The Changeling

EPILOGUE

[10 Cycles Later...]

Aedom Tate had done many things in his life. He'd helped put enough cannonballs through a ship full of murderous rapers to sink it faster than a gull could shit. He'd seen Cazars and keeps along every remen of Pagegonia.

Palaces and Cazars so magnanimous he'd quite literally slept on a pallet of pure gold beneath a mattress made of softened, dead sea sponges.

He'd feasted on food so decadent he'd spent days tortured over the phantom tastes left on his tongue. He'd reveled beneath the glittering black cosmos on white sand beaches, soft enough like clouds, as if the world had turned them upside down.

However, nothing ever compared to the fastidious, passionate hatred he felt while mucking the thrice damned stables of the menagerie. It was something he spent an inordinate amount of time on in his new life, at

his new keep, with his new outlook. It was a startling resemblance to one he once had, what felt like hundreds of lives ago, when he spent much of his time doing this same damned job as a child. It frustrated him the fond memories of raising animals and tending to the nature surrounding them had been so strong to make him forget it was fucking miserable. For hours, every single day, he hefted an enormous, iron pitchfork laden with piles of hay sopped in excrement over his shoulder. Then he had to haul it off in a shoddy cart to be used later for the crops. It left him smelly and irritable.

It was midmorning. He'd gotten a

considerable amount of the work done with the help of the wards they housed and taught a trade. They had to go through and dole out food to the animals housed there. Double check all the injured and parturient. Then make sure they all got the care or medicine they needed for the day. After that, he'd work on training both animals and his apprentices in their rearing practices.

He propped up his pitchfork after finishing laying down a fresh layer of hay. An instinct or something like a premonition itched at the back of his neck. Alert in an instant, he peered back over his shoulder.

A leopard sat in the doorway of the open pen. Next to it lay the injured deer living inside said pen, having a rest while its leg healed up, gnawing on some of the hay. Its eyes blinked, blank, black, and unfazed by the deadly predator a mere breath away from it.

"Much use those prey instincts do you, hm?"

He spat at the ungulate. "What do you want?"

He grumbled with a glare at the leopard with its gleaming coat, reflecting like gold with the burgeoning day. He watched as the enormous cat's eyes gradually slitted. The rounded curve of her tail flicked behind her, peaking above a shoulder that wiggled.

"Don't —!" Lovou tried to snarl, but the beast had already leapt at him with an inundated grace. He thumped into the hay with the big cat splayed on top of him, two massive

paws on his chest as she looked down at him, expectant.

"Beets, I already fed you, you shit. How the fuck did you get out of your pen again?" He groused and tried to shift beneath the beast.

Beets thrummed something deep in her throat and then drove her head right into his face. She dropped all of her weight on him and writhed over him enthusiastically, giving him a good, thorough bath in her scent.

Aedom sputtered up to a sitting position as Beets rolled off of him. She then splayed out on her back with her head tilted at an awkward angle, gold gleaming eyes staring back at him.

She flopped onto her feet and rammed her head into him again and again, shoulder, jaw, neck, elbow, her throat still thrumming.

"I get it, you're bored." Aedom grumbled,