Pregnant With His Liger Baby

“Breakfast,” said Sylvie, undeterred from her primary objective. Her stomach growled for emphasis.

“It must be nice not to have a care in the world about your figure,” tittered the scrawniest woman in the bunch.

“Maybe you should try it, Leona,” snickered another.

“Shut up, Mira!” she gasped indignantly.

“Ladies, please, you could all stand to put on a few pounds,” Rose informed them. “It can’t be healthy for a lioness to starve herself like that.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll have you know that nobody will be starving come this time tomorrow,” Mira informed her smugly. “I just heard they’re bringing in a new herd of buffalo to supplement the food supply. Five hundred head of cattle!”

“Five hundred?” gasped Rose. “Goodness! They’re likely to eat up all the grass and putrefy the water supply. What can those humans be thinking?”

“Of all the ungrateful things to say!” Leona gasped.

“There needs to be somewhat of a balance to things, don’t you see?” Rose insisted.

“Yes, of course,” scoffed Mira. “But only think, we’ll likely eat a large portion of them, and the remainder will be free to breed. Their offspring will keep us wallowing in meat for years to come.”

“Speaking of meat, how about some sausages?” Sylvie reminded her mother.

“If you’ll excuse us, ladies,” Rose said dryly.

“Yes, of course,” Mira said. “Oh, and the herd is due to arrive around eight in the morning, so I’m told. But if I were you, I wouldn’t bother to show up until ten. You know the rules—first our clan must get the lion’s share.”

The other women chuckled at this statement as if it was the funniest joke ever.

Rose didn’t respond to her, instead taking Sylvie by the hand and leading her away. Then she said, “They seem to think they should get the lion’s share of everything, don’t they? Stupid lions won’t even let tigers into the forest. Now they think they’ve got the right to take half the meat before we even get any? And no doubt they’ll have their males out making sure to run us off until they’ve had their fill. I wish they would have given the tiger shifters a preserve of their own, rather than putting us here!”

“Calm down, Mother,” Sylvie chastised her. “Do you want them to see that they’ve gotten to you? Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

“You’re right, of course,” Rose agreed. “Come, let us enjoy our meal and imagine that they are wildebeests or something.”

Now Sylvie giggled. She could totally get into doing that!

*****

“Has mother told you about the buffalo?” asked Sylvie a few hours later when her father stepped into her hut.

“Of course she has, poppet,” he grinned. “But that’s happening in the northern fields, so it has nothing to do with you in any case.”

“But Father, you’re the one who complains that I’m soft thanks to living on the preserve,” she protested. “I’ve only ever gone hunting just south of our village, where there’s hardly anything bigger than a deer. How do you expect me to become a great hunter if I have to keep practicing in the kitten yard? I would love to try hunting down a buffalo all on my own. See what I could really do if I set my mind to it.”

“Daughter, I’ll not hear another word about it,” he insisted. “Now, if you’re so keen on hunting why don’t you go out tonight and catch your own dinner like every other self-respecting tiger? It’d be a lot better for you than lying on that bed and reading those human novels you keep getting from the Community Center. I’m off to do a bit of hunting myself, as it were. Your brother David still hasn’t turned up, and your mother is asking me to help her look for him.”

“So that means you’ll probably be gone most of the night,” said Sylvie, keeping her excitement completely out of her voice.

“Yes, so this is good-night between us tonight,” he said with a nod. “I’ll expect to hear all about your kill in the morning.”

“Yes, sir,” she sighed.

After he kissed her on her forehead, her father soon departed. She waited a good ten minutes to make sure he wouldn’t see what she was doing, her heart thumping hard the entire time. He thought she was just a cub? Well, she’d show him what she was really made of. Just because she’d never had the opportunity to bag larger game didn’t mean she couldn’t do it! She was going to sneak out to the northern fields, and there was nothing he could do about it this time.

Thankfully, the moon was just a mere sliver in the night sky, shedding very little light over the forbidden plane as she snuck swiftly to the border. The only reason anyone would recognize the place she crossed as a ‘border’, of course, was from having been raised to respect its boundaries. Really, it was just another patch in the grass.

Sylvie, however, couldn’t help but get a little thrill as she stepped to the other side. She transformed into her tiger form and began to slink about in the tall grass, her eyes ever watchful both for prey and for lion scouts. She most certainly wouldn’t want to run across one of them. She’d heard that they could be quite brutal in their punishments to tigers stupid enough to venture into the woods, but she was a bit unclear on just where the open territory ended and the lion territory began. She hoped that she wouldn’t end up finding out the hard way.

All other thoughts fled, however, when she scented the meat. It was only a deer, no bigger than any she’d caught in the kitty field, but to her it was special. This one would be her first kill in the forbidden zone. Every muscle in her body bunched up with excitement as she waited for the right time to pounce. Then zing! She was off like a shot, her prey down, the satisfaction of a job well done beginning to well up inside her.

Then she heard a mighty roar. Frozen for a moment, she looked up expecting to see her father. Instead, she saw the most magnificent lion, his mane bushing up as he ran toward her. His movements were graceful and dignified, nothing like she would have expected from a belligerent enemy as he beared down on her. And then she remembered, somewhat belatedly, that he actually was bearing down on her!

She was not about to give up her very first kill in the northern field to some stupid lion, no matter how impressive his mane might look as he ran! She had every right to eat, and that was exactly what she intended to do.

He was on her with a mighty swipe of his paw, knocking her off of her feet. She roared a protest and rolled, quickly getting on her paws again. She glared at her attacker fearlessly, and he glared at her as well, though he did not hit her again.

What are you doing out here, young tiger? Do you not know on whose land you are trespassing? Surely your parents must have taught you better?