"Well?" Roxy demanded, her voice cutting through the silence. "I am waiting for an explanation. Why is the house like this?"
Roxy still gripped Torian's furry ear in one hand and Syris's thick, scaled tail in the other. She wasn't squeezing hard enough to cause genuine injury to apex predators, but the indignity of it was paralyzing.
The two beasts looked at each other.
Torian, in his massive Tiger form, let out a low, pathetic chuff. He lowered his great head, his ears flattening against his skull. The ferocity he had shown seconds ago evaporated under the Luna's gaze.
Syris, the giant Basilisk, flicked his forked tongue nervously. He tried to gently retract his tail, but Roxy tightened her grip.
"Don't you dare slither away," she warned. "Shift. Now. Both of you."
There was a moment of hesitation. Shifting back meant facing her as a man. But nobody disobeyed a direct order from an angry Roxy.
They both shifted into two naked men who sat amidst the wreckage.
