“Are you okay?” I stamped down the urge to pet her, to somehow comfort her—I knew better than to touch a cat in mid-Shift. As long as her cat jaws were still in place, she could take off my hand with one good bite. Even if she didn’t mean to.
When she didn’t answer, shaking all over now that the changes were visible, I tried again. “Hey! Nod your head if you’re all right!”
She nodded, an unstable up-and-down motion in the grip of the full-body tremors that ushered in her human skeletal structure.
Chapter Sixteen
As I watched, her tail seemed to shrink into her spine—easily the most amazing part of the process—and the fur across her back began to recede in a broad arc, as if the follicles were sucking each hair back into her skin. I’d done it at least a thousand times, but it was still amazing to watch. Riveting. Though the tabby probably wasn’t enjoying it quite so much.
Fortunately, by then she was past the point of needing my guidance. And past the point of no return, at least for such a young werecat. A more experienced cat could probably have reversed the Shift at such a late stage, if he was willing to put up with the extra pain and extended duration. But the tabby was over the hill and on the way down, with nothing to stop her progress now but completion of the transformation.
A few minutes later, her bare paws twisted and stretched into hands, and her claws thinned into fingernails, long and dirt-caked, as I’d expected. Then she went still, lying on the floor on her stomach, one leg out straight, the other bent at the knee. A long, matted mane of thick brown hair covered her head, shoulders, and much of her back. When it was clean and healthy, she would probably have one of the most beautiful heads of hair I’d ever seen. A true mane.
For several moments, she didn’t move, other than the rising and falling of her chest as she panted beneath that blanket of hair, winded from the most strenuous and unique exercise she’d ever endured. I thought back to my first few Shifts, trying to remember if I’d been so exhausted, or looked so incredibly frail. I didn’t think so. But then, I’d known what to expect. And I’d never in my life been as weak as she had to be, nor half as thin.
Between matted strands of hair, I saw bony shoulders stretching into a pair of arms so fragile-looking and thin that her elbows had actual corners. Her waist was impossibly tiny, and her hips so narrow I would have assumed she was prepubescent, if it wasn’t impossible for a werecat to Shift before puberty sent hormones raging through a body, triggering much more than just breasts and menses.