The days following the attack were rough for everyone. Though the Lion Guard doubled their usual patrols, they found no sign of the hyena they were looking for. They wore themselves out, searching late into the night, with no success. Every night Kion returned to the cave tired and cross, and despite Kiara reassuring him that she was fine, it was clear that his inability to bring her attacker justice pained him.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Pride Lands were in an uproar. Word soon spread that a hyena had attacked two prideland animals, successfully ate one of them, and then vanished without a trace. Needless to say, the herds panicked. That was nothing new. What was new was the sense of anger that also spread like wildfire among the animals of the Pride Lands. After all, this time it was no mere zebra that had been attacked, but their princess. And despite Kiara insisting that the one responsible was a stranger, rumour got out that Janja's clan was to blame. Soon many began to question why the Lion Guard wasn't confronting the Outland hyenas, with some even calling for an immediate counterattack. It only served to put more pressure on the already harried Kion and his Guard to find the real culprit, but the animals would not be silenced. Their monarch had been nearly killed, and they wanted justice.

Kiara herself only heard about all this second-hand, as she spent the next few days recuperating in the cave. The scratches and bruises on her body all healed within a day or two, but the deeper wound on her neck took longer. For some reason, Rafiki's regular medicine just wasn't proving effective this time around, which frustrated the mandrill no end. So Kiara found herself confined to the inside of Pride Rock while he tested alternative salves and potions. It quickly became maddening, especially when she became well enough to walk again. It was made worse by her worried parents, who doted and fussed until she could hardly bear it. And even when she got some small respite from them, they weren't the only ones who wouldn't leave her alone.

"It's all our fault Kiara, and I just feel terrible," Zuri wailed dramatically, flopping down onto the floor in front of Kiara's sick bed.

The princess rolled her eyes. "No it's not," she said for what felt like the thirtieth time. "You guys aren't to blame at all."

"But we are!" Zuri insisted, crawling forward as though she were grovelling before royalty (which, to be fair, she technically was). "I knew we shouldn't have separated that night, I just knew something bad was going to happen."

"You seemed fine with it at the time," muttered Tiifu, but Zuri ignored her.

"I should have said something," she continued to wail. "I should have stuck with you, but I didn't, and now I feel awful! Oh, if only we'd stayed with you…"

"And what, fought them off for me?" asked Kiara with amusement in her voice.

"No," said Tiifu, who stepped around her friends prone form with an exasperated expression. "But we might have been able to stop you from doing something as thick headed as attacking the hyena by yourself? Seriously, what were you thinking?"

Kiara shrugged. "It… seemed like a good idea at the time?" she said meekly.

"Kiara…"

"No, I'm serious. I thought I'd be able to chase them off, or at least outrun them and get back to the Guard in time. Besides, I'd seen Kion take on Janja one on one before. I thought I was strong enough…"

"Okay, but Kion has his roar and the rest of the Guard to back him up," Tiifu pointed out. "You may be as strong as him, but you were alone. It wasn't a risk you should have taken."

"Plus, didn't that hyena turn out to be like, mega huge and scary compared to Janja anyway?" added Zuri.

"Zuri, shut up," hissed Tiifu with a worried glance at Kiara.

"But like, the bite wound's really big compared to what Janja's given Kion, so that thing must be hu-"

"She doesn't need to be reminded, Zuri, it was probably traumatic," Tiifu growled through her teeth, glaring at her companion. "Try and show a little tact."

"Oh," said Zuri, covering her mouth with both paws, eyes wide. "Ohmygosh I didn't even think of that, oh Kiara I'm so s-"

"It's okay," interrupted Kiara. The fur on her back had begun to bristle a little, but she ignored it and turned away. "Like I said, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

Kiara still hadn't told anyone else the whole truth about the incident. There was no way that they'd believe what she'd seen. Indeed, as time went by, she began to doubt that she had even seen it herself. It all just seemed so impossible, ridiculous even, surely it couldn't have been real? It seemed much more likely that fear and trauma had distorted her memories of the event, making a regular hyena seem like a behemoth. That was what she told herself. It must've been some trick of the moonlight.

However, at night, Kiara found herself standing once again on that moon-soaked plain in her dreams. Once again, she felt the beast's hot breath and heard its dreadful howl. Again it raked at her with its terrible claws and tore at her with its fangs. The last thing she would see was the eyes, piercing blue and angry, glaring into her before she awoke with a gasp. It was in those moments deep at night, with her heart pounding and her breathing heavy, that there was no mistaking that monster for a regular hyena.

Still, time continued to pass, and even the nightmares became fewer and less vivid. The Lion Guard went back to their regular patrols after nearly two weeks with no disturbance, and the gossip about the attack died down to a whisper. By this time, Rafiki had declared Kiara completely recovered from her injuries and she was allowed to stretch her legs outside of Pride Rock once again. The mandrill had told her that despite his best efforts, there would be some minor scarring on her neck where she had been bitten, but she didn't care. All queens had their battle scars, the way she saw it there was not harm in starting early.

Life in the Pride Lands settled back into a familiar rhythm. Kiara's training and royal duties resumed, and with her days so full, the hyena incident couldn't have been further from the princess' mind. The savannah was peaceful once more, and to the residents of Pride Rock it felt as though things were finally starting to go back to normal.

Unfortunately, they were wrong.

...

The sun was halfway across the sky on that day when Kiara started to feel ill. She and Kion were on their way back from a trip to the waterhole when she noticed her stomach had begun to churn. At first she ignored it, hoping it would go away, but the nausea only grew the further she walked.

"Something wrong sis?" asked Kion, who had noticed his sister dropping behind him.

"I'm fine," she insisted. "I've just got a bit of a stomache ache. It'll probably pass."

"A stomache ache?" repeated Kion, tilting his head in concern. "Do you need to see Rafiki?"

"No," said Kiara quickly. The last thing she wanted was wind up confined to the cave again over some minor ailment. "It isn't that painful, I probably just ate some bad buffalo."

"Kiara, we ate the same buffalo this morning, and I feel fine."

"Yeah well, I don't know, maybe only my half was off. Look, I promised Tiifu and Zuri that I'd hang out with them this afternoon, and I don't want to flake out on them if it's not absolutely necessary."

Kion shrugged. "Okay, if you say so. I hope you feel better soon."

But Kiara didn't feel better soon. In fact, by the time the duo got back to pride rock, her stomach felt queasier than ever. She met up with Tiifu and Zuri as planned, but the whole time she couldn't focus, and kept tuning out of the conversation.

"Kiara, you really don't look well, are you sure you're okay?" asked Zuri after a while. When Kiara didn't respond, she used her tail to tap the princess a couple of times on the head to get her attention.

"Huh? Oh, I'm okay," mumbled Kiara. Tiifu and Zuri exchanged a doubtful look.

"I don't really think you are fine Kiara," said Tiifu, brushing her pelt against her friend's supportively. "Your ears and tail are all droopy, and you keep frowning and zoning out. I think you're sicker than you're willing to admit."

"I'm fine," Kiara said again, gently pushing the other cub away. "Besides, no good queen lets a mere sore stomach get in the way of her royal duties. I've got to learn to endure it."

"What royal duties? We were just having a sand bath together," Zuri pointed out.

"Look, you could at least go lie down for a little while in pride rock until it passes," said Tiifu. "That way, you probably won't even need to see Rafiki if you don't want to." Kiara blinked, surprised that Tiifu had so quickly guessed what was behind her reluctance. Her friend knew her better than she realised.

"Okay," she said with a sigh. "You win, I'll go take a nap until I feel better… I'm sorry we barely got any time to hang out, I promise I'll make it up to you two tomorrow."

Tiifu leaned in to nuzzle Kiara. "It's all good," she purred.

"We'll catch up when you're feeling better," Zuri assured her.

By the time Kiara had dawdled her way back to pride rock from their meet up place it was nearly sunset. At this stage, a churning stomach wasn't Kiara's only problem. She felt hot and feverish, like the fur all over her body was burning, and there was a strange tightness in her chest. She staggered into the cave and flopped down onto the cool stone of her bed with relief. When Simba came over to ask what was wrong, she lied and told him that she was just tired and wanted an early night's sleep. She knew that if she told her dad the truth, he's worry about her, and then she would have to see Rafiki for sure. Luckily he believed her, and she was left in the mostly empty cave to contemplate her symptoms.

This is the worst, she thought to herself. I've never felt sick like this before, I hope I haven't come down with something awful. She worried for a moment that perhaps telling nobody the real extent of her illness had been a bad idea, but quickly brushed those thoughts aside. If I still feel sick in the morning, I'll tell Rafiki, she promised herself as she drifted off into a fitful sleep.

...

Blood. The scent of hyena. Full moon, beaming down on a hulking, furry shape. A guttural howl, huge claws raking at her. Bright blue eyes met her own, and white fangs flashed in the darkness…

With a jolt, Kiara woke, panting rapidly. It took her a moment to get her bearings before she realised she was still safe in pride rock. Moonlight was pouring in through the cave mouth, illuminating some of the dozen sleeping lions spread across the cave floor. Kiara realised she was lying snuggled up to her mother, with Kion fast asleep a short distance away next to her father. The only sound to split the night was peaceful breathing, and the hoot of some distant nocturnal bird.

It then occurred to Kiara that she was about to be sick.

With great caution she rose to her feet, and when that movement didn't wake Nala she began to softly pad away. Hurriedly she weaved through her dozing pride, making a wobbly beeline for the exit before they could be rudely awoken by her throwing up buffalo chunks. When she finally made it out she paused for a second, to take a deep gulp of fresh air and look up at the sky.

Kiara was momentarily taken back to see the huge full moon, looming down on her from over the horizon. If that moon was up again, then… had it really been a month already since the attack? Reflexively, she reached up to her neck, feeling the scar tissue where the bite wound had been. An ominous rumbling in her belly brought her back to reality though, and she turned her back on the moon as she descended from pride rock.

As soon as her paws hit the grass Kiara braced herself for the retching, but it didn't come. Her stomach was doing backflips, and her skin felt like it was covered in fire ants. The tightness in her chest from earlier was now suffocating, she felt like she was straining for each breath. Most peculiarly, her paws had started to itch severely. She tried to scratch one front paw with the other, but nothing she could do seemed to lessen the sensation.

"Should have seen Rafiki…" she mumbled, and for some reason she thought even her voice sounded strange. The feeling of nausea was now so intense that Kiara wished she'd just puke already and get it over with. She kept aimlessly scratching her paw, which now wasn't so much itchy as it was tingly and… weird. Frowning, she looked down… and it was only her scarcity of breath that kept her from screaming.

The paws on the end of her forelegs were not her own. They were brown furred, with black pads and huge toes. And they were growing. As Kiara watched, mouth agape, the paws grew larger. Each toe got longer and more dextrous, and thick black claws erupted from the end of each. A frantic glance around revealed her back paws were doing much the same thing.

"W- what's…" Kiara managed to sputter out, but she was too stunned by what was happening to form any kind of reasonable sentence. Panicking, she tried to run back towards the cave, but she immediately tripped over her strange new paws and instead tumbled down the sloping hill in the opposite direction. By the time she righted herself, it became horrifyingly apparent that her paws weren't the only things that were changing.

Kiara's whole body was growing rapidly. Her arms were elongating, and the joints in her elbows and shoulders were changing too. Her back paws continued to grow, until she found it easier to rest her weight more on her hindlegs than her front. Suddenly she buckled in on herself, as she felt the grinding sensation of her spine rearranging itself, giving her a more hunched posture. Something odd was happening with her tail too, but Kiara was too preoccupied at this point to turn around and check. The whole thing felt like it should have hurt terribly but it didn't, it just felt extremely uncomfortable.

Next, her snout bulged outward right in from of her eyes, and her nose started to swell and turn black. There were a few seconds in which her mouth itched like mad, as her already sharp teeth got huger and sharper still. At the same moment, she felt her ears sliding around to a different position on her head, getting bigger and pointier. Her neck elongated and thickened, to match her already much wider chest and shoulders.

Help! Kiara thought desperately, but at this point she didn't dare try and speak, in case the only thing that came out was a horrific growl. The light brown fur from her paws was now spreading all over, making her feel like her skin was crawling with termites. Soon there was no trace of her familiar golden pelt, only coarse, light brown fur with darker brown spots.

Why… is this happening to me? Kiara wondered blearily, finding it difficult to even string the thought together. At this point she found her mind was getting hazy, as though control of her faculties was starting to slip away. She felt like she should do something, go get help, scream, anything. But this strange altered body wouldn't obey, her limbs felt like stone and her brain felt like mud. It was as though she was losing her grip on her mind, almost like something more powerful was dragging her under, and she was powerless to resist.

As her consciousness faded, Kiara was dimly aware that the changes to her body were slowing. The last thing she felt was the fur on her neck and back tingling. With great difficulty, she managed to slowly turn her head over her shoulder, just enough to make out a black mane growing in. It wasn't the thick mane of a lion, she realised dully. No, it was more like the thin stripe of a mane you would find on a zebra, or…

Or… a hyena, she thought, and that was the last thought she had before fading away into blackness.

...

"Zuri? Hey, Zuri… Wake up!"

Zuri grumbled to herself as she rolled over, reluctantly opening one eye to scowl at the one who roused her.

"Tiifu, it's the middle of the night, what do you want?"

The other cub stood before her, ears drooping, paws shuffling restlessly. "I know I'm sorry," she whispered anxiously. "It's just… it's Kiara, she's… not here."

"What do you mean 'not here'?" sighed Zuri, sitting up slightly on her forelegs.

"I mean that she's gone!" Tiifu wailed a little too loud for a whisper. "Like, I was having trouble sleeping because I was thirsty, right? And also I couldn't stop thinking about that gross bug story Bunga was telling – ugh – which was DEFINITELY going to give me nightmares if I did fall asleep, and like… okay, that's not really important. What's important though, is that when I opened my eyes and looked over to where Kiara sleeps… she wasn't there. Then I looked around and, she wasn't anywhere, she's just gone!"

Zuri stared at her friend. "…and you woke me up for this, because…?" she yawned.

Tiifu blinked owlishly. She hadn't expected her friend to be so… nonchalant. "Because our friend is missing!" she hissed. "What if something terrible has happened to her?"

"Tiifu, you dolt," groaned Zuri. "Did you stop to think that Kiara maybe just got up to, I don't know, go pee or something?"

Tiifu blinked again. "Oh… I guess that… could be it…"

"Exactly, that or she was still feeling sick and needed to go throw up or something. She's probably fine. You're just working yourself up thinking she's been snatched away by a ghost or whatever."

Tiifu's face flushed a little. "I don't believe in ghosts," she mumbled.

"Liar," scoffed Zuri. She rolled over, putting her back to her friend. "Just go back to bed," she instructed. "Kiara'll be back before you fall asleep, and I personally am not going to be losing any sleep over this."

Tiifu just stood there, fretfully kneading the ground with her paws. "But what if though Zuri?" she pressed. "I don't know, I still feel like we should go and check on her, just in case."

Zuri's only response was to make loud, fake snoring noises. Frowning, Tiifu turned around and flicked her tail indignantly.

"Fine," she pouted. "I'll go out and look for her myself. In the dark, all alone… so if I get carried off by a… a big owl or something, I'll blame you."

The fake snoring pointedly increased in volume, and Tiifu left the cave in a huff.

When she stepped out into the moonlight, Tiifu peered over the edge of the rocky outcropping. "Kiara?" she called out softly, but there was no sign of the princess in the area directly below. Frowning a little, she hopped down the rocks until her paws touched the grass. She sniffed the air, and thought she caught the scent of her friend on the breeze, but the wind was blowing the wrong way for her to pinpoint it. "Kiara, are you there?" she said again, a little louder. There was no response, nothing stirred in the night.

Great, Tiifu thought as she scanned the horizon warily. You better not have actually been ghostnapped Kiara, that'd be too ironic for words. Slowly she padded away from Pride Rock, glancing around as she did. Normally she wouldn't be brave enough to go out this far in the dark, but with the Pride Lands illuminated by the full moon she felt a little bolder. As she trotted in the direction she guessed Kiara might have gone in, she tried to keep thoughts of ghost, monsters and bloodthirsty rogues out of her mind, with little success. Then Tiifu jumped nearly a foot in the air when she heard a sudden rustling noise.

"K- Kiara?" she gasped, eyes darting from side to side. Again there was no response, but she thought she saw a blade of grass in the distance twitch. Gulping, Tiifu padded towards the long grass, unwilling to wrench her eyes from where she thought she'd seen movement. "Kiara, if this is a p- prank, it's a stupid one," she said, her voice high and strained. "C- come on out before we both get in trouble." Suddenly there was another rustle, this time in the long grass directly to her left. Tiifu hesitated, heart in her throat, before she made up her mind. Taking a deep breath, she reached out a paw, and in one fluid movement pulled the foliage aside to reveal the source of the sound.

From the long grass, a small mouse blinked up at her. Tiifu blinked back, then she felt her whole body relax with relief.

"Hey, you're no ghost," she chuckled at the tiny mammal. The mouse just stood there frozen for second, only its whiskers twitching. Just as Tiifu reached out a paw to gently bap it, the rodent let out a squeak of fear and turned tail to run away. Tiifu watched it go, amused that such a little thing had given her such a fright. Still smiling, she turned to head back towards Pride Rock.

Something huge swung at her. Acting on pure instinct, Tiifu leaped to the side as a massive clawed arm raked the air where she had been. She landed awkwardly, stumbling to her paws in a daze. Realising the danger she was in, the cub whirled around to face her attacker, only to gasp as she laid eyes on a creature the likes of which she had never seen before.

It was huge, and stood on its big hind paws in a most unnatural way. Standing up like that, it was about twice as tall as an adult lion. In many ways, it resembled a brown hyena, but Tiifu had never seen a hyena that was this monstrous. It held its black clawed arms up, poised and ready to strike, and bared its massive white teeth. As the young cub gawked at the beast she found her gaze met by a pair of cold, brown eyes that swept over her in the manner of a predator evaluating a scrap of meat. In that moment it was not attacking her, but Tiifu sensed that if she moved so much as a muscle, it would strike.

And it was standing between her and Pride Rock.

Oh my gosh, what am going to do? Tiifu thought despairingly. Her heart was beating like bee's wings in her chest, and she felt her whole body begin to tremble. As much as she wanted to run, run and never look back, but she knew that to move now would be death. So she stayed still, digging her front claws into the patch of dirt she crouched upon, and waited.

The beast looked down on her, nose twitching. For what seemed like an eternity, the two of them stood there, locked in a deadly standoff. Then, the beast growled and in one fluid movement dropped back on to all fours and lunged. In the same heartbeat, Tiifu pulled up a pawful of dirt and lobbed it directly into the eyes of her attacker. The beast faltered, flinching backwards and rubbing its face, and that was when Tiifu turned to make a break for it. Now was the time to run.

She took off into the long grass at top speed, adrenaline pumping through her veins. Dimly, Tiifu recognized that she was running away from the safety of Pride Rock, but there was no time to worry about that now. In fact, she had only made it a little way away when a beastly roar split the silence of the night. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw the beast pursuing her on all fours, eyes full of fury. And to her horror, it was gaining ground.

The chase was on.

...

Thanks for reading! This chapter was originally supposed to be longer, but it was getting pretty long already so I decided to split it into two parts. Anyway, if you enjoyed this chapter or have feedback, please leave a review! Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long to finish since I have everything planned out already. Don't hold me to that though. :3