Page 111 of Beasts of Mine

“Don’t look so shocked. He can follow directions when he wants to.” Malek stepped past me, dry amusement briefly softening his voice as he checked the vegetation ahead.

“Why does everyone talk about me like I’m difficult?” Tavian called after Malek, genuinely sounding as though the answer remained a mystery.

“Experience.” Luca supplied from behind me, barely hiding a smile when Tavian turned an offended stare on him.

I laughed and kept walking. We followed the creek south, moving slowly enough that I could stop whenever the canopy opened or something shifted between the trees. Having them in human form changed the entire rhythm of the outing. As leopards, they had blended into the forest so easily that I could forget they were nearby until a spotted head appeared from the vegetation.

Three men were considerably harder to ignore, especially now that I knew their attention toward me hadn’t been entirely platonic.

Tavian kept drifting closer before catching himself and giving me room. Luca seemed to understand what I needed without much instruction, positioning himself where his shadow wouldn’t fall across whatever I was watching. Malek ranged ahead with the same quiet vigilance he’d shown as Cat.

That created the first problem.

“Malek, come back a little. You’re getting too far ahead.” I kept my voice low and lifted one hand, my attention fixed on movement in a cluster of branches farther along the creek.

Malek stopped and retraced several steps.

“I’m not disturbing anything.” Malek lowered his voice to match mine, glancing toward the vegetation he had just passed.

“You don’t have to touch anything. You’re still a large predator walking directly toward everything I’m trying to photograph.” I crouched beside a broad buttress root and adjusted my settings.

A strangled sound came from behind me. I turned enough to catch Tavian pressing his lips together.

“Whatever it is, save it.” I warned Tavian before returning my eye to the viewfinder.

“I’m behaving.” Tavian backed against a nearby tree, his shoulders shaking once with the effort of not laughing.

“Barely.” Luca crouched several feet to my right, his attention moving between Tavian and the branches I was watching. A small troop of capuchins worked their way through the lower canopy, mostly hidden behind leaves. One female carried an infant tight against her chest while a younger monkey hung from a branch and stared down at us.

You brought the spotted ones back wrong. The young capuchin leaned farther over the branch, clearly studying the men behind me.

I nearly lowered the camera.

“They aren’t wrong.” I whispered toward the capuchin while keeping the viewfinder against my eye.

No spots. Too tall. The capuchin scratched beneath one arm, unimpressed by my explanation. My shoulders shook with a laugh I managed to keep quiet.

“What’s he saying?” Tavian whispered from behind me, curiosity apparently stronger than his commitment to silence.

“He liked you better with spots.” I kept tracking the female carrying the infant.

A pause followed.

“That is insulting.” Tavian kept his voice low, but the offense in it was unmistakable.

This one talks too much either way. The capuchin bounded onto another branch and peered down at Tavian. A laugh escaped again before I could stop it.

“He said something else.” Tavian shifted behind me, immediately suspicious.

“I’m not translating that one.” I took another short burst of photographs as the troop crossed an opening in the leaves.

“Which means it was definitely about me.” Tavian muttered, but he stayed exactly where I needed him. The monkeys moved farther down the creek, and I followed for another ten minutes before the vegetation grew too thick to keep a clear line of sight. When I finally lowered my camera, Luca was watching me rather than the canopy.

“What?” I checked the last few images on the screen before lifting my eyes to him.

“You get very still when you work.” Luca stepped closer but stopped far enough away that he wasn’t crowding the camera.

“I’m trying not to frighten my subjects.” I enlarged one photograph of the infant and checked the focus around its face.