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“I didn’t have much of an option. I felt clumsy trying to run and was pretty sure you could bring me down if you wanted to. I do know when you approached me, her instinct was to lower to the ground…”
“To submit in the face of her mate’s annoyance. It’s why I purred to you and to her. I wanted you both to know I understood, and I wasn’t angry.”
“What is the feeling I get from you? Sometimes I can hear it, and sometimes I can’t, but I can feel it.”
“It’s the bonding link. Large cat-shifters use it to communicate with their mates. It works both ways. The link, like the change, is initiated by the claiming bite.”
“Claiming bite? That sounds a little bit possessive.”
Carson threw his head back and laughed. “Let me assure you, it is more than a ‘little bit possessive.’ Who made the decision to follow me back to the cabin?”
“It was kind of a joint thing, but you said I had control.”
“You will always have control. If, when she had charged, you had understood, you could have shut it down on your end. Your snow leopard will always yield to your will. But I find it’s best to try and link with them. There are things they see and perceive that we as humans miss. You will find you experience the world on a far more tactile level. Your eyesight will be keener, your senses of smell, taste, and touch heightened. But you will always have your human ability to listen, reason, and assess a situation and you decide whether to take human or snow leopard form.”
“Does shifting always make you hungry?” she said, trying to ignore the throbbing of his cock beneath her.
“Among other things. Come on,” he said, standing but not putting her down on her feet. Instead, he walked toward the dining area and sat her in the seat. “There’s more shepherd’s pie, there’s the meat and cheese tray, and I can make you anything else that sounds good.”
“Shepherd’s pie would be great.”
Carson gave her another serving as well as splitting the last of the pinot between them.
“Tell me again how we got here,” she said, taking a bite. “Not us as snow leopards but you and me.”
“Let me go back to a little before I saw you. I worked as a geneticist in Iceland. About a week ago, I overheard a conversation that I probably wasn’t supposed to. Two guys from a different department were talking about a project that had gone awry in Seattle. It made me begin to believe that Mason might be right about the people I worked for in that they weren’t good people and were up to no good. I decided I’d better get out while the getting was good.”
“Were you that concerned?”
He took a bite of the shepherd’s pie, thinking. “I was. Mason has been saying for years that he thought NLGP had nefarious goals for their genetic research. I guess his paranoia got to me. I literally bolted from Reykjavik—I didn’t tell anyone, left my car in front of my favorite diner and got on a plane to Quebec where Mason had stashed false identification, including credit cards to accounts no one could trace to us and a huge chunk of cash.”
“Didn’t that concern you?”
“I thought Mason was being overly dramatic, but I was grateful for that. I can’t be sure, but I think I was followed on the connecting flight between Reykjavik and Quebec. I lost the guy in Toronto where I changed info, but still. Before I saw your plane go down, I had gone to Otter Cove, which is the closest town…”
“It and Mystic River are odd little places. They kind of keep to themselves. I’ve always thought they could do a lot more business. Don’t get me wrong, when I’ve had to land close, people are friendly, just kind of distant.”
“That would be because both were founded by shifters and to this day only shifters live there. They keep to themselves, as having humans around hasn’t always been good for our kind.”
“Seriously? So are there different kinds of shifters?”
“Yes. Pretty much any living species except insects and arachnids. There are some shifter species whose pureblood or animal species have gone extinct—dire wolves, cave lions, and cave bears all come to mind. Not any dinosaur shifters that I know of.”
“Do you know a guy named Deke Campbell? They call him the Finder.”
“I know Deke both by reputation and as a friend. He’s a cave lion-shifter.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. I met with him and Zach Grayson…”
“The sheriff of Otter Cove.”
“Yes. Before you ask, polar bear-shifter. Anyhow, they didn’t know where Mason was, either, and Deke was headed out to see what he could learn. Apparently, Mason was working covertly with them and against a group known as the Shadow League—a group of shifters not known for their good deeds. They would like nothing more than for the world order to be shifters on top with humans as their servants, slaves or breeders.”
Carson went back over how he’d seen her plane and come to her rescue. He played down his part, but Amelia was coming quickly to believe without his intervention, she would have died. The events she had experienced and he had described before now took on a whole new meaning given her understanding of what had happened.
Her skin prickled and goosebumps came up as she realized just how close to death she had come and that if it hadn’t been for Carson’s ability to shift and become a snow leopard, she would most likely be dead.
