Chapter 1: Bron

-Bron’s birth: Amity = Earth year: 2066 approx.-

My earlier years had been a living hell.

I knew my grandfather hated me. My mother had defied him and gotten pregnant to a sailor. He had been delivering stock purchased from the continent call Federation. She had gone outside the family. Only a Bull can do this, not a spouse or a dependant relative.

My grandfather, Bull Warh Horn, had tried to beat me from her womb when he found out she was pregnant. He had not yet claimed her as a spouse even though she was his daughter. I was a tenacious little bastard and hung on until my mother birthed me.

While born female as most shifters are, I didn’t like being in female form, and I changed to male as soon as I could, at a very young age. I have spent most of my life as either as a man or in one of my other forms. I have only given birth once, this due to Warh raping me in my first season.

The bastard tied me down and fucked me for three days to make sure I fell pregnant. It pissed him off that he couldn’t fuck me in my bighorn form. You see I’m one of the rare shifters that can only take male gender when I change to my animal forms.

I had one other advantage over my grandfather. The man who sired me had actually been a shifter too, and he had two alternate forms. He could change to wolf and merman. My mother believed that I took my father’s disposition to appear as a male as being the reason why I only took the male gender when in my animal forms.

Personally, I think it’s just genetics. It is more common for my relatives to change to a cow than a bull. Even my grandfather can’t stay in bull form for extended periods, as I can. I don’t believe Warh’s influence encouraged the others to change to male forms either.

Each Herd is supposed to have only one Bull (Leader). Warh was a man who liked his own way and no one else’s. The Bulls of the ten Herds tended to take male form when in public.

As far as genetics are concerned. Shifters who have a herd animal as their dominate form behave a little differently to those who have a predator as theirs. In the wild, a bull will mate with daughters but rarely with the daughters of daughters. The closeness of the genetics creates mutations and birthing difficulties.

While the Bull rules over the herd, it’s the head cow or dame, who is responsible for ensuring that closely related people don’t mate. For example, parents who share more than half of the same genetics.

When a property changes hands and the new Bull is closely related to the old Bull’s spouses or progeny, then he has a choice to make. One of the options was that he could keep them as workers since they are family.

They are also classed as dependants if they stay. Thus, they can’t have calves. If they do, the calf becomes the property of the Bull, and the birth parent must leave the property. In the past, I’ve been told many were also flogged for their indiscretions.

If the Bull decides not to keep them as workers, he may sell them or allow them to move to one of the smaller support towns if they are over twenty-five. The towns, Central, Barton, Midton, Southport and Trail Town all sat on the borders of adjoining properties.

Many of the Bulls ran side industries from the towns, like their dairies and put their people in these positions. Else, the people could move to Horn City or leave the island. Essentially, they were given their freedom and could marry and calve, with the Bulls permission of course.

My people tend to have their first season between the ages of fifteen and seventeen. We are often sold when we are fifteen if we are too closely related to the Bull.

Twice a year we have a festival. The girls that have turned fifteen in that half year or any person from the herd, whom a Bull wishes to sell, are paraded before the ten Herd Bulls. They inspect our pedigrees, good health and negotiate our purchase.

To them, it’s no different from a person selling off their other livestock. We do raise bighorns for a living, and they are sold in a similar fashion. It is how it’s been for thousands of years, or so I believed. To the Bulls, everyone in their Herd is simply a commodity.

The Bulls are not allowed to touch heifers until after they have their first season. My kind can come into season two to three times in a year. Once they calf, it is less often. It is preferable that we have reached at least seventeen before our first calf. To calve to soon can damage us and reduce our ability to breed.

In my case, because my mother went outside the herd to be mated, my grandfather didn’t have to sell me. As long as his genes were less than half of the other persons, he could mate with them. My genes were only a quarter of his so I was fair game.

My mother’s mother was from a southern herd, and any relationship to Warh was at least four generations back. He also didn’t send my mother away and found other ways to punish her. Her next three daughters were all sired by him.

She died in childbirth with her fourth calf when I was ten. This too was common if the woman was breed too quickly between calves. Our race tends to not calf any closer than three years apart. Even two years was considered too soon.

Herd shifters didn’t live as long as other shifters. Giving birth to too many calves to close together will shorten our lifespan further. Most of us can produce upwards of twelve calves in our average hundred year life span. Five to six is more common.

After we turn about twenty-five, we don’t physically age a lot until very late in life, unlike some races. Hence, we are very active for at least the first eighty years of our lives. When we do start hitting old age, our decline is rapid.

Warh got into a bit of trouble over raping me when I was fifteen. While I was his property, it was not the done thing. It was as much for him damaging me as any other reason. While we may be a Bull’s property, they were not supposed to force us unduly.

By accepting a marriage contract, we were expected to behave as a spouse. I’d not accepted a marriage contract. I had refused, and everyone knew it. A dependant who refuses is supposed to be sold. In this way, our choices are very limited. If we are sold, we lose the right to refuse. Some choice, huh!

Several of the other Bulls had hoped to purchase sire rights of me since I represented new blood into the herds. Some weren’t as rigid about the inclusion of other forms in our genes or breeding outside the Herd as long as the progeny could change to bighorn.

By the way, sire rights meant they could pay to mount me when in season and any calf I produced was given to them after birth. I found the whole procedure distasteful. We were told to submit, and I’d heard some Bulls used drugs to keep us subdued during the mating.

To be honest, I didn’t consider the practice any better than being raped by Warh. The fact that I hated being in female form and most certainly didn’t enjoy Warh’s use of my body didn’t encourage me to want to be fucked by the other Bulls or anyone else.

I had decided at a young age that I would be the one doing the fucking.

Despite Warh’s abuse of me, I was a valuable asset to him in other ways.

I had ‘the touch’. I could calm any beast; any animal I ministered to regained its health or healed fast. It was rare that a calf I delivered died. Their mothers regained their health faster, and our milking herd produced the finest milk on the island.

Our small flock of woollies produced the finest fleece. The meat from our bighorns was always the most tender and succulent that you buy. I could also tell if the animal was good breeding stock or not. As much as he hated to rely on me, even my grandfather understood my worth.

When I went into labour, it took two days for me to deliver the calf that Warh had forced on me. The calf was big and my hips small. While we can manipulate our shape to a certain extent this ability is reduced when we are with calf. We can’t change form or gender when pregnant.

The fact I was still growing physical was also an issue. I was a slow developer. At fifteen, I was still small in stature and build. I couldn’t even produce decent tits when in female form. I still looked like a boy and only my genitals really changed.

If I hadn’t pissed Warh off, I might have lasted to my second season before he tried to breed with me. He had wanted me to go to town with him to look at some woollies he was planning on buying.

I, however, had been out in the barn administering to a sick calf and didn’t go to him when he called. The unusually cold winter was affecting many of our calves and even their mothers.

When I got back to the house late that evening, he was madder than a stung bull. He hauled me over his knees, ripped my pants off and went to beat me. Unfortunately, for me, I had come into season, and the smell hit him. Bulls find it hard to resist a heifer in heat.

He forced me to change to female by hitting me so hard I lost consciousness. Like all my kind, I change to female when asleep or in my case unconsciousness. I came to when he rammed his cock into my dry cunt.

My screams of agony could be heard all over the house. My grandmother tried to stop him, but he backhanded her and told her to get out. It was three days of the most hideous torture, any person could conceive.

I know not how many times he used me, it is a memory I block from my conscious. I do remember the pain, and he used me in any way that he could imagine. If his aim was to break me, he didn’t succeed. If anything, my hatred only grew with each thrust of his hated cock into me.

On the third day, I promised him that I would kill him some day. For that little tirade, he tried to fuck my arse. He only stopped fucking me because I bled so much after his first penetration that he had to get the vet to stop the bleeding.

I was in and out of consciousness for a week (10 days) with a fever and due to the trauma of my body and blood loss. It took a further week before the vet would allow me to leave my bed. I couldn’t sit properly for two more weeks as I healed.

Then the sickness of pregnancy started. In my weakened state, I suffered badly. The next four and half months of my pregnancy were hell. I was sick the entire time. I often spent many days in bed with fevers from the vomiting. Inflamed bowels from dysentery and his use of me were other complications.

I worried the other woman, as the child grew large in my small frame. They and the vet told Warh that he couldn’t use me sexually in my state. The one time that he cornered me and tried, I threw-up on him. He left me alone after that.

Warh paid for his use of me in another more devastating way. The calf I had been administering had developed a fever and dysentery. I was worried at the time that it was more serious. I didn’t get to tell my grandfather of the sickness since he felt it was more important to punish me.

We lost thirty calves, twelve cows and his prize bull to the disease that winter. The cost of the vet constantly being at our property was also high. It served him bloody right, as far as I was concerned. While Warh was considered the richest man on the island, even he found such losses hard to counter.

The quality of his herd also dropped over the next three years. The fact I wasn’t putting the same effort into looking after the herds was noted by all. Even the homestead had an unhappy atmosphere. For the first half year, while I was pregnant, I was just too sick to care.

I got to upset my grandfather again. I gave birth to a boy, the day before my sixteenth birthday. I was born on the first day of the New Year, which for us was mid-summer. Shifters bemoaned the birth of a boy. It is exceedingly rare that they can shift form.

More often than not, they sire more useless boys than girls. Having a boy was a bad omen. Warh had never sired one before, and he took it badly. I was a curse to him. It got so he couldn’t even stand the sight of me, and I was evicted from the house to the bunkhouse. I was not upset by the change of status.

Warh had planned to sire me out to help recoup some of his losses after I had his calf. By having a boy, I thwarted him again. I had greatly reduced my desirableness and value as breeding stock. It had to be my bad genes from my father that had to be at fault.

He was a strong, healthy boy and the image of his mother, not his sire. When I saw him, I laughed so hard I peed. My son was sent away. I didn’t produce milk to feed him, and Warh couldn’t stand the sight of him or me.

As soon as I healed enough to change, I changed to my male form and stayed in it for every waking moment. I also took to roaming the countryside and neglecting my duties at the homestead. I was sullen when with the family and they started avoiding me as much as my grandfather did.

I would snap at them all to leave me alone and then disappear for days. The vet said I was depressed and he was very worried about my mental state. I think it surprised them all that I was grieving over the loss of my son.

Losing a calf in its early years, during birth or not long afterwards, is common here. Having your calf taken away and not being told where it was, is a different story. It took me many months to regain any semblance of my previous health.

I went back to herding and took off for weeks and even months at a time. I’d pack my back pack with every book I could find, round up the weaners or sale longhorns and go. I’d only come back to stay at the homestead long enough to change herds and books, and then I took off again.

I knew it pissed my grandfather off. At the time, I didn’t really care. I couldn’t tend to the rest of the herds if I wasn’t around. We had a very large property, and it was easy to get lost with a herd in the high country. I’d live off the land and use my other forms to hunt and eat.

I don’t think Warh was game to confront me. The herding had helped me regain my strength, and I had started to grow at last. I also grew fast. When he was near me, the looks of hatred I gave him could have killed if I knew how. We only communicated via other people.

Initially, I did try to keep his other stock healthy during the winters, but Warh refused to do as I asked. I just gave up caring after a while. After he bitched and cussed when the sickness came back, I told him I had lost the touch.

Only the animals I personally herded during the warmer months stayed free of disease. At least we did have some saleable stock. The next two winters after he raped me were bad ones for the Horn herds.

Then my luck changed.

Warh sold me at the spring festive before I turned eighteen.

I had lost my worth to him, and he could no longer tolerate me being around. I think even the sight of me angered him so much that selling me was his last effort at punishing me. I was taller and stronger but still under-age. He knew I’d have to submit to the person who purchased me if I was sold.

One of the Bulls who lived to the north-east of us purchased me. Our island is quite large. Many say that from the sky our island looked a lot like a roosting rohan with its beak pointing east. Green Island is located in the southern hemisphere of a planet call Amity.

The tip of the island is about seventeen degrees south of the equator. Four continents surround us but no closer than 1800km of sea. To the north-west is Saran, and to the north-east is Orient. To the west is Palatine and to the east is Federation. A fifth large content called Galina lies between Orient and Saran in the north.

Bull Cavil Hind owned most of the land that took up the head of the rohan. Bull Robert Black owned the southern half of the head. It was lush property. While Cavil had many meadows and a large herd, he also had large tracks of forests on the hills. It was a very hilly island.

He hired commoners and his descendants to cut and replant his forests. He grew a lot of fast growing softwood trees specifically for the paper mill in Horn City. He mined copper and tin and had one smelter that I knew of. I learnt this because I liked to read our histories and any other book I could, on the long nights when I was out herding.

One in three of the people who lived on the island were classed as commoners. This meant they couldn’t shapeshift. We are taught that when our people came here two thousand or more years before they had been escaping a dying world. Their spaceship was damaged, and the piece that landed here held our people in a special type of sleep.

Chapter 2 »