With a little help from Nandi—she’d tipped me off about Sasha’s schedule—I was waiting for Sasha when her shift ended. They’d only needed her to work eight hours into the afternoon, a rare short day for her in the ER. I’d kidnapped her from the hospital with every intention of preparing a homemade dinner while digging for information on what to get Isisa and Nandi for the holidays. My plan was to get each of my ladies alone to get ideas for the others.

What did you get the women who had everything?

“I’m afraid my fridge is woefully empty, but we can run down to the store once we figure out what we’re making.”

“This is your show, remember? You pick, and I’ll eat it,” she said.

“Sure. You okay, though? You seem distracted.”

“Huh?” Sasha turned her gaze away from the side mirror and blinked. “Sorry. I thought someone was following us, but they turned off a block or so back. Random black Escalade.”

That news made my brows raise. I darted my gaze to the rearview mirror but saw nothing. “Do you always watch for a tail?”

Rosy heat suffused her cheeks. “Only when my boyfriend says creepy, swarmy jerks are threatening him.”

“Trust me. I’m not worried about them.”

“Esteban, the Medrano family has ties to the FEL. I’ve treated some of their victims at the hospital, so don’t fucking tell me you aren’t worried about them.”

How the hell did she know that? “They’d be idiotic to actually do anything. Dupont isn’t afraid of them, and he could cost them business in Texas entirely. Hell, the man probably could get them blacklisted across the whole damn country.”

She stared at me.

“I’m being careful. Look, I know you work undercover and shit with Nadir for your pal, but you don’t have to be on the job when you’re with me. I can take care of myself, okay?”

“Okay. Um, we need to talk about something later. Not now. Just later, after dinner.”

“All right.” I parked in the driveway and killed the ignition. Before getting out, I leaned over and kissed Sasha, tipping her face up to meet mine. Her tension faded, and she melted against me. “How’s enchiladas verde sound?”

“Mm. Sounds good to me. I’d eat anything you made.”

When I slipped my key in the lock and twisted, it slid effortlessly to the side, silent. Had I left my door unlocked all day? My brows bunched together, and I locked it, testing the key. Unlocked it again, the lock mechanism clicked.

“What?”

Quietly, I withdrew the key and shoved the ring in my pocket. “Go back to the car.”

“What? Why?”

“I think someone went inside my place.”

“Doesn’t your brother come over to walk the dogs?”

Intuition tingled down my spine. I shook my head. “No. Samuel knows better than to leave doors unlocked. And he texts me, ’cause he always borrows something.” He always sent me a text message, letting me know if Rambo and Ripley had been good, because the kid took a lot of pleasure in helping me out with the two fosters. He’d been trying to convince our parents to let him adopt a dog from the shelter ever since I’d brought the two home.

“Then if someone is in your place, I think I should definitely be staying with you and not cowering in the car like a little girl.” Her tone was even and calm, the voice of reason penetrating the machismo demanding to take charge.

I gritted my teeth. “Fine.”

Keeping Sasha behind me, I touched the Smith & Wesson beneath my jacket. Cold metal met my fingers. Drawing it with one hand, I pushed the door open with the other and moved inside. To my left, the open living room appeared untouched, expensive equipment, television, and video game systems where I left it. Ripley and Rambo were standing with their bodies stiff inside their crates. Ripley growled.

The hairs on the nape of my neck rose. Sasha moved behind me, breath a whisper in my ear.

“Someone’s here. A couple someones.”

“Yeah.” Intuition was a hell of a thing. The thing about being in the Marines is that, whether you had a job behind a computer or joined the special forces, the first and foremost thing we learned was how to kill and how to be damned comfortable doing it. No one enjoyed taking a life—at least, few people ever owned up to it—but we all had the balls to do what was necessary to protect ourselves and our squadmates.

Years of training flooded back to me. I moved forward past the living room after a glance at every corner and the blind spots. No one there. Dogs would have barked if someone was. Sasha moved with me, never in my way even when I swung to the left or right and swept the room.

There were at least five other rooms to hide in my house, including the upstairs bed and bath. Finally, I raised my voice. “If you’re here, you better haul ass out of my place before I give you a reason to regret it.”

Turning a corner into the kitchen brought me face to face with an armed intruder. We both leveled our handguns at each other, but after a moment of eye contact, the asshole shifted his a few inches to the left.

“Drop the gun, or your chick dies. I got her square in my sights, homie, and at this distance, I ain’t missin’.”

“Or maybe I’ll shoot you first. Whatever you came to get, is it worth dying for, kid?”

A creak on the floorboard behind me alerted me seconds too late to what I knew was coming, but couldn’t prevent. I knew every sound in my house, every loose board I’d intended to fix, every groan and moan of a loose rail.

The second spoke up. “You ready to die with him, old man?” His gun clicked.

Fuck. Two against one. Masculinity and years of training told me I could still take both of them with the element of surprise—but with an unarmed girlfriend in the room, I couldn’t risk her life, too. Not with these odds. While I loathed to do it, I crouched down and set the gun on the floor.

“Good. Don’t need you playing hero.” The second thug kicked the gun aside and joined his cohort in the kitchen. From the corner of my eye, I saw the weapon strike one leg of the dining table. Sasha shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and her posture changed.

Assessing the lay of the kitchen and positions of the two gunmen, I curved an arm around her waist and guided her behind me, turning my body to place her between me and the sliding doors. The glass doors, maybe they’d shatter in a gunfight. Maybe she’d be able to escape.

Maybe it was foolish to keep a werelioness behind me, like she needed my protecting or saving, but something about leaving her exposed and out in the open rebelled against my sense of decency. Knowledge of the beast she could become warred against my perception of the very feminine and slender woman at my rear. One of her arms had encircled my waist, her palm against my chest. She curled her fingers into my T-shirt. A warning.

Sasha wasn’t a fragile damsel in distress needing me to rescue her.

It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter if it was Sasha, Samuel, or one of the guys on my crew, I’d put myself between anyone and a bullet because it was just the way I was raised.

“Look, if it’s money you want, we can do that. I have three hundred dollars in my wallet and an assload of cards, man. Take all of it.”

One of them laughed. He looked young, eighteen or nineteen with a buzzed head and tattoos crawling up his neck. A sleeve on his right arm displayed a pair of crossed Mexican cavalry blades. Shit. Gangbangers.

“We’re not here for money. We came for this blue-eyed bitch. Move out the way and we won’t fuck you up, too, Castillo.”

“What? You’re here for her?” And they knew my name. The chilling realization turned my body to ice.

The thug tightened his grip on the gun. “Get over here, bitch. You gotta make amends for what you did to my homie, David, and his boys. Lost us a lot of cash.”

I stared at them. “What the hell are you on about, man?”

“A bunch of sleazebag assholes who were drugging girls and videotaping their abuse,” Sasha said in a low voice. “They picked the wrong target when they nabbed me.”

Tension burned in my muscles and tingled beneath the skin, raising the hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck. Hell if I knew what kind of mess Sasha had gotten into, but I wasn’t moving. Two tours in Iraq had introduced me to the faces of killers, and these two guys had the eyes of stone-cold murderers. It didn’t matter that she was a woman.

It didn’t matter that she’d burst out of her clothes and become a sleek killing machine the moment they touched her. Lions weren’t impervious to gunshots. A coat of fur wouldn’t make her bulletproof. It’d still punch a hole in her, and one lucky hit was all it would take.

A third voice spoke up behind us. “Yo. Hurry this up.”

Sasha tapped her fingers twice over my heart. Two more men. The odds of us escaping the situation changed from slightly improbable to almost impossible.

“Not gonna ask again.” The first man aimed his gun slightly to the left and fired. The round tore through my fridge, punching a hole in the stainless steel.

“The next one goes through your head, man. Or maybe I’ll tag your bitch first in the leg. She doesn’t need them for what we’ve got in mind.”

“All this fucking playing around. Just grab her—”

One of the new arrivals barreled forward and shoved me aside. I resisted it, twisting my body with the momentum of his charge. His fingers closed around Sasha’s wrist. My arm swung up and delivered a chop against his nape, all reflexes and muscle memory taking over.

The first shot hit me in the shoulder, a sharp in and out lance burning through me and splashing blood against the glass door.

“Esteban!”

A bone-deep ache began in the core of my arms and legs, and fire raced down my spine. It happened in the course of a few seconds, but it felt like hours, infinite agony dragging me into a white-hot abyss. The loose T-shirt I’d worn stretched taut across my torso and split at the same time my jeans burst at the seams. There were shreds of denim and cotton everywhere, my shoes obliterated, my senses overwhelmed. The light shone too bright, the air too thick with the smell of cheap cologne, marijuana, and the sour odor of fear permeating the air.

Because they were afraid. Because they were growing all the more terrified.

Instincts took the place of reason. When I charged forward to disarm the thug holding the gun on us, another poorly aimed shot whistled past my ear. Shattered the glass.

Anger. Fury. I had to protect Sasha. Mine.

The thug screamed, no match for the grip I took of his wrist. The next shot went wide. There was blood in my mouth, bone smashing, sinew tearing. Cloth ripped under my fingers. Fingers? Not fingers now. They were paws tipped with claws sharper than fish hooks, easily rending flesh and ripping through muscle. Blood welled up beneath them.

One was getting away. Prey. Fast prey on two legs dashing toward an open door. Seconds from fresh air and a shaded yard where I wanted to be. Sunlight and trimmed grass. Leaves. Birds. Neighborhood scents washed over me, the wind carrying the smoke of hickory from a winter cookout.

Sharp pain exploded in my foreleg. I ignored it, eager to catch prey. I overtook him in two bounds and pinned him to the cold floor. Tore his shoulder, severed a limb. Ripped him into shrieking, terrified pieces that couldn’t cause more harm. Relief fell over me when the screaming ended. It had hurt my ears, their shrieks high-pitched and desperate. But that didn’t matter, because I’d won and protected my woman. I’d shown her I was the strongest, the meanest, and the biggest. Shown her I was worthy.

Whirling, I turned to face my mate. A pair of big blue eyes stared at me from the kitchen entrance, and all I could hope was that I’d made her proud.

---

Why couldn’t they have come for me when no one else was around, especially Esteban? I’d had a feeling my snooping around would anger someone, but I didn’t expect them to send hired thugs with Esteban present.

How could I indicate to him it was okay? That I wanted this and needed to go with them to find out what the hell was going on? As a trained operative, half of my life had been dedicated to espionage and covert infiltration.

Four of them. The reflection in the sliding doors showed two men at the front door. The odds weren’t great, even for me.

“All this fucking playing around. Just grab her—”

A big guy with a shaved head came up from behind and grabbed me by the wrist. His sweaty, meaty palms clamped a bruising grip, but before I even had the chance to pull away, Esteban turned and struck.

A shot fired, and the metallic tang of blood filled the air.

“Esteban!”

It happened too fast for me to do anything about it. One moment, Esteban had been standing in front of me playing the part of the unnecessary hero, and in the next, he was shifting and contorting into something else. One second, two at the max, and then there were pieces of clothing falling around us like confetti, and the biggest, angriest lion I’d ever seen lunged at our assailants. No. He didn’t lunge; he became golden lightning, preternatural speed launching several hundred pounds of muscular male lion at a skinny gangbanger I could have snapped in half over my knee. This guy didn’t have a chance.

“Esteban, no!”

Only it was too late and the young man was already dead. He twitched against the ground.

Of the remaining two, one bolted for the door and the other fired panicked shots at my lion. A round clipped his muscled foreleg and exited without striking the bone, but the other shots went wide. The side of my hand struck one thug’s wrist and swept his arm to the side. The bullet meant for Esteban broke a lamp instead. Glass shattered.

I spun, twisting my body into roundhouse kick that snapped the man’s head to the side. He staggered against the island counter, drooling blood on the pale marble surface. Springing forward, I brought an elbow down into the spot between his neck and shoulders. His chin bounced off the counter, and then he slumped to the ground.

Esteban caught the runner at the door and trampled him on the threshold beneath hundreds of pounds of muscle.

The last guy, the stocky bald one Esteban had dropped before his shift, groaned from the floor. He’d been injured but not knocked unconscious apparently. I stomped him in the balls with my medical clogs before crouching and cracking his head against the tiled floor.

Esteban’s rumbling growls reverberated throughout the house and echoed from the entrance hall. The first guy he’d mauled was in pieces nearby, not much more than shredded torso and a few dismembered limbs.

I turned the corner from the kitchen and stepped into the entrance to find him rising from his kill with blood on his paws and mouth, bits of flesh in his mane.

God, he was so handsome. At first, all I could do was marvel over the beauty of him and admire the thickness of his mane, all jet black and thick around his shoulders and neck. Eyes like burning amber studied me in return.

My senses returned, and fury flushed through me. I wanted to shove him. I wanted to walk away. Because in all this time we’d been dating, he had every opportunity, even after I’d shared my secret, to confess he was also a shifter. How the hell hadn’t we noticed he was one of us? “Why didn’t you tell me you were a shifter?”

He didn’t reply.

“Esteban?”

He licked his mouth, silent. No comprehension shone in his eyes.

“Oh no. Oh no, no, no.”

My boyfriend licked blood from his paws and stretched across the floor on his belly. He eyed the corpse in disdain, staring down his long nose at it for a while before he returned his attention to me.

“Esteban, please, return to your human body and answer me.”

He yawned.

This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

Refusing to let down my guard just yet, I peeked outside and saw the same black Escalade I’d noticed earlier parked in the drive behind Esteban’s Lexus. Thankfully, the house was set far enough back no one would notice the extra car, but I wasn’t so sure about the bloody body on his stoop. If his mom dropped by, we would be in deep shit.

Scratch that. His brother was more likely to pop by than his mother since they’d had their argument.

Only one number came to mind for an emergency like this. I whipped out my phone and hit the callback button. “Ian, we have a big problem.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“Um, you know that guy we’re all dating?”

“Yeah? Esteban.”

“Well…” Esteban nuzzled his enormous head against my chest and rumbled an intimidating, torso-vibrating noise.

“Sasha? What the hell was that?”

If I’d wanted to conceal the truth from him, I couldn’t have even claimed it was Nandi or Isisa. This sound was deep and masculine, a throaty growl that ran shivers of delight down my spine. “It was Esteban. Ian, something is wrong. Four guys attacked us and tried to take me, and when they turned violent, Esteban transformed.”

“Huh.”

I tried to push Esteban away while I was on the phone, but a mournful look came to his face as if I’d wounded him to his soul.

“Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction. I think this was a first for him.”

“How’s he handling it?”

“That’s where the problem is. He hasn’t shifted back. I’m not sure he knows how, and I’m worried he might be lost to his animal side.”

“Any injuries?”

“He took two gunshot wounds, but it’s all soft tissue. Neither seems to be bothering him.”

“Shifter regeneration will take care of that.”

Esteban slumped beside me and threw his body across my lap. Between that massive black mane and his bulky frame, he covered everything from my upper thighs to my ankles.

After I gave him the address, Ian promised to arrive within the hour with backup. I just had to sit tight and keep my lion here.

I ended the call and wiggled the phone back into my pocket without standing, since Esteban had decided it was prime time for cuddling.

Despite the transition, he still smelled like Esteban, although the human scents I associated with the human man were an undertone beneath the musky scent of feline.

“You big, crazy lug. How did you manage to keep this secret, huh?”

He rumbled again and settled his head down, eyes closing. It figured he’d choose now for a nap, keeping me stuck beneath him. Instead of getting to clean up, I remained his unwitting prisoner.

An hour later, the familiar sound of Ian’s Tahoe pulled into the drive. Esteban raised his sleepy head and peered toward the door. He snorted. I knew what he smelled, because I was also breathing in the scent of Juni and Nadir. Rabbit and golden jackal. Bald eagle, and the musky smell of feathers joined them as the cool breeze swept their individual aromas inside through the open living room window.

“It’s open,” I called out before anyone had the chance to knock.

“Safe to come in?”

“Yeah.” My gaze dropped to Esteban, and I ruffled his mane. “Be nice, okay?”

For their sake, I exuded nothing but calm and reassurance, giving Esteban no reason to think the three were a threat.

Ian stepped inside first and blinked a few times. Neither Nadir nor Juni moved from the doorway, frozen in place as any wild animals would be in the presence of a massive predator like Esteban. Only Ian snapped out of it, and then he stepped forward with measured and slow steps, approaching a beast capable of crushing his human or animal counterpart into jelly.

“I’m not interested in your woman, big fella. And neither is Nadir. We came to give you a hand. You remember meeting me, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I replied.

Ian nodded to the mauled gangbanger by the door. “And he did that?”

“And another in the kitchen. I killed one, and a fourth might still be alive. Not sure how hard I bounced his head against the kitchen floor, so no promises.”

“Damn. You two don’t do anything half-assed I see.” He rubbed his face then pulled his government issued, encrypted phone from his pocket. After a glance at the screen, he shoved it away again. “There’s some people on the way to handle this.”

“His family lives nearby. I mean, like, all of them. We need to be discreet.

Ian’s reassuring smile eased the worry churning in my gut. “They’ll be in and out. They’re real professionals about this kind of thing, accustomed to cleaning up supernatural messes.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

It took Ian and me both to coax Esteban outside to the rear hatch of Ian’s SUV. When I jumped into the back of the open hatch, Esteban hung back a step and eyed the dark interior. “Come on, big boy. Come on. You won’t leave me to sit back here alone, will you?”

Encouraging Esteban to join me in the back of the SUV, I ran my fingers through his dark mane and beckoned him again. He tilted his head into the touch and closed his eyes while tickling his whiskers against my fingertips. After doing this a second time, Esteban caught the hint and leapt into the rear. Nadir shut the door behind us.

“Can one of you walk his dogs and feed them before we go? They’ve been caged for hours.” I’d have Isisa and Nandi come to get the pups later.

Juni nodded and turned back toward the house. “No problem.”

Nadir climbed into the rear, close enough to be supportive but still absolutely useless if Esteban decided to exert some muscle. My beastly beau eyed his friend, started to move, then the tension drained from him and he flopped bonelessly against me again. An ounce of recognition shone in his brown eyes.

Nadir had passed the test.

“That’s right,” I whispered, hugging him around the thick neck. “Nadir is a friend. You’ve known Nadir longer than me, and he won’t hurt you or me. Isn’t that right, Nadir?”

“Nothing could make me lift a hand against either of you.”

Within twenty minutes, we were ready to go. A van marked with a local exterminator company pulled up by the garage. Ian spoke with them a few minutes before returning to his vehicle and climbing behind the steering wheel.

“They’ll take the perps’ vehicle back when they leave, and we’ll give it a thorough search. I’ve already got someone tracking the plate numbers.”

“I didn’t get a chance to mention it on the phone but, uh, they were here about that whole fiasco I went through with those porno freaks.”

Ian twisted around and stared at me. “Right. We’ll talk about this when we get him somewhere out of sight. And safe.”

Juni slid into the car again, carrying the scent of the dogs on her jeans. “All fed and cared for. Cute dogs. So, have you ever heard of anyone getting stuck in a shift?”

Nadir shook his head. “Never.”

Ignoring the human blood in his fur, I kissed Esteban’s nose. He stretched out his powerful limbs and relaxed again. “It’s more than that. It’s like… he doesn’t realize he’s human.”

“I dunno, he seems to remember you at least.”

“I’m not sure if it’s me he remembers or he just smells that I’m a female of his kind.”

Esteban tickled my lap again and rubbed his face against my breasts, eyes closed in euphoric feline bliss.

Ian grinned. “Maybe a mix of both. He knows he has it good right now. A woman’s lap and some boob nuzzles? That’s heaven.”

I scowled at him but ultimately submitted to exactly that, my ferocious and fuzzy mate falling in love with my tits for the remainder of an hour-long drive to Quickdraw.

---

Ian’s place made the ideal safe haven for Esteban since we’d moved him from home. Sophia and Leigh were upstairs under strict orders not to come down for any reason while Esteban was on the loose, even though Sophia wanted desperately to see a male lion.

We promised she could have one look at him through the window as we led him from the SUV and into the backyard. Esteban seemed content to hang out there on the grass. Even with a slight chill in the air, the November sun shone with mild warmth. He flopped down on the patio and stretched.

Ian crossed his arms over his chest and studied the sprawling lion through the open sliding glass door. “Did you have any idea?”

“No. None.” I peered back into the yard. “I mean, in hindsight, it makes a really weird sort of sense, but, no. No, I had no idea he was a shifter. And I don’t think he did either. At all.”

“It happens sometimes.” Ian rubbed his nape. “It’s rare, hell, I’d say you have a better chance of winning the Texas Powerball than a shifter does of having a child that can’t shift. But it happens. Sometimes they repress it altogether and don’t want any part in it. Or they’re adopted. There was a term used among my grandfather’s people. They were called Lost Souls. Shifter children who aren’t acquainted with their shifter halves because they’ve been taken from their tribes too early to remember who they are. They’re raised in non-shifter homes and eventually forget what they can do. They lose themselves and who they truly are. If Esteban had no one around to tell him what he was and teach him, the ability could easily remain dormant until the right stressor provoked the change.”

“You’ve seen it before?”

“Once, a long time ago. It was a hazing gone wrong. I didn’t arrive in time to stop it, but I saw how it ended. The kid was fresh outta boot camp, and as they were beating on him, he shifted into a falcon. He tore the lead aggressor a new one, and the guy needed about twenty stitches by the time it was over, most of them to the face and ears.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, it was something to see. Then he flopped around on the ground, since he had no idea how to fly.”

“What’d you do?”

“Only thing I could think of at the time during all the confusion.” He chuckled. “I shifted, too, and gave him some flying lessons. Eventually his senses returned, and he was able to shift back. That was a long night of drinks and talk, let me tell you. Probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, and after my CO finished tearing into me, I learned the proper protocol for handling spontaneous shifts in public.”

Shifters almost always recognized shifters. Regardless of the inner beast inside us, we had a knack for picking our own kind out of a crowd, even if we couldn’t identify the species. The military liked to sort us out early, often before we completed our physicals. Give us shifter commanding officers.

I imagined a much younger Ian—not a strand of white yet amidst his black hair—deferring to a pissed-off officer for his stunt. “What was that guy’s story. Was he one of the lost ones?”

“Yeah. He was adopted, but he knew about it. I’m all for adoption when it’s done responsibly, but when a shifter mother relinquishes her rights without notifying the proper people, lives are at stake. It’s different when you’re raised in the lifestyle and taught to shake off the animal instinct. We’ve had all our lives—entire childhoods—to grow accustomed to quelling the inner beast inside of us.”

“What about Esteban? None of us recognized him.”

“A true rarity. Have you met his family yet?” Ian asked.

“No, but I’ve never smelled anything but human on him.”

“Then the best we can do is ask him when he comes to his senses.” Ian sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Now what? What’s going to happen with those four guys?”

“Taken care of. The great thing about working for the government is making problems like this disappear on a whim. His place will be good as new. As for the dead guys, we’ll fabricate an accident and have the bodies turn up in a few days.”

Ian could be so cool and collected when discussing these matters. And right now, I couldn’t afford to do anything but mirror him while Esteban was counting on me.

“Sasha?” Nadir’s voice echoed across the yard with a note of sharp concern.

“What?”

“I think you better get over here. Quick.”

Esteban had been asleep a moment ago, peacefully sprawled in a patch of sunlight, but since our discussion began, the lion had awakened again and shambled to his feet. His body tensed with the posture of a predator stalking its prey, and when I followed his line of sight, I saw the creature in the distance. A rabbit.

Ian’s privacy fence made a tight perimeter around the entire house, eight feet of solid wood boards with a lattice design adding another twelve inches to the top. Unaware of the beast lurking nearby, the rabbit nibbled on a plant in Leigh’s vegetable garden.

“Oh no,” I breathed.

Demonstrating the terrifying speed he’d displayed at his home, Esteban exploded forward. The rabbit dropped its lettuce leaf and bolted toward the fence line where it wiggled beneath it and disappeared.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Ian said. “He can’t jump that high, can he?”

Over the years of our service together in the group, we’d all seen each other naked so many times we didn’t even keep count anymore. Modesty be damned, I yanked my shirt over my head and shoved my jeans down. “Doesn’t need to!”

Ian took my cue and began undressing as well. Before he could shed his clothes, Esteban leapt onto the tree trunk beside the fence and scaled it in two powerful bursts. He jumped over the fence and the chase resumed beyond our eyesight.

I sprang forward and followed his path, bounding off the tree and over the fence in time to see Esteban’s tawny ass disappearing into the bush. Damn, he was fast. A normal male lion wouldn’t have a chance against a rabbit, but we weren’t normal. Shifter genes made us the ideal example of our species, faster, stronger, and more resilient. A typical lion wasn’t good for much but short sprints. Bursts of speed. They weren’t built for prolonged chases.

But we weren’t typical lions. If he had as much stamina now as he did in bed with me, this was going to be one hell of a chase.

I hadn’t run like this in a long time, not since I’d last gone on a deer hunt with Nandi and Isisa out in these same woods. My paws kicked up fallen leaves and forest debris as we tore ass across the forest. Ian soared above us and kept pace.

God. How was he as good a hunter now in his lion form as he’d been as a man? Esteban rounded a corner, resembling a cheetah more than the enormous beast he was, and finally cornered his prey. One snap ended the rabbit’s life, and then he laid on the ground to devour it, tearing off fur and swallowing meat.

Chest heaving, I slowed down and approached with cautious steps, respecting his boundaries as I would any male of my species in the wild. He was Esteban, but he wasn’t at the same time, unaware of himself. Another step, a pause when he glanced up at me with big brown eyes set in the most handsome feline face.

I’m not going to take it from you, I thought, with all of my human awareness. Could he sense it and realize I’d never hurt him—never threaten him?

Esteban stood and grabbed the rabbit. He dropped it at my feet instead, appearing every bit the proud and mighty hunter, a reversal of the roles we’d have if we were wild lions roaming the savannahs of Africa.

He nuzzled my face and neck before dropping his haunches to watch me. He hadn’t taken more than a bite of the tender creature. The rest was mine, a gift and token of favor as if some aspects of the human Esteban were seeping through his lion personality. I bumped my head beneath his throat and against the thick mass of ebony hair to show appreciation.

Unable to disappoint him by turning my nose up at fresh meat, I ripped away another layer of fur and tugged meat off its haunch. Esteban’s instincts had taken over, gifting him with a knack for hunting that must have translated from his fondness for it as a human.

Maybe. Only time would tell if it was a fluke.

I shared the rest with him and then herded the big lion back to Ian’s home. Nadir had waited for us in his human body to open the gate. We both strolled inside, though when Esteban tried to sprawl in the grass again, I nudged and guided until he rose to all fours.

Oh noooooo. We are going inside.

Like hell if I’d trust him again out in the grass.