“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” my sister admitted as she ate her fish and glanced longingly at her bribe. “It’s kinda chewy but it doesn’t taste terrible. It’s kind of tasty, actually.”

“Yeah, we think that the transformation probably altered our taste buds along with everything else,” Kara offered with a shrug. “I really like oysters when we can get them, but I certainly never would have eaten them raw before becoming a Naethari.”

“Yep, and I would have thought the same about shrimp, but they’re, like, one of my favorite foods now,” I added.

“Yes, Babe, you have made your preferences obvious to everyone, right Nat?” Kara teased before kissing me affectionately.

Natalie didn’t reply as it seemed that her attention was elsewhere at the moment. That elsewhere was Kara’s belly, and mine, and the rashes that still lingered there on us both. She looked very concerned about it as she furrowed her brow and her amethyst eyes focused on them. “I thought those were supposed to fade after your kima’tah was over. It has been well over a month if Maddie and I were out as long as I think, but they’re still there. Are you two sure that you’re both feeling alright?”

Uh-oh, she was going into doctor/caregiver mode again. Honestly, I admired that about her, especially because it wasn’t like it was her job any longer. She cared, and she was worried about us as her friends. The problem was that neither Kara nor I wanted to get anyone’s hopes up about us possibly being pregnant until we could be sure, especially since if we were pregnant the babies wouldn’t be due for a year, and a lot could happen in that time.

Kieshala quickly interjected for our sake. ~ I am not an expert on the third metamorphosis, or the kima’tah, ~ she gently reminded the marine biologist-turned-Naethari. ~ I have gone through neither myself yet, so most of my information is based on the experiences of others, and those can be varied. ~

“But something could be wrong with them,” Natalie protested, unwilling to let go of this. “Hell, they could even be pregnant, and this could…”

My jaw dropped at that guess and both Kara, and I quickly looked away. It seemed that my sister was as observant as always though as she interrupted her girlfriend. “No way! That’s it, isn’t it? You’re both knocked up but you don’t want to tell us for some reason!”

“So that’s why you’ve both been eating so much lately!” Jenny added as she fit another piece of the puzzle and the flimsy hold that we had on our secret slipped out of our control. Jenny is a smart kid, but I kind of wished that she hadn’t said that because it only seemed to cement the theory in Maddie and Natalie's minds.

“We… suspect that’s the case, but we... uh… didn’t want to tell anyone until we were both sure,” Kara admitted with a blush now that the catfish was out of the bag.

I sighed and nodded in agreement, as I pulled my mate closer and tried to explain our reasoning. “With Naethari pregnancies lasting thirteen months or so, it will be at least a couple of months before we can confirm those suspicions using sonar. We didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, or for our parents to get super protective of us. It’s just a guess until we can confirm it, and honestly, a lot could happen in the next year, especially with some assholes from military R&D after us now.”

Shortly after that, Mom called us for breakfast and Dad and Aunt Carmen carried my sister and her girlfriend to the table since they couldn’t get around very well on their own yet. We hadn’t even gotten to the food part yet when Maddie spilled the beans. Not that we were eating any, the beans she spilled were of the secret variety, which led to a heated discussion where Dad and Uncle Jack wanted Kara and I, along with Jenny, out of harm’s way if there was a possibility of combat.

“We’re pregnant, not invalids, and we aren’t even sure about that yet,” I said as I glared at my sister. I knew that she was just being protective of us, and that full disclosure was probably even a good idea to take precautions to keep the possible babies safe, but Dad and Uncle Jack were talking about keeping us both locked up someplace safe with Jenny while everyone else mounted a defense if those assholes found us.

To my surprise, Mom came to our defense. “Max, Jack, get your heads out of your fucking asses. Naiya is no less competent or dangerous than before just because she might be pregnant. You both know damn well that I was doing missions until I was five months along with Madelyn, and we need every gun and every advantage that we can get in our current situation. She can go places we can’t, and she can probably protect herself and her mate as well, if not better, than any of us can.”

Dad looked ashamed of himself, and Uncle Jack was thoughtful as Maddie nodded and put in, “What I was trying to get at when I dropped that little bomb is that we need to start working on plans to take this fight to our enemies soon. We have more information on them than they do on us and we can’t just sit back and wait for much longer. The longer this goes on, the more chance that they will find us and that this will become a danger to Naiya, Kara, and the babies. We need more information, a plan of attack, and a solid exit strategy while we still have some sort of advantage.”

“We can barely move on our own right now, Maddie. We’re probably way more of a liability than Naiya and Kara are,” Natalie helpfully pointed out.

My sister gleefully grinned at her girlfriend and retorted, “I can still use a gun, and I’ve got a nice big new one that I’m itching to try out on these assholes after they shot me. Payback is a bitch, and bitches love cannons.”

In the end, we decided to table further discussion until the next day so we could all take some time to consider our situation, options, and possible plans that would lead us to a happy ending and give Carmichael the bad ending that he rightfully deserved. Uncle Jack was hoping to find us some more useful information on Carmichael as well.

During breakfast, Kieshala had Nat and Maddie work on their tail and fin exercises under the table and once we had all finished eating, she had them both attempt to swim for the first time. It was not easy for them, I remembered well those first moments where I had tried to adjust to moving with a tail and fins under water, instead of on legs and land. Since this was their first day as Naethari, they were both exhausted and in need of a break after an hour or so.

Since Maddie had eaten her fish earlier and worked so hard, I showed her and Nat the basics of half slithering and half crawling for land-based locomotion so she could open her present and have a look. That too was an awkward affair for them, and their tails were still too weak to support their weight so they could coil and sit upon them as we more experienced Naethari could do on land. I had to open the crate for her and then Maddie had to somewhat lean over it so she could inspect her new toy and check its condition.

“Sweet, this thing is a beast, and it even has a decent carry case to protect it from the elements. I can’t believe that you made an arms deal, Sis. You’ve grown up so much while I was out,” my sister said with a pride as she familiarized herself with the anti-materiel rifle.

“I got Dad a minigun,” I shot back with a grin.

“No fucking way! Seriously?!” she squealed with glee. “We are going to fuck these assholes up. You made sure that the weapons weren’t being tracked, right?”

“Of course, Mads. What do you take me for, a complete greenhorn? I looked through the crates and inspected the weapons myself and we ran bug sweepers over them just to be sure.” Then I let out a sigh and told her sympathetically, “Sorry, Mads, but playtime is over now. Just because you’re tired doesn’t mean training is over, you know that. Now it is time for something that I know you’re going to hate as much as I did. I’m going to help you to find the weave of magic inside yourself so I can start teaching you to use it.”

For the second night in a row, Luiza returned to her hotel room, stripped off the disguise and horrid wig that she had been made to wear for questioning the tourists and locals, showered, and got dressed in casual clothes that were more her style. The light hoodie and jeans that she had bought on the way to the hotel were casual and low-profile, and once she had properly showered off the day’s sweat, she could be certain that there was nothing in the clothes that would allow her commanding officer to track her while she was off duty. She wouldn’t put it past the misogynistic asshole to have someone tracking her (for her own safety), but this was a personal matter, and she didn’t want General Carmichael finding out about any of this.

Still, she was grateful that they were staying in a hotel in Havana rather than at the base at Guantanamo Bay. That base, and what went on there, made her extremely uncomfortable and ashamed to be a soldier. The people that the General was looking for were last seen in Havana though, and he wanted himself and his senior staff on location for the investigation, even if most of them had no idea what he was after here. It couldn’t just be the mercs, not unless they had stolen a prototype or something from R&D. Strike teams were staying on the base though and were airlifted in when he had need of them, like for his failed trap that the Holmes girl had escaped.

Like the night before, Luiza was going in search of the woman with magenta hair from the Supermercado Palco who radiated magic. She wanted answers. She wanted to know who and what the woman was and how she could have that much magic at her beck and call when the rest of the world was starving of it. Was she even human, or was she some fairy creature? Luiza was burning with curiosity and the need to have her questions answered.

Despite traveling the length and breadth of the tourist area of Havana last night, Luiza had not felt even the smallest spark of magic. Either the magenta-haired woman was very good at hiding her magic, or she wasn’t there at all. Luiza suspected the latter since she hadn’t bothered trying to hide it when they met. In fact, she had seemed as surprised and curious by Luiza’s magic as she was of hers. So, since it seemed unlikely that she would find her target the easy way, she had something else planned for tonight, something that would require quiet and privacy.

It was after 10:30 when Luiza picked up the small backpack that she had bought earlier with the clothes and filled with the tools necessary for her search, and then slipped out of her hotel room. After leaving the hotel and making certain that she hadn’t grown a tail, she made her way to one of the places that rented scooters and such for tours of Havana. After renting a Vespa that seemed to be in good condition, she found a quiet spot alongside the beach to get to work.

Her search would be easier if she had a strand of the woman’s hair or something else connected to her, but the spell she had in mind should work just as well for her purposes. She removed a needle, a length of thread, some salt, and a bottle of water from the backpack and quickly got to work. She started by taking a couple of sips from the water, then pouring the salt inside, and mixing it thoroughly. Once that was done, she tied the needle securely to the thread before immersing it in the salt water and chanted the words of power that her abuela had taught her to cleanse the needle of any negative energies.

More words of power followed when she finally removed the needle from the water by the string. This was the hard part. She needed to channel her magic into the needle while chanting those words and focusing her mind on what she wanted to find. Had she had something connected to the magenta-haired woman she would be searching for her, but in this case, less specific was better. So Luiza focused instead on finding any nearby sources of magic, hoping that it would lead her to either the woman herself or her source of power.

Luiza’s eyes shot open as the thread that the needle was secured to was nearly pulled from her grip. The thread was stretched taut and was drawn eastward so either what she was looking for was very close or very potent. It seemed to be the latter, but that wasn’t much of a surprise, given her earlier encounter with the woman and the magic she could feel from her.

For over an hour and a half, Luiza followed the pull of the needle, sometimes having to stop to reorient herself. Her path led out of the city, and she probably would have missed the small road that branched off the highway if she hadn’t felt it. The needle was no longer necessary; she could feel the power that was being radiated from where she stopped at the roadside to catch her breath from the sheer magnitude of it. It was familiar but massive, far more potent than what she had felt from the magenta-haired woman. She was there, she was not alone, and whoever else was with her was at least as powerful as she was.

Luiza was unsure of how long she sat there on the Vespa by the roadside, attempting to steel herself to approach the magic and the answers she sought. She was eager, but she was also scared out of her mind. If these people were as powerful as she thought and they didn’t want her there, they could probably end her easily. The woman with the magenta hair seemed nice enough, and curious about her, during their short encounter, but how much of that was an act? What if these people were a threat?

She needed to make a decision, and she couldn’t stay out here all night. The one she had met before hadn’t seemed to sense her power until they were nearly face to face, or at the very least didn’t know it was coming from Luiza until then, so maybe they didn’t know she was out here yet. She could go for help and try to explain things to the General. Or she could try to get her answers and risk the possible wrath of magic users that dwarfed her power so excessively that it was almost hilarious. “Time to shit or get off the pot, Lu,” she told herself as she tightly gripped the Vespa’s handlebars. A moment later, her decision was made.