Page 44 of Beasts of Mine

You will, Red informed Evie, sounding entirely confident as he climbed higher onto the branch. You always do.

Evie stared at him for a second before shaking her head.

“I hate that you're probably right,” Evie muttered to Red, adjusting the strap crossing her chest before turning toward the trail.

I should have let her leave without adding anything. Instead, the familiar urge to follow tightened through me as soon as I saw the narrow path waiting behind her. I'd checked the route earlier. There hadn't been fresh predator sign anywhere near it, and the research station wasn't far enough away to justify concern, but knowing that did little to silence the part of me that disliked watching her disappear into the forest alone.

Be careful on the way back, I told Evie, my voice quieter as I lifted my head and listened automatically for movement beyond her. Evie paused before entering the trees. The teasing softened from her face when she glanced back at me, one hand resting on the strap of her camera bag.

“I will. See you tomorrow, Cat,” Evie promised me, deliberately emphasizing the nickname she knew irritated me.

My ears flattened. Evie's smile widened before she turned and disappeared between the broad leaves crowding the trail.

Above me, Red made a pleased sound.

Cat, Red repeated, bobbing his head as if he'd just discovered the word.

Leave, I told Red, turning my head slowly toward the branch.

Very good name, Red informed me, spreading his wings when I rose to my feet. Short. Accurate. Easy to remember.

Now, I warned Red, taking one deliberate step toward the trunk. Red launched himself into the air with a burst of scarlet and blue, his laughter carrying through the canopy long after he disappeared.

I listened for Evie instead. Her boots remained distinct for several minutes, pressing into damp soil and occasionally scraping against exposed roots while the faint rattle of equipment followed each step. Around those sounds, the rainforest carried on without concern for either of us. Eventually Evie's footsteps blended into the forest and disappeared.

Only then did I stretch.

Several days ago, the movement would have sent pain along my side. Now the healing skin merely pulled beneath my fur, and the leg that had been caught in the wire took my full weight without complaint. I'd already run on it that morning and climbed one of the steeper sections along the northern boundary without difficulty.

There was no physical reason for me to continue spending every afternoon beneath the same roots where Evie had first found me.

There hadn't been for several days. That didn't mean I'd spent every hour here even when the injury was worse.

The first evening after Evie treated me, I'd missed a check-in with Tavian and Luca. That alone had been enough to send both of them looking. We had shared territory, work, and a home for too many years for one of us to disappear in the middle of a patrol without the other two noticing, especially when that missing Alpha happened to be the one responsible for knowing where everyone else was.

Tavian had found my blood trail first. Luca had followed the vegetation I'd flattened while dragging myself away from the wire. By the time they reached the creek, Evie had been gone for hours, leaving them to find me beneath the roots with a cleaned wound, a wrapped leg, traces of human medicine around the bank, and the scent of a human Omega thoroughly worked into my coat.

Tavian had asked enough questions for three people.

Who was she? Where had she come from? Had she seen me shift? Why was a human Omega that deep in the forest? Why had she approached an injured leopard instead of running in the opposite direction? Why did I smell as though she'd been touching me for hours?

I'd answered the questions that mattered. I wasn't dying. A human woman had found me. She'd treated the injuries. She hadn't seen me shift. And until I understood more about her—and about the strange fact that she could apparently hold conversations with animals—neither Tavian nor Luca was going anywhere near her.

Luca had examined my side and leg, decided her treatment was competent, and spent long enough studying the neat bandage around my leg that I knew his curiosity wasn't entirely medical.

Neither of them had pushed after that. That was part of why the three of us worked so well together. Tavian might ask every thought the moment it entered his head, and Luca could notice things I would have preferred to keep unnoticed, but both knew when I wasn't ready to discuss something. They trusted that when it mattered, I would.

Their willingness to wait hadn't made either of them less curious. Especially when Evie's scent kept returning with me. Every afternoon she came to the creek, and every evening I eventually returned to my pack carrying some new trace of her. Soap, damp cotton, earth, sweat, camera equipment, whatever food she'd brought, and beneath everything else the warmer Omega scent her blockers dulled without completely erasing.

Neither Tavian nor Luca had commented. The restraint required from Tavian had been remarkable.

The morning after the storm had nearly broken him.

Evie had slept beside me for hours, leaving far more of herself behind than an afternoon sitting nearby ever had. When I'd returned toward the temple later that morning, Tavian had been halfway through telling Luca about a damaged marker along the western boundary. He'd stopped speaking the instant I entered the courtyard.

His nostrils flared once and his amber eyes moved over me.

Then he looked at Luca. Luca had been sorting herbs across one of the old stone tables. He paused with a bundle still in one hand, drew in a slow breath, and raised his eyes to mine before glancing toward Tavian.