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very conscious of the smoke-colored feline stretched out on the sandy ground twenty feet away, her tail twitching. In this, her true form, Dell was over eight feet long, nose to tail-tip. Her oversize pads hid claws that would do a grizzly proud. She needed those claws; the teeth in her oddly shaped muzzle weren’t made for biting. Chameleons consumed blood and magic, not flesh.
    The blood part of her diet had been provided for by a small herd of sheep. The magic part was augmented now by the Winter Queen’s gift: a dusky purple gem set into a band around one ankle, a gem capable of storing a vast amount of magic and disgorging it at whatever rate Dell required. Such a talisman, made by Winter herself, was literally priceless in Faerie. Here on Earth, no one had any idea what it was, although Cullen Seabourne had asked. Three times.
    Nathan put the vehicle in park and got out. Dell flowed to her feet and started for him. He shook his head at her. “Kai is in the city.”
    Dell stopped. Her ears flattened. Her lips lifted in a snarl.
    Nathan waited. Dell knew very well she couldn’t go into a crowded human city looking like that.
    “She understands you?” one of the guards asked.
    “Dell understands a fair amount of English, but language doesn’t come easily for her. She’s a gestalt thinker.”
    “Gestalt?”
    From the car came Cullen’s voice. “Like a new wolf. She doesn’t think in words.”
    The chameleon cast a snarling glance at the guards.
    “I’m here,” Nathan told her. Meaning that he would guard her during her transformation, when she was vulnerable. He thought a moment and added, “
Not
Cynna. She would stand out too much.”
    Dell gave him a haughty look meant to say that
of course
she wouldn’t choose such a distinctive form, but Nathan suspected she might have. Dell loved what she thought of as Cynna’s markings—the tattoos that covered most of her skin. A couple times now she’d disconcerted people at Clanhome by wearing Cynna’s form when she came down from the node to see Kai.
    Dell huffed out a breath and began her change.
    The chameleon’s transformation looked nothing like those of the lupi. Took longer, too. Her fur went first, soaked up into skin the same shade of gray. Then muscle, flesh, bone, and sinew melted into a thick gray ooze that briefly held Dell’s original shape before flowing into a new one.
    One of those stoic lupi guards made an “ewww” sound.
    It was probably the eyeballs, Nathan thought. They’d disconcerted him at first, too. Dell always left them for last, so they bobbed around on the viscous gray surface of her transforming body until she had the shape she wanted. Then they wandered to the front of the reshaped head.
    That head was rapidly sprouting hair now. The rest of the details shaped themselves, and a few moments later an apparently human woman stood there, holding out one hand imperatively. She wore the Queen’s gift around her right wrist and nothing else.
    Dell had chosen one of her favorite “hiding” forms, a blended-race woman with features that managed to be unremarkable rather than exotic. Here she’d probably be taken for Mexican with a trace of Asian ancestry. “Pass me the dress, will you?” Nathan said to Cullen.
    A cotton dress came sailing out the window. Nathan caught it and tossed it to Dell. Dell preferred dresses or robes to pants and refused to wear underwear. After they arrived, Kai had bought her a few loose dresses so the omission wouldn’t be too noticeable.
    A moment later, the chameleon slid into the backseat wearing a demure brown dress with tiny blue flowers. Nathan closed the door and got back behind the wheel.
    Dell looked at Cullen. Her nostrils flared. “Smell Cynna.”
    Cullen heaved a sigh. “Ryder’s napping. Cynna and I were taking advantage of that, but we hadn’t gotten very far. You look nice, Dell, but I like your other form better.”
    “So does she,” Nathan said, putting the SUV in gear and