"Sorry," he muttered.

"You should be," Heda replied shortly. Her opinion of him had dropped a few notches.

“DM” was a derogatory term in the shifter community that had been floating around for over a century. It meant "Darwin's Mistake," and was used in regards to shifters with conditions that would reduce their chances for personal survival. Changelings were closer to their wild animal counterparts than humans. Humans were a little more discreet than most shifters in their discomfort or outright contempt for those with handicaps. The girl was blind, a condition which would have led to her being abandoned or even killed in the animal kingdom. That made her weak according to the unspoken laws of the changelings. It made her prey. Heda's parents had always taught her tolerance, and her travels in Europe had given her a good perspective as to what was really important.

Another couple of changelings spotted her and stood up, intentionally standing in front of her. Heda couldn't hear what they were saying, but it was making the girl more upset. She tried to move around them, but one of them (another mammal shifter) got in her way.

"What are those ass-clowns doing?" Joanna said.

Heda concentrated and enacted her Gift. Her eyes flashed blue for a second, and she was able to see with the clarity of her predator counterpart. A Gift was a blessing for shifters. It occurred rarely, but it was a variation on the shifter virus that allowed that person to use certain aspects of their animal totem in their human form.

For Heda, that meant outstanding eyesight as well as increased strength and speed, as well as a battle-cry that temporarily froze her enemies in place.

“Crap," Joanna said, “you're Gifted too? Sweet!" But when Heda stood up to go and intervene, Joanna grabbed her arm.

“It's okay," she said.

"Billy is here."

Another player entered the area, and he was impossible to miss. First, he was six-and-a-half feet tall and had a chest like a barrel. He was just so damn massive that it was actually scary. He was ruggedly handsome in a way, but nothing out of the ordinary. But his massive arms flexed slightly under his flannel shirt as he stepped forward, and the girl's . . . Madison's . . . persecutors backed up quickly.

He turned to Madison and they started to chat. She looked noticeably more relaxed now.

“I think he's apologizing for being late, but that's all I can make out. Not good at reading Lips."

“Want to practice?" Anthony said, leaning in.

"Even if I wasn't still pissed at you, the answer would be 'no.' Or "hell no.' Depends on my mood." She glanced at Joanna.

"Who were the creeps?"

"That would be Alvin Hannity, resident vampire bat shifter and complete a-hole. Madison's a bat shifter too, so Alvin's taken it upon himself to be offended on behalf of the whole bat community that Madison is one of them. And don't ever say ‘blind as a bat' around her, because Billy might break you in half, no matter who your mother is."

“I wouldn't say something like that," she replied. Of course she'd been thinking it, but she had some control over her mouth.

“You know them?"

“Not personally no, but they've apparently been harassing her for a couple of years. Billy keeps it from getting too bad, seeing as most people with sense don't screw with him."

"He's a reptile shifter. What kind?"

Joanna looked at Anthony, who said, "Alligator snapping turtle, or so I hear. Except that somehow he managed to score a miracle and get Sasha Baker as a girlfriend, I don't know much about him."

“Who's Sasha Baker?"

Joanna fielded that one.

"She's the student council . . . the human student council president. She's also a sorceress, and she may very well be every man's naughty-librarian fantasy. And yes, she actually works at the Library. You'll probably meet her at some point.” Then the cobra shifter let out a pleasant little purr.

"Now speaking of ‘meat,' there's a big hunk of yummy meat I wouldn't mind chowing down on."

The crowd actually hushed and eyes went to the podium at the front of the room where Neil Reichert, King of the Reptiles, was preparing to speak. It was the business of every changeling to know the monarchs of the other animal families, and everyone knew about this one. Fifteen years early, he had been working as an paleontologist in Africa when they uncovered the remains of an ancient crocodile known as a Sarcosuchus Imperator, or the Flesh Emperor Crocodile. His Noah Strain had kicked in, and he had become the first changeling in history to have an extinct species as his totem animal. He was one of the most powerful kings of any of the families that anyone had ever known. And, in Joanna's words, he was yummy.

A studly cross between Harrison Ford as “Indiana Jones" and Viggo Mortensen in just about anything, Neil Reichert tended to make girls swoon and made the guys wonder why they couldn't be more like him.

He was one of those eternal-five-o'clock-shadow kind of men who looked good in a tux or in a Lumberjack outfit, and not the Monty Python kind of lumberjack. He was as alpha male as anyone could get.

He had apparently decided to start teaching archeology, anthropology, and paleontology courses a few years ago, and they were always filled to capacity. Even humans, having no cerebral concept of what he was, were drawn to him. All the monarchs were like that to some degree, but Reichert was different.