Chapter 1

My name is Sham. I’m sure you must be laughing. I get that when I introduce myself. The creature in question either gives me a startled look, or struggles to contain his laughter behind a smile. Some of the latter occasionally ask, “Did your mother hate you when she named you?” And the sad truth is she did.

I doubt most anyone would believe me when looking at me today, but back then, when the racer world was still harsh, there was a deep truth to her hate. And the story goes back to even before I was born.

Paras, my mother, was a remarkably fast silver cheetah in her days. She left even the males in the dust whenever she ran, so naturally she got the fastest males following her around to produce their prodigy. At the time it was not uncommon for a female to mate to different males, but Paras fell for one cat and one cat only: the legendary Marskot.

Marskot earned his status incredibly early in life—his first year of adulthood at fifteen—when he found a talent for last second lunges. For once he set his fooling aside, grabbed the lead, and won against elite racers by ten lengths. After that race many females fawned over him, my mother being one of them.

With him she birthed two cheetahs that came ten years apart, my brother Marskin and my sister Faris. With the pedigree of a purebred they ran the legs off of everything as soon as they became adults. As the third cub and a son of Paras, you’d think I was destined for the same success. But my father was not Marskot.

Marskot ended up the victim of a common accident. He was in front of a dozen cats in the homestretch when his legs froze and his face hit dirt at his top speed. The high speed caused his neck to contort and snap. I don’t believe any of the onlookers ever forgot that day.

Including my mother.

His death threw her into a deep shock and suddenly she was no longer conscious of her actions. Rumor says she got drunk at a local tavern in Bardou, and left with a warrior. The only inference to how she became pregnant with me obviously lies in the warrior. That is where the hate begins.

If there were one thing to know about warriors and racers it is that most can’t tolerate a second in each other’s company. Being a racer lends them a sense of superiority, and at a brief glance the two silver cheetahs’ societies yields a fantastic difference. A racer is the image of quiet dignity and pride, even at the worst of the racing levels. In startling contrast warriors are blocky, blunt, and publicly ferocious; it’s hard to imagine the two species share an ancestor. And so the pride of pure blood and the dignity of producing pureblood offspring sowed the seeds of my mother’s hatred for me.

Before I was even born there was no hiding I wasn’t a racer. Rumors are the contagious disease that everyone wants to get—potent, too. The mere rumor of my mother carrying the offspring of a warrior led to a spectacular fall from grace. Though she was as fast as ever, her sponsor cut the strings of her financing, and severed her from the inner racing world.

She survived somehow and birthed me in the middle of July on an oppressively hot day in a cave she’d staked out in anticipation of my arrival. When I heard of that day from my mother, it was the only time I truly pitied Faris. At only eight she went without food throughout our mother’s labor and the whole day after. To wait there for countless hours on end, listening to her mother moan, growl and snarl, would’ve been torturous under normal circumstances. But then there was the added horror of Paras birthing a half-breed!

I often harbor the fantasy that Paras had even an infinitesimal speck of love for me when she could’ve done away with the trouble of raising me by snapping my neck. Although I do wonder if she thought I might actually turn out, at the very least, looking like a racer, but even from birth I was a runt. I was a rangy looking silver cheetah, who appeared as if I might be blown away by the wind. I didn’t even look like a warrior. The only remotely unique thing about me were the faded spots on my belly and flanks, a rare thing to see on a silver cheetah—a testament of the relation to the yellow cheetahs, or sun cats. That aside, the only indication of my blood relation to Paras were two stripes on my black-tipped tail, and turquoise eyes.

That was it.

The memories between then and my first debut as a racer are vague and unclear, aside from a constant ragging by Paras, nipping by Faris, and the relentless pace with which we traveled at. I don’t think there was a time in my youth when I didn’t feel leg-weary or downtrodden.

And I don’t think there was a day when I did not hear this mantra: You will never be anything. You half-breed, you fandsor! I don’t know why I bother keeping you. You’re nothing but a sham, which is why I named you as such. It’d be kinder to put you out of your misery now, but I won’t. I’ll let you see for yourself what difference you’ll make.

And so I did see.