FORBIDDEN MOUNTAIN: RISE OF THE WARCAT

The wind shifted, carrying the truth of the world in a new key: blood. Fresh and human.

Keira stilled in the same breath Cairo did. Her body slid into readiness without thought, knees soft, shoulders loose. Her claws slipped back beneath skin with a last reluctant prickle. She and Cairo breathed together. Cairo was her twin. He was sleek, massive, not a panther, not truly; something older and deadlier. If you looked closely, faint tiger stripes seemed to ghost his coat. His eyes were green coals, slow to blink.

“High-low?” she sent.

I cut the ground. You take the bark. His tail swept once before vanishing into the knee-high scrub.

Keira sprang for the nearest tree. Her hands and feet found holds where none existed. Where the grip failed, her claws slid out and bit wood, silence as she climbed. She moved along a limb until the world below became a landscape of angles and shadows she understood.

The Warcat women had always said she and Cairo were wrong, different. While other Warcats on the mountain could shift forms, sharing one body, to become a woman or a beast with ease. Keira and Cairo were born different. They had two separate bodies, one human, one cat, sharing a single soul that connected them.

The Warcat Queen had called this pairing a bad omen, something unnatural. Still, when Keira moved, Cairo moved; when she breathed, he breathed; when she smiled, he purred from within. She knew they weren’t wrong; they were meant to be.

The smell of blood thickened as the corpse came into view.

A young human girl. Dress shoved up, just as dead as you please. She’d been beautiful, someone’s laughter, someone’s home, and the mountain had claimed her.

Keira dropped from the tree to a crouch beside the body. She lowered the girl’s dress with two fingers, as if dignity could be returned even when life could not. Then she closed the staring eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

This was the third in as many weeks. Always near the Warcat borders, always brutal.

Not wolves, Cairo said, disgust skirting his tone.

“Then who?” Keira whispered.

Something that slithers and sneaks.

The hairs along Keira’s neck lifted. The forest’s long silence changed, taking on a new weight, a sense of being watched. She did not look directly at the source. Instead, her eyes swept the area and returned.

Cairo’s thoughts came sharply. There is danger. I counted five men. The leader is just ahead; you need to get out of the open.

“Too late, I see one,” thought Keira as a figure separated from the trees, a lean, dark-haired man moving with practiced confidence. He was shirtless, wearing hunter’s pants designed for speed and stealth, but he carried no visible weapon. She did not feel safer because of his lack of weaponry.

He was not a wolf, not a human. Something she couldn’t quite place. Under the leather and road-dust, a fainter scent tugged at something buried in her chest.

Her stare caught his waist first, to the deep V line that travelled beneath his pants. He was all muscle and hardness, not like a warcat. Then, scanning up, she stopped. His face was beautiful, handsome like nothing she had seen before.

Her breath caught as she realized he was staring back at her with the same intensity. Suddenly, her leather top, shorts, and fur boots felt like too little clothing.

A strange heat spread through her body, grasping her with something fierce and bewildering. Her nipples pebbled hard. Every instinct told her to retreat, but a wildness pushed her to step closer. Her heartbeat skipped a beat, as if his presence made it forget its normal rhythm.

She pushed back, thoughts snapping to her twin.

“Run, Cairo, find the Queen. Tell them we have men on the mountain and dead girls stacked like tinder.”

No.

“Now.” She didn’t blink. “Do not come back. I will use my claws if I have to.”

Cairo hesitated a heartbeat, an ache she felt in her own chest, and then wheeled and went, black lightning up the slope, swallowing ground like living nightfall.

The man stepped forward. His mouth curved into a half-grin; his eyes didn’t smile. They locked on hers, intent and knowing.

“Easy,” he said.

His voice poured through her like warmed wine.

Keira lowered herself a fraction, her weight over the balls of her feet, ready to spring in an instant. Her claws itched beneath her skin, hungry to leap free, but she held them. No one could see her strength, not yet.

“Leave,” she said. “Or we find out how many lives you have.”

“The wolves say this mountain is haunted,” the man said. “They say it swallows men. What is a girl like you doing here?”

The mountain kept the Warcats in as much as it kept the world out, a cage cloaked in green forest.

They had long been told that there was a magical border chaining them to the mountain. To leave would mean instant death. Yet recently, she and Cairo had breached it, slipping into the world beyond, exploring a little further each time.

Nothing happened. No thunderbolts from the sky. The border was a lie. Her heart yearned for adventure, to go further, to leave the mountain for good.

You’re thinking of sneaking again, Cairo would say, voice sliding into her mind.

“I am thinking about the lake,” Keira would reply.

You are thinking about breaching the border again.

She could never pretend Cairo didn’t already know the truth in her heart. Beyond the border lay wolves, men, and trouble. She had always been curious.

Curiosity, Nana always warned, kills the cats.

“Men say many things,” Keira answered the strange man. “Mostly to excuse not climbing the mountain.”

His eyes flicked to the dead girl and back.

“Did you see who murdered the girl?”

“No, I just found her now; no doubt it's men or wolves.”

“We’re not wolves.”

“I can smell that.” She glanced at the ring of shadows ghosting in behind him.

“Are you poachers, or something worse?”

“Travellers.”

His tone suggested the word meant they were harmless, but she didn’t believe that.

“We belong to a house. We have rules.”

“Then your rules are poor if girls end up like this.”

“My name is Dion,” he said.

Keira didn’t move; she studied him. He looked like he was carved from flesh by the gods, yet every instinct screamed to her that he was dangerous.

Keira offered a smile that held no hint of pleasure.

“I don’t care for your name, and my name is none of your business.”

“Everything about you,” he said softly, “is my business. At least tonight.”

Heat flashed through her again, treacherous, bewildering. She wanted to spit in his face, to break whatever trance this was.

His hands came up, palms out in a peace gesture.

“We don’t want to hurt you. The dead girl is one of ours; she went missing, and we came to find her.”

“You should have stayed away from Forbidden Mountain.”

The sting hit her neck before the sound reached her. A feathered dart bit skin. She tore it free on reflex, snarl ripping her throat. Heat spilled down her nerves. Another strike kissed her shoulder, sharper, deeper, and the poison went to work.

Far up the slope, Cairo's stride faltered. He felt her slow, and hurled himself faster up the mountain, claws tearing dirt.

Keira, his thoughts blurred, distorted, like words through water. The bond fizzed, then faded.

Cairo stumbled, wavered, collapsed into coarse grass, breath going ragged, then slow, then shallow.

Sleep dragged him under.

“No,” Keira tried to say, but the word came out wrong.

Her claws leapt free in reflex. Then retracted again, unseen. Poison seeped through her muscles and will.

The circle of men closed. Dion moved fast. He caught her before the ground could. Up close, his grin had gone; his eyes were darker, and behind them she glimpsed something chained, something that howled without sound.

“You’ll be safe,” he said.

Even drugged, Keira heard how carefully he laid the words, stone by stone.

She tried to say, “You won’t be if I ever wake up.”

Maybe she did.

The dark rolled over her voice.

The last thing she saw was the dead girl’s face, eyes closed forever.

Then the mountain turned its face away, and the dark took her, and Cairo, with it.

A breeze ran up the ridge. Somewhere higher up, an old woman woke with a hand on her heart.

“Oh, child,” Nana sighed. “I should have told you curiosity didn’t kill the cat, men did.”

Down the slope, among folk that had listened to the first lies ever told on this land, something else listened too.

In tavern corners, whispers had already learned a new name. The Barbarian Warlord with a horde like a storm front, was marching nearer.

Just a rumor. Just a tread felt through cups on a table.

But rumours, like cats, have a way of landing on their feet.

And in the valley below, wolves told their pups: Stay away from Forbidden Mountain. It takes what it wants.

Tonight, it wanted a girl with cat eyes.