Valentina’s head pounded as her jaguar clawed at her skin, desperate to come out. She hadn’t shifted in over a month. Her cat wasn’t used to going so long without a run and was now throwing a hissy fit about it inside her skin.

The gentle rev of the engine refocused her senses as she drove out of the city toward Woodhaven, the estate the pack owned. Not only did they own the one hundred acres that the sprawling mansion sat on, but the surrounding parcels of land as well, giving their animals plenty of room to roam, which was exactly what she needed. She could already visualize the path she knew her cat liked to take, wooded with lots of trees to climb and a stream where she would stop and relax.

An accident had diverted her from her normal route home, adding an extra half hour to her journey just to get through all the diverted traffic, but it wouldn’t be Chicago without a car accident and traffic.

She sighed, thankful that she was at least on the country road that would take her to the long private driveway she craved so much. Her lights flashed over something on the edge of the road. Skin, and lots of it. She could have just swerved around it, but the shape of it made her stomach clench.

Valentina slowed and moved her car to the side of the road, pausing before she reversed along the curb to the person sprawled out on the grass, silently cursing herself the whole time. Woodhaven was only a couple miles away. Why couldn’t this person have been after her turning? She had just passed the horse farm and briefly wondered if the person had been thrown from a horse. That wouldn’t explain the nakedness, though.

She pressed the button with the dual red triangles to turn her hazard lights on and got out of the car. It was late enough that the road was quiet, and with cornfields on one side and a few homes scattered here and there on the other, it wasn’t one of the major roads to begin with.

The grass was still wet from the evening’s rain as she navigated the soggy ground as best she could in her heels. The wind brought the smell of the horses to her, along with the clean scent of the rain as she hobbled around the wet ground. Finally, the person came into view. A lean, muscular back topped off with wide shoulders was what she kept her eyes on as she tried not to notice the firm, round behind the man had.

She crouched next to him and listened for a pulse; her cat’s hearing was strong enough that even in human form, she should have been able to pick it up, but there was just the ambient noise of the bugs in the surrounding vegetation and her own pulse thundering in her ears. She really hoped it wasn’t a dead body. As she took a deep breath, she extended her hand and connected with his skin. A steady but light thump, thump greeted the pressure of her fingers on his neck, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Thank the elders he wasn’t dead. Moving humans when they were injured was tricky, and she knew there was a possibility of doing more harm than good depending on how he was injured, but she didn’t have another choice.

Gently, she rolled him over onto his back, careful to keep his groin out of her visual range so she could give the man some privacy. The scent that wafted up from the ground as she disturbed him was most definitely not human, though. The woodsy, earthy smell of the horses was so pungent, she must have missed it at first. Now, she was left with a choice, either call in a cleaner and wait for them to show up, which would probably be over an hour given the traffic she had just driven through, or take him back to Woodhaven.

Sitting on the side of the road for an hour was a luxury her jaguar wasn’t going to give her. Its claws scraped along the skin of her fingers, and she had to focus to prevent her fingernails from shifting. Once her cat had eased off, she lifted the man into a fireman’s carry and eased him into the back seat of the car. She had been lucky that no one had driven by, and she wanted to get out of there before her luck ran out.

The driveway for Woodhaven was long and winding, and if the driver wasn’t careful, or was going too fast, it was easy to spin out into one of the trees that lined the paved area. She pulled through the archway into the area lined with what looked like barn doors but were actually garage doors. She pressed a button to open hers, and as she parked the car, she dialed Liam’s number, hoping their resident doctor was home.

“Alpha,” his low voice greeted her over the phone.

“Are you home?” she asked, knowing her tone sounded urgent and would set the man on edge.

“Yes.”

“Meet me in medical.”

“On my way.”

The brief exchange was all she needed to make sure that someone else was there to help her when she brought the stranger into the house. Hauling him out of the car was more challenging than getting him into it, but eventually she had his limp form over her shoulder once more and began to make her way to their medical bay.

She passed through the back door of the garage into the hallway toward the house before turning right, only to find Liam waiting for her. As he took in the sight she presented him with, his eyes questioned her own as his eyebrows raised ever higher toward his dirty blond hair.

“And who is this?”

“No idea. He was unconscious on the side of the road a couple miles away.”

“Put him over there,” Liam said as he threw on a surgery gown and snapped gloves into place. He was a skilled surgeon and didn’t mind getting his hands dirty in his line of work, but outside the operating room, he was a fastidious man, so it didn’t surprise her one bit that he had covered up before greeting his patient. “You need to run,” he said as he came back over. “I can feel your cat straining against you. Go. I’ll secure him before I begin my examination.”

“Are you sure?”

He simply nodded.

When she didn’t immediately turn away, he carefully added, “Take care of yourself, Alpha, or you won’t be able to care for your pack.”

“Thank you,” she said with a sigh, and sprinted out of the room.

She was in one of the bathrooms in the pool house before she knew it and was quickly pulling her clothes off as fast as she could. Shifting wasn’t what Hollywood made it out to be in their fantasy or horror movies. There was no pain, no skin tearing or teeth falling out, no clothes shredding, just one form taking over the other, like coming up to the surface of a pool to breathe. She could have kept her clothing on and shifted that way; it was what she normally did, and maybe if she hadn’t waited so long, she could have. The problem was for her, the longer she waited to shift, the more abrupt the shift became, and since she had waited over a month, she knew if she shifted with her clothes on, she wouldn’t be able to retain enough control to keep them on, and they would simply get destroyed in the process.

Once her jaguar was free of the constraints of her human form, she let loose an almighty roar that shook the walls around her. Her cat stood and shook her dappled coat as she flexed her claws and stretched her back before darting out across the patio and into the woods.

Valentina gave up control and relaxed, letting her conscious mind retreat and the cat have full control. As her animal’s stride ate up the ground, she saw the sun setting behind the trees. Even though her cat’s vision was mostly black and white, she knew the sky would be filled with warm tones, coating everything in gold. Her last thought before she let her human mind completely fade out was about the man she had found. Who was he, and what had he been doing that wound up with him naked and unconscious on the side of the road?