It was about that time that he realized what he was smelling. He could smell everything around him. The bed, the wool of the blanket, the leather of the chair. The spicy-musky-warm smell that was strong in the room was coming from Dolanna. And there was a myriad of other smells assaulting him, smells that he couldn't identify easily, faint ones and strong ones, sour ones and sweet ones, light ones and heavy ones. He could hear quite clearly his own breathing, Dolanna's breathing, and he could just barely make out the sound of the beating of her heart. Never in his life has his senses been so lucid, so sharp, so incredibly sensitive. The light of the single lamp, the fire turned down very low, was as bright as the daylight to his eyes.

The numbness. When that creature had bitten him, there was a numbness that had spread through him, almost like a poison. Then there was pain, pain so severe that his mind didn't want to remember it. Then nothing. Had the creature's bite caused this change in his senses? Was it a side effect of the venom she injected into him?

There was more, he realized. He was feeling odd new sensations along his body. His sense of touch was more acute, but there was a sensation of things being touched that he didn't have. There was no way for him to describe the sensation, even to himself, but he was feelings things where he didn't have things to feel. He decided to try to move. He shifted his legs, putting his feet down on the mattress, getting ready to push himself into a sitting position.

Then his claws snagged on the sheet.

His heart seizing in his chest, he realized that that was exactly what he was feeling. He pulled an arm out from under the covers, and stared at it in numb shock. His arm was fully healed, and it was covered in black fur to just above the elbow. His hand was almost twice the size it had been, with thick, long fingers that had pads on the insides and on the palm. He could see the tip of claws recessed up inside his fingers, retracted out of the way.

"I'm sorry, Tarrin," Dolanna said in a weary voice, looking at him. "There was nothing more I could do for you."

"How?" he managed to ask.

"It was her bite," she told him quietly. "Her condition can be passed to others through contact with her body fluids. When her spittle got into your blood, it began the change."

Tarrin stared at her, his mind whirling. Then a little voice in his head carrying his mother's imperious demeanor snapped at him to get over it. "What's done is done," his mother would always say. "Worry too much over what's behind you and you don't see the root in front of you," his father would remark. It was done. He had been, been changed. Crying and panicking over it would do no good, and breaking down wasn't going to help him now. Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. While doing so, he sat on something that had a feeling of pressure. Reaching under him with his other hand, he grabbed something that felt the sensation of being grabbed. Almost absently, he realized that it was a tail. Whirling images of the nude creature came back to him then, and he realized that he looked just like her now. The fur, the hands and feet, the claws, and the tail. Probably the ears and teeth too. A run of his tongue through his mouth confirmed that aspect of his suspicion. A tentative hand to his head proved the other, as the pad of his palm crushed down on his cat-ear. It was an eerie sensation.

"What now?" he asked calmly.

She gave him a curious look. "A strange question to ask," she said. "I thought you would have started demanding to know what was going on. Or perhaps start rearranging the furniture."

"My mother always says that's what's done is done," he said grimly. "Going into conniptions at the moment isn't going to help me."

"A wise woman, your mother," Dolanna said, sitting up. "And it seems that the training you have received from your parents is going to help you. That is very good. You have a strong mind and an even stronger will, young one, and those will be you allies.

"The worst of the news, Tarrin, is that I cannot change you back," she told him bluntly. "Your body is not what it was, and I cannot separate what was once you from what you are now without killing you."

"I sorta expected that," he sighed.

"The change is not just physical. You have taken in the instincts, the essence, of the animal of which you now are part. In her case and yours, it is the common housecat." She pushed her rather dishevelled hair back from her eyes. "Now this, this is where I have helped you. Do you feel the presence of that side of you? It should be there, inside with you, but it will not be easy to recognize."

He remembered the sensation of not being alone before he woke up. It was still there, but not very strongly. But now that he knew what he was looking for, he could find that other side of himself, the Cat, sitting in a corner of his mind. "I can feel it, but it seems far away," he told her.

"That was my doing," she told him. "The sudden introduction of that animalistic set of impulses into you would have all but driven you mad," she told him. "I have contained that part of you so that you can adjust to its presence. As the days pass, the spell I have woven will weaken, and you will feel it more and more in your mind, until the spell is gone and you must deal with it on your own. But this will give you time, time to adjust to it, time to learn how to control it. Soon, in days, you will begin to hear the song of its instincts trying to guide your actions," she warned. "That song will get stronger and stronger as my spell wanes, but it will give you the chance to learn how to deal with it without any negative consequences."

"Consequences?"

"Tarrin, it is not human," she said. "When you are in danger, or angry, or afraid, that part of you will lash out, just as an animal would. It does not see right or wrong, or laws, or what is proper or improper. It is an animal, and it will react like one. It is up to you to control that, because if the animal takes control of you for too long, what makes you human could be lost to it, and you will spend the rest of your days as the animal you will have become."

Tarrin paled at that, but he nodded. Just as his conscious mind was in control, it seemed logical to him that if he had another mind, then it too could take control. Although the instincts he could feel in his mind wasn't precisely another mind, it was a different aspect of his own. The Cat was part of him, but it was not. More to the point, it was a new part of him, and that unfamiliarity was part of the danger.

"There are, advantages to what has happened," Dolanna said quietly. "You are now a Were-kin, a Were-cat. The Were-kin share several distinct advantages over humans. Most have great strength," she told him, and he nodded. That woman had thrown him across the room with one arm. If that wasn't "great strength" he had no idea what was. "Were-kin can be hurt by weapons, but they cannot cause permanent injury unless they are weapons of magic or weapons of silver. I saw that you stabbed her with your knife. That probably did nothing but make her angrier."

"It did," he said. "That's when she bit me."

"You may have sharper senses now, but that I cannot tell you. I have never read nor talked to anyone that had a knowledge of the Were-cats. They are a very rare and seclusive breed." She leaned back a bit. "You are now linked to the cat, physically and mentally, so I would surmise that you share its traits. Strength, speed, and agility. The senses of a hunter."

"I can smell you right now," Tarrin told her quietly. "And there are, other smells, smells I can't identify."

"You will, with practice," she said. "And that is what matters right now. If you can gain a familiarity with your physical form, it will help you understand and deal with the instincts that are part of you."