drive

Chapter 3: The Coat Rack

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7 years later

I sit on the bank of the river. The cool water feels great on my feet. Mom burnt a loaf of bread earlier, I throw chunks of it to the fish. They aren't picky.

Percy is upstream flirting with the female otters. They are in their shifted forms and frolic from water to shore. They dart through the plants at the bottom of the river so quickly they look like shadows. They are in season and are unusually frisky.

Percy nips one of the females on the nose. I stiffen. My hands move up to the junction of my shoulder rubbing the scar left there. The bite healed unusually fast, but the scar has yet to fade. My touch leaves tingles in its wake, causing me to shiver. Touching the mark always did that. My Doctor said is was a psychological reaction and nothing more.

My mom didn't like to be reminded of the scar. I wore a lot of high necked clothing around the house now.

Sometimes I would forget and my mom would catch sight of it. She would stare at it, and her eyes would glaze over in thought. Those interactions always ended the same way, her telling me to stay away from the woods. I didn't need to be reminded.

I hear a noise from behind me and whip around. Legs ready to flee. When I finished my lessons this year my teacher informed me I turned out to be his most devout student. My vigilance was unparalleled.

My family didn't tell anyone about that day in the woods. My professor didn't understand why I started taking his classes seriously all those years ago, just happy I was showing initiative.

The intruder is none other than Tyler Guilden. My eyes narrow at him, he stares back, I lower my gaze. When I look back up at him he is standing erect, his antlers gleaming in the sun, he looks smug. I want to hit him.

He walks closer to me, I turn back to the water. As soon as Tyler's antlers came in he upped his level of douchary ten fold. Once they reached maturity bucks retained their antlers in both of their forms.

He thought he looked impeccable. I thought he looked like a coat rack. A cheap one at that, who wants to hang up only 4 coats?

"How is my favorite breeder bunny doing?" His voice reminds me of the algae on the bottom of the river my feet are in.

The name makes me wince. The term was outdated and offensive. Something from the Before that us rabbits didn't like to think about.

Each species of shifter had something that nature deemed an advantage. Bat shifters could sprout wings in their human forms when in need. Percy and the otters could hold their breaths for minutes, and see underwater. Deers had their stupid antlers and incredible reflexes, ones that have been known to thwart even predators. Wolves. Wolves were almost invincible, wolves were vicious.

I shudder and move on. There were more but I digress.

Rabbits like many of the small prey species were incredible farmers. This was not our specific skill though, we just needed to eat, the trait that nature gave us was more... intimate.

Every other species had a small window of about two weeks a year to conceive. The time of the window occurring differed for the females of other species, however, the length didn't.

Rabbits, on the other hand, were always in season.

In the Before this was taken advantage of.

Scientists were trying to fix humanity's infertility crisis, the purebloods had destroyed the earth and their bodies beyond repair. Shifter DNA splicing technology had just been perfected and the advantages were unmistakable. Wolf shifters were made first their bodies living weapons, other species to follow. The frustration of having to wait a year to try to create the new era of humanoids angered those in charge. That was until the rabbit's shifters "skill set" was realized.