Colin woke with a jolt and before he could react, he was jerked and slammed into the cage as it flew forward and hit something.

  He groggily felt at his surroundings with his life pulse and felt the predatory woman and man in front of him. Colin guessed they were inside of a car based on the way the two were sitting. The woman jumped out of the car and ran away somewhere.

  Colin shook himself and remembered that he had been taken by these two. He needed to escape as soon as possible. It was dim all around him but he could see enough from the light outside bleeding through to tell he was in his cage from Jenny and there was duct tape all around it. Colin changed his mouth into a razor sharp, serrated beak-pincer hybrid and chewed through the tape easily.

  The man opened his car door and Colin turned into a dragonfly and escaped the car through the man’s door before he closed it.

  Freedom felt so good.

  Colin flew to the woman and dodged a swat from her. Her focus was not on him so he just kept his distance. His first instinct was to get revenge, but he wasn’t sure if he could beat her in a fight. She had already bested him once.

  Colin flew to investigate what the woman was focusing on. Two men fighting, but they weren’t exactly men. Their life-pulse was different from a human’s, almost like they were only partly human.

  On a whim, Colin reached out through his pulses to one of the strange, not men and something resonated and reached back out to him. It felt like himself in some way, but different, almost lesser. Before whatever was reaching out could connect with Colin, he pulled away and the connection snapped. The one that was reaching out through the pulses to him felt far more unstable after Colin broke the attempted connection.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  The whole encounter scared Colin, something about those two “not-men” fighting made him feel uneasy. He felt like he recognized them, but wasn’t sure why. All he knew is that their presence made him feel uncomfortable. Between them and the predatory woman and man, Colin decided to run away as far from them as possible. Right now, he didn’t feel hungry and none of them were trying to hurt Jenny or Kristy, so there was no point in interacting with them.

  Colin flew back in the direction the car had come from in the hopes to find Jenny’s house again. He had an odd feeling that he had traveled on this road plenty of times and he let his instincts lead him until he was close enough to recognise his surroundings. After a few hours of flying, he made it back to the house.

  Hungry

  After traveling for so long, Colin was ready to feed. There were no life pulses in the house, so he decided to give in to the hunger while he waited for Kristy and Jenny to come home.

  Outside the home, Collin fed on bugs mostly, but found a snake and devoured the entire thing. It was his first time eating a snake and he looked within to find the new pulse within himself. For some reason, the snake’s pulse was dull and try as he might, he couldn’t transform into it at all. It was the same for the Alligator when he tried. Colin wondered what was wrong. He had a feeling that he would be able to transform into the snake and Alligator in time, but for now, something was missing.

  After hunting and eating his fill, Colin climbed into Jenny’s window. Now that his cage was gone, he found a comfortable place underneath her bed and patiently waited for his family to come home.