Dangerous Territory

Nine

She was the first one up in the morning, the sound of her dad's snoring sounding out from the room across the hall.

Malandra made a noise of irritation, glaring at her pale pink walls.

They weren't that thin.

Her dad only snored so obnoxiously after he'd had one too many drinks before going to bed. To celebrate the weekend, he had gone out with a bunch of the men from the station and come back extremely late. As the man of the law that he was, another one of the men had been picked as the designated driver for the evening, so her dad was able to come back very drunk. He had done the routine one too many times to need any help, so she had ignored him when he came bumbling up the stairs, and had tried to get some sleep.

Her sleep had been much better than the previous nights. Although it took her a while to get there, her mind unwilling to shut off, once she fell asleep, she stayed that way until morning light poured through her curtains.

She was also relieved that she hadn't woken up in half-form, knowing that there were only so many bloodied sheets she could hide from her father before he noticed.

Grabbing her laptop and phone, she padded softly downstairs, making her way into the kitchen. She placed the devices on the counter and opened her laptop up, making herself a cup of tea and some cereal while she waited for it to turn on.

Her plan was to do some more digging, search for any extra information on Auden, and then see if she could go down to the reserve around mid-day. Considering her father was sleeping, undoubtedly still recovering from the previous night's escapades, she decided to go on her own rather than disturb him. The pain of shifting to full-form was bad enough, he didn't need the aggravation of a hangover on top of that.

Her tea finished brewing and she placed it next to the laptop, grabbing a spoon out of the drawer on her way.

Instead of doing what she knew would be another pointless google search, she opened up her browser history and went back to the first article she had found on Auden: the one on the dodgy conspiracy page.

Shifter Revolt dot com.

Mala rubbed a hand down her face.

It was one of those sites loosely affiliated with the shifter supremacist groups, many of the other articles on the page filled with hazardous propaganda, trying to pit shifters against humans and vice versa.

If it wasn't bad enough that the mass media already perpetrated shifters as violent and untrustworthy, this website was calling its followers to treat humans as the enemy.

You were born to be stronger, faster and more intelligent than humans. You were here before them and you'll be here after they're wiped out. So don't try to hide your strength and size from them. Don't dull down your instincts in order to pacify their flimsy emotions. They fear you because they're jealous of you. They want what you have and they'll resort to violence to get it. Use whatever measures necessary to-

Mala stopped reading that particular article, clicking on another one that was linked below it: The white man's attack on the Male Shifter.

Mala laughed, oh this will be good. She thought to herself, sarcastically.

She read through the list of ways that the 'white man' tried to emasculate the male shifter population.

Perpetrating male shifters as a hazard in the workplace. Bullying us out of jobs so we can't provide for our families.

She frowned to herself when she realised that it was actually a true statement. She had noticed it herself and had commented about it many times to her father: that the news loved to paint shifters in a negative light. The males definitely had it worse than females in that respect. Job-wise, that was why humans dominated the higher pressure professions, many employers not willing to take the risk with testosterone charged shifters. She wouldn't say it had anything to do with the 'white man' but rather all the humans in government.