Buffer Zone

A full moon hung over the Mississippi's dark waters, meaning this was the time for hunters to arrive and take whatever they could capture. A device would be clamped to the backs of our necks and we'd never be able to shift back to human again. It was how they justified their enslavement of us; that we were only animals instead of sentient humans.

The Krelk had killed more than two-thirds of the human population, too, but they made the excuse that they'd thought them animal as well, until the...