I loved them for that. I had a soft face which many took as me being a soft girl, but they couldn’t be further from the truth. My body told a similar story. It wasn’t cut or lean, but it didn’t carry much excess fat either. It refused to put on any more weight, and I ate a lot to keep my calories up. As I kept staring at myself, my pupils constricted into the feline slits seemingly on their own, but it was probably my own anxiety over what I’d just gotten pulled into. I would need to wear sunglasses to make sure no one saw that outside, since I hadn’t been able to convince them to go back to my hazel.
“Fuck me,” I groaned softly, finishing up by brushing my teeth and pulling my hair back into a ponytail. I dried off and dressed, walking out into my living room, finding Carey immediately and watching her play on my computer. There wasn’t anything there for her to find, so I wasn’t sure how to react to the violation of privacy. I could stomp over and slam it closed. I could ignore it and let her know it was okay, even if I didn’t feel that way. I wasn’t good with children and it was becoming more obvious every second I stood there. She finally looked up and closed the laptop on her own.
“I was just wanted to…I don’t know. I wasn’t doing anything.” With a shrug, she stood up and left my chair, going to another and crossed her arms, seeming smaller every second.
“You’re fine. I have a few games on there if you want to kill the time, but maybe we should get you some clean clothes first. The best thing here is a Walmart, but it’ll have what you need.” I didn’t know what sort of lifestyle this girl was used to and I didn’t want to make any assumptions.
“Yeah, thanks.” She stood up and grabbed her bag as we walked out. I led her out the back of my bar to my hatchback and held the door open for her. The strong shell of curiosity had obviously faded and now I was stuck with a somewhat sad little girl. Not that I could blame her. She was in a rough spot and one that I had the utmost sympathy for.
“So…” I had no idea what I was doing with an eleven-year-old. If her father was alive, I hoped he realized he sent her to possibly the worst werecat he could find for this sort of thing. I might have been the closest one to his pack, but I wasn’t good with kids.
“Why do the Laws say you can’t help?” she asked, and I could hear the sadness. Hopelessness and sorrow. She had really thought that I would help her dad. “I’m human, so I’m not taught a lot. Dad says if I decide to try and be Changed, I’ll learn a lot more, but I’m too young to consider that, and now this…”
“The Laws,” I said softly, staring out into the bright sun. I grabbed my glasses from the center console and slid them on. I didn’t want to consider her being Changed one day. It wasn’t my business, and I knew she was now seeing realities of her world that she thought would never touch her. Children thought their parents were indestructible. The shattering of that belief was something that shook everyone eventually. “Over eight hundred years ago, there was a very big and very deadly war between werewolves and werecats. I don’t really know the why, but because of it, humans were starting to notice we existed and were not just scary stories. They started hunting all of us. Vampires, fae, witches. They were all caught in the crossfire too. They forced werecats and werewolves to sit at the same table and talk. The werewolves aren’t as strong as werecats, but my kind were being driven to extinction. We wouldn’t give up until one of our most ancient werecats forced us into the peace talks to save us.
“Well, the sides all sat down and we made the Law. The witches and fae used their magic to make the Law binding. Now, I’m really young. I’ve been a werecat for less time than you’ve been alive, so this is all secondhand.” I stopped for a second, glancing at her. She just nodded, accepting that I might have some of this wrong. I didn’t think