FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Da," Dannica said when they got to the living room. "We need to talk."

---

Duke looked up from the papers strewn about the coffee table at the sound of Dannica's voice.

"What is it, Dannica?" he asked.

Dannica could hear the tone in his voice that usually told her that she was interrupting something important. One of the things that she learned living with him for so long was that he would always take time to talk with her, no matter how important something else was. It was an indulgence that she didn't take advantage of lightly.

She walked into the living room and easily found her favorite chair. When she climbed in, she felt Hope climb into the chair next to her and snuggle up close to her. The feeling of her friend's arm around her shoulders and her closeness gave her a modicum of courage that she wasn't feeling herself. She paused while she thought about how to tell her father what had just happened.

"You know you said that if I don't feel right, I should tell you?" she finally asked.

"That's right. Why?"

"Um..." Dannica blushed fiercely as she tried to figure out just what to say next. "Well, Hope and I...we were...um..."

"That's all right, Dannica. I know what you two get up to. And I don't mind. To be honest, I'm happy it's with her than with some strange boy at school."

Dannica could hear the smile in her voice, and she could feel Hope's face heat next to hers.

"Well, when we were...um...having sex..." just putting those words into a sentence to her father made her want to crawl under the chair and pull the upholstery over her face, but she continued.

"I felt something strange inside me, Da. It was like I was hungry, but it wasn't for food. It was for something that Hope had."

Her father remained silent and she felt Hope's paw nudging her, pushing her to tell a little more of the story.

"When I let it go, it felt good. It felt like something I should be doing, but after a while, I thought that I should stop, but I couldn't. It felt too good."

She paused again, hoping that her father would say something that would ease the embarrassment that she could tell was plainly etched on her face, and by the way Hope was clinging to her, she was positive that her expression was mirrored on her friend's face as well.

"Hope? What did you feel?" Duke finally asked.

"It was..." Hope stammered. "It was better than anything I've ever felt. Even when I knew that something was wrong, I just wanted it to go on forever, and I knew it would."

Dannica squeezed Hope's hand and hung her head.

"What's wrong with me, Da?" she asked quietly.

She heard her father sigh and then she heard his weight shift, something that she'd heard a million times before. It was her father standing and starting to pace. She could hear him moving from the chair to where she knew the window was, and then he walked back to the chair. She waited while he made the circuit again, and just when she was about to ask him again for fear that he hadn't heard her, she heard him sigh once again, this time more in resignation.

"Dannica," he said, "there are things that you don't know, and I'm not sure how much I can tell you right now."

She heard him sit back down in the chair and then a shuffling of papers in front of her.

"You deserve what truth I can tell you, though," he finally said.

"Timofey and Anna were not your real parents, Dannica. In fact, we don't know who your mother and father really were."

Dannica raised her head and her ears perked at the statement.

"But they have to be. I grew up with them. And Steven." Dannica didn't want to believe what Duke was saying, and she shook her head while a trace of a lump started in her throat. She didn't remember a time before her parents.

"Steven was their child, and if you and he had grown more together, you may have noticed later on that you didn't look anything like him."

She could hear the truth in his words, and she remembered back to school in Novvy Urengoy. She couldn't remember a time that anyone who didn't know the two of them had ever said that she and Steven looked like brother and sister. Then again, not a lot of people in the small mining town didn't know the two of them, so it was a very infrequent occurrence when it happened.

"You're starting to remember," Duke said.

Dannica nodded. "But if they weren't my parents, where are my real parents?"

Duke sighed again. "We don't know, Dannica. That's the thing. Timofey and I found you together."

Dannica heard her father settling into the chair again, and then the rustling of papers hit her ears again and she held Hope a little closer. The revelation that her whole life before now wasn't what she thought it was made her feel like the world was slipping away, and by holding her friend even closer, it gave her something to hold on to. She felt Hope tightening her grip, too, just before she felt Hope's face pressing against the side of her neck.

"Almost fourteen years ago, I was working in the Twenty Third Airborne, and I was on a joint mission with the Russian Special Forces. That's where I met Timofey. The Russian government called and requested American assistance with a group of people who had set up deep in the Verkhoyansk mountain range."

Dannica took a sudden breath. The name was very familiar to her, and would be to anyone who lived in the area. It was the name of a range far to the east of her village where the temperature dropped to the coldest in any inhabited region on the planet. Her mother used to tell her that she should think about the people living there when she complained about the bitter cold in the winter.

"I don't talk much about the military with you, Dannica, because it's really not all that interesting, and you have better things to do than listen to an old veteran tell war stories."

Duke chuckled.

"Our units operated in small, four-man teams, and they put me with Timofey and two others, one Russian and one American to go and see what was going on in those mountains. I won't bore you with all the details of what we did, and I couldn't tell you all of them if I wanted to. What we eventually found was some kind of laboratory. We found you inside. You were with three other infants, all tigers, all girls."

Dannica sat up a little straighter and listened with keen interest. "I have sisters?" she asked.

"You could say that," her father replied.

Dannica could tell from the tone in his voice that he wasn't telling her everything. But she'd learned in the months that she'd been living with him that there were some parts of his job in the military that he just couldn't talk about, and so she learned when to ask questions and when to stay quiet.

"Four baby tigresses, all wired up for sound. You all had more wires attached to you than you did fur it looked like."

Duke laughed again and continued.

"We didn't know what they were doing with you and the others, but whatever it was, it wasn't something that the government knew about, and we were told to put a stop to it. We took what we could find in their computers and we took you and the other girls."

Dannica smiled a little when she felt Hope's hand tighten on her shoulder, and she knew that her friend was thinking about how lucky she was that she was taken out of the lab, and Dannica couldn't blame her, she felt the same way. She always knew that she felt something special about the lion sitting across from her.

"The Russians and the Americans put together four teams and assigned one to every girl. Two stayed in Russia and two were taken to America. You were given to Timofey, and the rest of us were always around to look after you."

"What happened to the other girls?" Dannica asked.

"I don't know, Dannica. None of the teams knew any of the others. We never saw any of them, and we were told not to go digging."

"But why? What's wrong with me that I have to have four soldiers as guards?"

"We don't know what they were doing in the lab, Dannica. All we knew at the time was that someone with a lot of power wanted you and the other girls back, and they wanted it badly enough to throw around some very powerful influence, both in the government and with some less legitimate areas. That's why there was such a fuss when the Bratva took you. We thought it was someone looking for you."

"I don't understand," Dannica said quietly.

"I still can't tell you everything, Dannica. When I can, I will. I swear to you that I will. But there's one thing that you need to know."

Dannica sat up a little straighter and her ears focused on her father when he paused.

"We didn't save you from the Bratva, Dannica. When we got there, Kaminski and the others were already dead."

"What?" Dannica asked. "What do you mean they were all dead?"

"Just that, Dannica. When we blew in the door, we found you unconscious in the tub and every other soul in the house dead on the floor."

"But how?" Dannica asked.

"That was the question that we had, too, Dannica. And we still don't know all the answers, but after we got you back, I requested all the records on you, all of the data I could find that we dragged back out of the lab. They didn't want to give it to me at first, but when they found out what happened, it got a little easier."

Dannica frowned. She could almost feel the last remaining threads of her past slipping away, and for the first time since she was blinded, she felt adrift and she clutched at Hope's hand for something to ground her to the present, to let her know that she was still there.

"I still don't know what happened, Dannica, but I've been reading through the data and the experiments that they were doing in the lab. That's the reason that I talked to you earlier. I don't know who your mother is, but I found some mention of her in the reports."

Dannica still clung tightly to Hope's hand and turned her face to the other tiger's shoulder, shivering with something she couldn't put her finger on.

"They found something in the ice in the mountains. The reports call it 'the old hag.' She was a female of some kind that somehow survived being frozen. When they removed her from the ice, they also found you and the other three. She was curled around you, perhaps to protect you.

"They thawed all of you and were monitoring you and the other kits when she woke up and tried to get out. She killed three of their team before they locked her back up. Here's the thing, though, Dannica. The reports say that none of the team could get anywhere near her without feeling an almost overwhelming need to mate."

Dannica stopped shivering. She had more questions than she could even put into words, but she could hear how hard it was for her father to tell her the truth. She didn't want to believe what he was telling her, but she could also hear the truth in his voice, and she had to concede that it wasn't the kind to make up a story like this. And she couldn't think of any reason why he should.

"Then what am I, Da? Why did this happen?"

"I think you're the same thing as your real mother, Dannica. What that is, I don't know, though. But if you are, then you probably have the same effect as she did on the others in the lab. You've hit puberty, and you're coming into sexual maturity, so that probably means that whatever that power is that you have is starting to manifest."

Dannica lowered her head and fidgeted her hands against Hope's. She had questions that needed to be answered, but one was forefront in her mind, and it was something that she had to ask.

"Did they tell you to adopt me after my father...after Timofey was killed?" Her voice shook when she asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer or not. "Did they order you to do it?"

She heard her father getting up from the chair, and then his footsteps as he crossed to her chair. Then she felt his hands against her face and she rubbed her cheek against his warm, familiar paw. There were no tears to dampen his paw, but her heart ached just the same.

"No, Dannica. They ordered me to bring you to America and to their own facility. They wanted to make sure that you didn't hurt anyone else like the Bratva. That's why I was gone for so long after I first visited you in the hospital. It took everything I could do to keep them from taking you back. I fought harder for you than for anything else in my life."

Dannica finally let the emotions overwhelm her and she let go of Hope to throw her arms around her father, shuddering with sobs, crying even though there would never again be tears. Nothing else mattered in that moment. Duke loved her and fought for her, and that was what mattered. She had a place, and she had something to hold onto. She was Duke Wallis' daughter, and he was her father. She might not know anything else about what she was, but she knew that.

"And no matter what, Dannica," Duke said quietly, "I love you, and that will never change."

"I love you, too, Da," Dannica whispered, clinging tightly to him.

Finally, Duke managed to extricate himself from her embrace and gently guided her hand back to Hope.

"Now, then," he said as Dannica heard him moving back to his chair, "I don't know what you did today, but it looks like you found a way to reverse whatever it was. It doesn't look like Hope is any worse for the wear."

Dannica felt Hope's head shaking beside her.

"No, sir, Mister Wallis. I'm just fine."

"Okay, Hope. I want you girls to be happy, okay, but I want you to be careful. Dannica, you know what that hunger feels like now, right?"

Dannica nodded, but didn't say anything.

"Then use that as your guide. Don't let it take over again. You know what it feels like to let that happen, so it'll be easier to prevent in the future. And if anything happens, I want you to tell me right away."

"Da, do they still want to study me and the others?" Dannica asked.

"Yes, but we talked them into doing it at a distance. Now that you're starting to feel these things, they may want me to bring you back for tests."

"You didn't really get out of the military, did you, Da?"

She heard Duke chuckle. "Yes, Dannica, I did. The people who took over the project aren't military. But my full time job is making sure that you're safe."

Dannica wanted to ask more questions, wanted to have answers for everything that she wanted to know, but she knew, too, that her father would tell her everything that he could. He would never lie to her, but he might not tell her everything right off.

"All right, love. Go on. I know you have questions, and there will be time to ask them later. For now, there's some sandwiches in the kitchen. Go eat and be with your friend."

Dannica nodded and took Hope's hand in hers to collect the sandwiches and head up to her room again.

---

"Wow, that's not exactly what I was expecting," Hope said when they were settled in the room.

Hope had settled on the floor with her back against the bed and her legs stretched and splayed in front of her, and Dannica was sitting between them, leaning back against her friend's chest with Hope's chin on her shoulder.

"Are you okay, Dannica?"

"It's weird. It's like everything that I thought I was I'm not. It kind of feels like I'm not me anymore."

"Of course you're you, Dannica. Just because you didn't know all that before doesn't mean that you're any different than you were before your father told you all that."

"How many other people do you know that might have killed a bunch of people?" Dannica asked, a sarcastic tone creeping into her voice.

"I think there's a difference, Dannica. They hurt you. They were going to kill you. And besides, you don't know that you killed them."

"Da seems to think that I did."

"He didn't say that. As far as I'm concerned, and he's probably the same, you didn't do it consciously, if you did at all. So it's not your fault. Not in the slightest."

Dannica just nodded, feeling a little reassured now that she was back in her Hope's arms.

"Now," Hope said, stroking her fingers against Dannica's belly, "when are we going to try that again?"

Dannica turned her head with a shocked look on her face and Hope giggled.

"Oh, come on," Hope said, "That was the best feeling I've ever felt. I want to do it again. Maybe without the almost dying part of it, though."

Dannica scoffed and shook her head, letting her hands cover Hope's on her belly. "Not tonight."

She wanted to say that she was done with that forever, but she could already feel the slight tinge of that other hunger coming back, and she knew that it would happen again.

"Soon," she said. "If I do a little at a time sometimes, maybe that will help so that I don't take it so far again."

"That makes sense, you know," Hope replied. "It's like a starving tiger devouring everything he can get his hands on. Take a bite here and a bite there and maybe you won't get so bad."

Dannica nodded and closed her eyes as she laid her head back against Hope's chest.

"I guess if it had to happen that I'm glad it happened with you."

Hope wrapped her arms around her friend and held her close.

Dannica felt one of Hope's hands sliding from around her and shortly after, she heard the sound of the nightstand drawer opening.

"What are you doing?" Dannica asked.

"Shh," Hope whispered, "just relax."

Dannica couldn't stop the curious mrowl that came out as she turned her head, but her question was answered when she felt Hope's hands on her belly once again, this time moving downward. There was something different, though, and it took her a minute to realize that one of Hope's fingers felt different as it stroked through her fur. She reached a hand up to her friend's and listened to Hope laughing behind her.

There was something on Hope's finger. She traced its outline with her own fingers, the hard plastic and the springy ring that surrounded her friend's finger just between the first and second knuckle. A quick movement brought her fingertip around to where Hope's fingerpad should be, but against it was a softer, slightly more pliable, rubbery feeling plastic. Her sensitive fingers found the nubs raised through the material, a subtle texture that was different than anything she'd felt before.

"What is this?" she asked.

"Lay back, Dani," Hope whispered.

Dannica did as Hope asked and leaned herself fully back against her friend's chest, moving her hand away from Hope's to rest both of them against her friend's thighs. The next thing she felt was Hope's fingers undoing the button and the zipper on the baggy cargo shorts that she almost always wore. Her friend's confident hands parted the canvas-like material and then slid inside.

Hope didn't bother moving anything else out of the way, she simply slid her hands down beneath Dannica's panties and in between her legs. Dannica still hadn't recovered entirely from the session earlier, and she flushed when she realized just how wet she still was, and the feeling of her friend touching her once again didn't make her any less so in the slightest.

"It's something I can feel, Dannica," Hope whispered. Dannica could feel her breath against her ear when she spoke, tickling the fur there and telling her just how close Hope's lips were.

Dannica gasped softly when Hope's fingers made contact. It was a light, barely perceptible touch that became more firm with every second. Hope knew exactly what she was doing, having had enough practice by now.

"Feel?" Dannica asked, more than a little distracted by the feeling between her legs and in the bottom of her stomach. She couldn't deny that she wanted what her friend was offering her, even as close to the last time as this was, and even given what had just happened.

"I don't know why, but I know when you need more. Maybe it's something about the way you smell or the way you look, but since that first time together, I can tell when you want this."

Dannica just nodded. There was some more to think about, this connection between the two of them, but right now, she was too distracted to think any harder on it.

"Just enjoy, my love," Hope said.

With that, her fingers found exactly the right place and Dannica felt her thumb move just a little. Then her world exploded in pleasure as the thing on Hope's finger began to hum against her. Dannica's low moan filled the room just as much as the scent of her newly increased arousal.

Her fingers tightened on Hope's thighs and she had to make a conscious effort to keep her claws sheathed, knowing full well what she could do to her friend's flesh with them. Instead, she slid her hands up behind her to Hope's hips and used the leverage to pull herself back and start to move against Hope's finger.

Hope just kept up a steady pressure with the finger-mounted vibrator, letting Dannica move and rock herself however she needed to build the pleasure once again. Giving her the reins as she did, it wasn't long before Dannica tightened her hands around Hope's hips and shuddered, then laid her head back against Hope's shoulder and moaned out her release, body shaking while Hope held her close around the middle with her free arm.

Then the sensation was gone, and Dannica heard the quiet buzzing of the vibrator for a moment before a quiet click silenced it. She still writhed against Hope as the last waves of her orgasm subsided, and then she relaxed into the boneless state of pure bliss, giggling quietly as the rush started to fade and the glow began to come on.

"How did I get lucky enough to end up with the one girl who would know exactly what I needed to calm down?" Dannica asked with a heavy voice.

"The same way that I got lucky enough to end up with the most beautiful girl I could think of."

Dannica flushed anew and ducked her head only to find Hope's hand on her chin.

"You don't ever have to do that around me, Dani," she said as she gently lifted Dannica's head, laying it back on her shoulder.

Dannica relented and laid her head back, letting her hair drape over Hope's back. She smiled self-consciously, still pink from embarrassment. The flush only got deeper when she felt Hope's lips pressing against the rough skin to the side of her face, and she tensed, about to pull away. That place was always so full of pain whenever someone touched her there that it was almost impossible to keep the reflex contained, but she managed.

Her breath caught and her hands tightened again around Hope for only a moment before she relaxed.

"No one has ever done that before," she said quietly.

"I know," Hope answered. "You can hide it from everyone else, Dannica, but I know the real you, and I love every bit of it. Even the scars."

Dannica felt another soft kiss to the scar again and this time, the urge to pull away was easier to contain. She let the feeling linger for a moment once Hope's lips had left and then she turned herself around. She spread her legs and wrapped them around Hope's hips, still sitting her backside between her friend's legs and she wrapped her arms around Hope's shoulders.

"Guess we're both lucky," Dannica said with a shy smile.

"Yes, we are. Now go and take a shower and get dressed again. I'm going to go talk your father into taking us out to eat."

Dannica laughed and pulled Hope into a hug, then stood up and started towards the bathroom, letting her pants fall right off her hips as she walked. She could find them again later, or Hope would make sure they got into the wash. For everything that had happened today, she felt surprisingly better for the time she spent with her friend afterwards. She felt like there was something more between her and Hope besides their feelings for each other, but she shook off the thought. It was simply their love for each other that was their bond. That and nothing more.

And with that thought, she closed the bathroom door and started the water running for her shower. There was still the night to look forward to.