“You say the sweetest things," he said, he voice low and seductive. He leaned against her jeep, his generous manhood dangling off to one side.

Heda's retort was cut off when she saw Joanna slithering out of the woods with a lump halfway down her midsection. She morphed back into a beautiful naked blond who looked mightily vexed.

“You got back already? Damn, you are good!"

It would have been so easy to say she'd already devoured her kill.

‘Damn Mom and her damn honor,' Heda's mind grumbled.

"You won. I didn't catch anything."

She looked confused but pleased.

"So . . . why'd you stop?"

Heda growled and then told them everything that had happened.

“Who do I report this to? What's the chain of command for this?"

Anthony looked at her.

"Think they'll actually do anything? I mean, if they've been harassing her all this time --"

Heda shot him another one of those looks.

"We do something because it's what we're supposed to do. Even if Madison Sloan is a complete bitch."

"It'll be your word against theirs. Yours and Madison's." Joanna actually felt surprisingly good when Heda shrugged her shoulders, indicating that it didn't matter.

"I'd go straight to Reichert if I were you. You might be able to get his attention more easily than the rest of us could."

“I should changed my last name to ‘Smith’ or something." Heda sighed.

Unfortunately, this was a time where she actually needed to use that last name.

Joanna smiled and placed a hand on her new friend's shoulder.

"You're one of the good guys, aren't you? Well, that isn't EVEN going to keep you from paying up on our bet." She hugged Heda.

"I hate you," Heda replied.

"I know you do."

"Don't I get a hug?" Anthony asked.

‘Okay,' Heda thought. She put a little sway in her hips as she walked over, pressing her body against his. It didn't take much to feel him rising to the occasion as their heat merged. She traced one finger along his stiffening member, leaned in and whispered into his ear.

"I'm a lesbian." She raised her face to the sky as she laughed and walked away, leaving him pointing in the wind Like a flagpole.

Anthony just stared while Joanna laughed at him, then started to get dressed.

"That's not funny!" Anthony said.

"You're not serious? Are you? C'mon!"

Two weeks later...

Heda had been pissed for all of practice. Professor Reichert had actually gone out of town for the weeks before school started, so she hadn't been able to tell him what had happened, and her complaints to the local Changeling Council had been met with red tape and "Well, we'll see what the Reptile King says when he gets back."

She had almost broken down and called her mother for help, but then she'd kicked herself. Literally. She wanted to break out of her mother's shadow, so she'd see this through on her own. The people she had talked to didn't seem surprised, so she guessed they'd already heard from Madison. She hadn't seen hide nor hair of the blind bitch of the west since the incident.

So Heda had taken out her aggression on the other side of the practice squad. She'd pancaked two girls, spiked one ball so hard it bounced off the lumber and cracked a window, and people were so scared of the shots she was throwing that no one would set to her ... even in setting drills. The coach decided that she "needed a nap" and sent her home. Napping was the furthest thing from her mind. Her coach had told her to call the campus dorm escort service so someone could walk her home. That suggestion lasted as far as the locker room before being summarily dismissed. She WANTED the perp who had taken the horse shifter to show up. She was itching for a fight.

"I can be way too much like Mom,' she thought. It amused her to think of that same woman puttering around a kitchen at her five-star restaurant holding a knife that she wasn't supposed to stab anyone with. There was a wild and primal world just below the horizon on normal humans' reality, and sometimes wars were made there. The last one had been a huge uprising of insect shifters in South America, led by a maniacal Queen who thought the human race had blown its shot at running the planet. Shutting them down had been costly, but a coalition of the warriors of the different animal families had gotten the job done. Jessica Adler had taken time off from being a wife, mother, and restaurant entrepreneur to general the effort.