Chapter 7

Darcy and Blaze no sooner joined the others and they were under attack.

Rollover seemed the main instigator of the rebellion. “This isn’t who we are, you are abominations. You are trying to change who we are as a people. The Gods designed us to be the way we are, but no, you were not happy with this, so you align yourself with an outsider. He cares not for our way of life.”

“He doesn’t even wish to live amongst us. He deems himself better than us because he can access the ancestors home and he defiles our histories and beliefs by doing so. I say that you are abominations and you all should leave us now. You are not true Dogs anymore. Even the sight of you sickens me,” she ranted.

She looked at Huntress with spite and venom, “You are a poor leader, Huntress. First, you try to have us accept humans to live amongst us and now you wish us to accept this mongrel to be your successor’s mate. You have lost your way, you and your daughter are too human, be gone I say and take your changelings that you have infected with you.”

Darcy took note of those who openly sided with Rollover. He could see that the women were mostly undecided. Of those in Dog form, it was harder to tell. He could tell that Huntress was deeply disturbed at being attacked so openly by Rollover.

He suspected Rollover and Grunt had been spreading their dissent since they had left the afternoon before. Fear had a way of making people shy of change. He assumed that Rollover and Huntress had been adversaries for many years.

Huntress shot back, “You are as human as I am Rollover, I have the records. You are the tenth daughter in the line of a first-born female the same as I am, so don’t give me that shit about being too human. Most of the first-born females in this room are at least four generations direct.”

“If it weren’t for the fact that our fathers were not Dogs we would have suffered the disabilities of inbreeding and reverting to Canine as many of our brothers and sisters have. How many of those present have given birth to a female Dog that is a first-born of one of our male Dogs in the last twenty-five years?” she asked and looked around the crowded room.

“None, that is how many. Most of you have not even had female puppies to our males. Even worse, most of you have not even been pregnant to one of our males even though I know you have been trying. That includes you Rollover. You have only produced one litter in twenty years and that was two sons.”

“The very Gods that you evoke Rollover have answered our petitions and they have sent our saviour. If you wish, I will ask Darcy to not change any who wish to wait. I can feel my fertility coming and I will mate with Boner in the human form. If my children are not born as pups then we will leave, will that satisfy you?” she goaded Rollover.

They were all surprised when Goldie stood beside Huntress and said, “I will also leave if I give birth to a human child to Speeder. My time is due and as you know, I’m a first-born, and I have not been with a human male, as I should. If I do become pregnant, then we will know that we will no longer need to seek out humans if we don’t wish too. This will make us true Dog-Shifters.”

Twitch then stepped forward, “I’m not a first-born, so I was not able to shift to human form even though I carried the ability. Thanks to Darcy, I can now do so and I can now contribute more to this community. I felt trapped in my Dog form, as if a part of me couldn’t be who I was supposed to be. If they go, then I will go with them.”

Speeder then said, “I’m with Twitch and Goldie, I also felt as if part of me was not able to be what I should be. I now feel whole, I am what I should be; what all of us who carry the shifter gene should be.”

“You can include me,” Boner said, and he was echoed by Romp.

“Fine, I say that you all stay in the ancestors’ home and not come near the community until you prove that you are still Dogs like the rest of us,” Rollover challenged.

Huntress looked at the group who stood beside her then at the others. “Very well, since you wish that both Blaze and I are gone until I give birth to pups, then I must put Chaser in charge.”

“What! I am the next in succession not her,” Rollover spat.

“No, you are only next if we both die. Since I will for all intent, be on a mission for the people, then Chaser is in charge as my nominated deputy, just as she has been every-time I go away. These are our laws are they not?” Huntress challenged.

Rollover scowled, but she couldn’t see a way around this. “If you do not produce your pups by the end of spring you will be exiled from this community,” Rollover growled out.

“Agreed, I will accept exile,” Huntress said and at Rollovers nod of acceptance, she spun on her heels and marched back towards the ancestors’ home. Darcy and the others had little choice but to follow her.

Darcy had to alter the spells before he could let them in and they all headed to the sitting area. “Well, that could have gone better,” said Boner as he flopped down onto a lounge chair and the others joined him.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Darcy said sadly.

“The bitch has been trying to get rid of me for years. But she hasn’t won. The stupid camla only challenged for me to be exiled. Blaze is still my heir and according to our laws she did get pregnant to a human, so both she and her children can’t be exiled as she didn’t flout the laws.”

“What happens if I insist on staying once the children are born?” Darcy asked.

“She can’t stop that either. None of our laws says that you can’t stay. There are in fact several documents showing that men have stayed with the community for many years and even all their lives in our past, so she has no justification to have you removed,” Goldie said.

“Except that I can infect people with my gene,” Darcy replied.

“Oh! I suppose that she can try that, but if Huntress and I can produce some pups then that point becomes moot too,” Goldie added.

Darcy scrubbed his face as he thought. He knew if he had the magical items then it would ensure they did come into season faster. He seriously thought of giving Huntress the box he had but he just couldn’t do it.

“I need to go check my spellbook and see if I can find a spell to help bring you into season faster,” he said and got up. He headed to the secret rooms wishing to find a place they couldn’t disturb him. He called up all the fertility spells that he could find but he had no idea how to alter them to suit the Dog-Shifters.

Frustrated, he wandered around and looked for any of the books that the brothers may have left. If they were experimenting to make Shifters, he bet they had tried different fertility spells. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed.

He had opened one of the chests that were lined along one wall. He noticed that two were stained a blue colour, four a green and the other six were so dark he would have called them black. For some reason, he had chosen a black chest to open first. It was completely filled with black stained leather bound books.

They were all the same size and thickness. He knew they were magical books because Lee and Sean had original Keltrian books themselves and he had seen both of them use them. He also knew the damned things would hold hundreds of pages and a lot of Mages used then as diaries.

Mages also had a bad habit of noting spells in them and not bothering to move the spells to a more dedicated book. He hoped these were just diaries. He pulled one at random and flicked it open. “Fertility spells,” he said aloud.

Nothing happened. Either it didn’t have any or it didn’t understand him. “Shit, this could take forever. I need to get the damn bitches in heat in the next few days.”

Darcy was surprised when the chest rattled and a book forced its way up to the top. He exchanged books and opened the new one. He started reading the page it had opened to. After several minutes, his arse found its way to the next chest and he sat heavily as he read in horror.

After a while, he said aloud, “Fuck, this is no heritage I’d wish to be proud off, and I thought mine was fucked up.”

The oldest brother, whom he found out was called Nathan had been the one to come up with the idea of altering the Canines so that they took human female form. The three brothers had learnt that they could change from male Canines to humans at a very young age and always appeared as humans in society.

After being rejected by the other Shifters and society in general for both being born male and as puppies, they had coined the term Dog as their new race. For them to become a true race, they needed children. Some of the do-gooders in town were not happy with their perverted ways as they saw them, so the men moved.

Nick, the second born, had suggested they use an old map that they had found, which had the location of a transportation ring, and go to find it. They had worked out that they needed a good supply of crystals to help them perform the level of magic they would need, so they came to Dog Mountain to find them.

Here they set up their laboratories and conducted their experiments. Darcy was surprised that the room he sat in was originally here and many items had been left here by the first explorers. The brothers had determined that the explorers had planned to leave people here but they didn’t know why they hadn’t.

Darcy knew that this was common, as the Keltrians had done something similar on Earth, the first time around. He wasn’t sure what the significance of the variations of the times was. On Earth, it had happened seventy thousand years in his past but here it was more like five thousand.

He wondered if the sun in Keltria had even blown up yet or if it was a more recent event. Lee had told him they’d had about twenty-five hundred years in Earth terms, to scour the galaxy to find new worlds. He wondered if the event that happened a hundred years before when the crystals disintegrated had some significance.

He had no idea how long it would take for the effects of something happing in one solar system to affect other systems. He didn’t even know if he was closer to the Ketrians system or even further from it than Earth was. He wasn’t a scientist and the star systems he has seen in the sky his first night there, were not even vaguely familiar.

He pushed the significance of the fact he would probably never get home from his thoughts and concentrated on the diary again.

Nathan or Nat as his brothers Neil and Nick called him was the one who got lucky.

Their mother, Gia, had lived on a small farm outside of Boney Hills. Her mother had been horrified when she realised that her daughter was letting the wild Canines service her. Her daughter had always been a bit odd. It was one of the reasons she lived out of town and not in it.

She had suspected for some time that the Canine were in fact sentient. While it was known that Shifters could acquire the genes from other mammals it hadn’t been done for hundreds of thousands of years back in the home system. Both repulsed and intrigued she had let her daughter continue the association.

Sexual intercourse wasn’t necessary to gain the gene but it was soon apparent to the mother that Gia, wasn’t always changing to Canine form when she interacted with the animals after the first time. When Gia gave birth to the puppies, this created a whole new dilemma as Gia had been in human form.

The mother had wanted to drown the puppies but Gia and Rough, the Canine she was currently with, wouldn’t let her. The mother was relieved when the male pups changed to human form when they were about two years of age and she did everything to make them stay in that form.

She expressly forbade them to change to Dog form and even placed a spell she had acquired on them to lock them in their human form when they were five. Things changed when their hormones altered and the teenagers found that they were once again waking in their Dog form.

They were smart enough to work out that young ladies would not be happy to wake up beside a huge dog. Then their hair changed and except for one lock of blonde hair over their right ear, the rest went black. The mother had also worked out that the bothers didn’t have the same sire. They were not identical triplets.