Taming the Queen of Beasts

<strong>GAR</strong>

When Gar raised his voice to draw attention to himself, he knew his sister would be angry. But when Elreth snapped her head around to find him with her eyes, her gaze was aflame with rage. Shame speared through him. The smallest part of him, the part that had risked missing this entire ritual to save his mate from her fear, quailed at that look. But still he didn't shrink.

Gar was many things, but a coward wasn't one of them. He owned his choices. He may have been late, but he was here. He was the Alpha of these people. And the birds brought a ridiculous charge against them. His people. How dare they?

He had never been more lion than in that moment. He wanted to close his teeth on that female's throat. A growl puttered in his throat, promising violence, as he prowled across the space between the disformed and the female who stood in front of Elreth. He let his body swing, let them see the pride in him, the strength. Let them understand exactly what a shitshow they would be facing if they continued with this charade.

He was the Alpha of the disformed. He was a predator. And he was ready for a chicken dinner.

Raising his chin to show her how little he feared her "real" anima strength, Gar snarled through his teeth, "I will demonstrate how truly Anima the disformed are."

Then, without hesitation, he shifted and launched his lion towards the tribe of birds, roaring to shake the ground under their feet, scattering them with his claws.

They screamed and squawked, running from his bared teeth as he twisted mid-leap, to snap them closed a hairsbreadth from the neck of their Alpha. Then, when the male cried out and the tribe wheezed with fear, he shifted back, standing proud, holding the Avaline Alpha by his neck, his teeth bared.

"Real Anima, my puckered ass," he muttered. Then, swinging his attention back to the tribe who'd spread out, all of them staring at him in fear, he laughed humorlessly and turned back to the Alpha Male in his grip. "Does that answer your pathetic challenge?" he growled at the quivering male, who was trying to meet his gaze and hold it, but kept shivering.

"Y-you aren't disformed! That doesn't count!" the Alpha's mate screeched from behind Elreth where she'd taken shelter from his claws.

Gar snapped his head around to face her, his eyes narrowed to slits. "I am Alpha of the disformed. I won them. They are my people. No one is more disformed than me! Do you challenge me? Do you deny that I am Anima?" His voice rose to another roar on the last question and the crowd of birds scattered further. Only the Alpha stood without fleeing, though he shook.

Gar didn't let him go as he turned his attention to the rest of the tribes.

"This challenge is bullshit. A question and a quest brought not because of a valid argument or concern, but because of bigotry and selfish hearts. No one here truly believes the disformed aren't Anima. We are not made Anima by our ability to shift. If we were, would that mean the sick, or the dying are suddenly no longer Anima? Would the old who do not carry the strength to shift again no longer number among us? What about our differing forms—do they also carry our truth? Is there a tribe that is more Anima than the rest if it shifts faster, or if the predator takes the prey?

"No! We are Anima because of who we are—our strength, our character, our knowledge of the Creator, our honor of the natural world. We are Anima because we are a tribe and we all work together to make this life, this society work. We are anima because it runs in our blood—just as much in a disformed as in any among the tribes.

"I am a lion, and I am Alpha of disformed. Am I less Anima for carrying both? Or more?" Then he turned to gesture with his free hand towards his parents. "My mother was born human and yet she stands here, a lioness in her own rite—do any here deny that? Is any human who takes our ways less Anima for denying their own heritage in order to choose ours?"

Rika's face flashed in his head and he turned, pretending to scan the crowds, but actually looking for her in the shadows of the trees that crawled out of the cracks at the top of the bowl. She'd been too frightened to stay alone, and he'd been unwilling to leave her, so he'd brought her and urged her to hide high above the tribes, praying that the winds wouldn't shift to reveal her.

"It has never been within us to require an Anima to shift—where does the bullshit stop? We are Anima because we embrace difference, we do not reject it. We value our differences. We celebrate the differences in our strengths and skills because they compliment each other. There is nothing less Anima that we have ever done than reject the disformed who walk among us, yet are measured as less. Any Anima, any single one born to our mothers with different bodies, different minds, different needs… as long as they can shift we treat them with the honor due any Anima. But we deny the disformed? It's bullshit!" he roared.

He turned his head to scan the entire crowd, the entire bowl, making sure every tribe felt the judgment of his eyes.

But one brave soul spoke up from among the birds. "It isn't differences in general that we challenge. We challenge this difference. If the disformed can't shift, how do we know they aren't just humans? How can be we be sure they aren't the reason our whole world is at risk?!"

The entire Hallowed Grounds went silent as Gar growled, low and long, as he slowly swung around to face the male.