Elijah’s body ached. He couldn’t remember what had happened, but it felt like he’d been hit by a truck. When he tried to raise his hand to itch his nose, he found himself restrained. He checked both arms and legs, only to find all his limbs had been tied down with something. Panic clenched his gut as some of his memories surfaced. He’d been restrained before, and that hadn’t worked out well for him or his captors. His memory might be fuzzy, but he sure as hell remembered that, or at least some of it. When he cracked his eyes open, he found a face he didn’t recognize staring down at him.

“I’m Dr. Page, but you can call me Liam. You were found unconscious by the side of the road and brought here to help you recover. Can you tell me what happened?” The man’s icy blue eyes watched him carefully.

“No, I don’t remember anything.” He kept his voice calm but could feel his heart hammering in his chest. “Why am I restrained?”

“For my protection. I don’t know what your animal is, so I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.”

“My animal?”

Liam frowned at him then, and Elijah could tell that the man wanted to say something but was holding it back. “Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

“I was out having some drinks with my coworkers. We’d won the contract we were bidding on, so we decided to celebrate.”

“I see. Did anything unusual happen?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“I see,” the doctor said again as he turned and wrote something down. He quickly pulled out his phone and tapped away at the screen, sending a message no doubt. Elijah wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew he wanted to get out of there.

“Look, I feel fine, and unless there is something wrong with me that you haven’t told me about yet, I would really like to go home.”

“You’ve been here under supervision for over twenty-four hours. I would rather not release you as soon as you wake up, especially if you are having memory issues.”

“I’m sure my memories will come back.”

A woman’s voice called from the hallway, “Can I come in?”

“Please do,” he said, and greeted the woman as she entered.

Elijah’s body roared to life at the sight of her. Thick waves of dark brown hair cascaded over her shoulders onto a soft blue sweater. Her perfectly pouting lips were a blushing pink, and her deep amber eyes stared into him as she walked forward, warming him to the tips of his toes. He wrenched his eyes away, refusing to let them travel down her body and take in the curves he had no doubt were there.

“Liam, how is our mystery man?”

“Seems just fine, aside from some memory loss.”

Her gaze sharpened on him then; he could feel it like a spotlight being focused on its subject. “You don’t remember what happened?”

“No.”

“Valentina, can I speak with you a moment?” Liam interjected before the woman could ask him any more questions.

The two stepped to the side and seemed to lower their voices to the point of silence, because he couldn’t even hear them whispering to one another. When she looked over sharply at him, he wanted to demand that they explain what was going on, and rail against them. Anger boiled in him at the thought of being under someone else’s control, being at their mercy. He swore he would never let it happen again, not after everything that had happened, and he’d be damned if he would break that promise.

His vision seemed to fade, the colors washing out to almost black and white, and something pushed against his skin, but he couldn’t see what it was.

“Liam . . .” The woman’s, Valentina, apparently, smoky voice called the man’s attention to Elijah even though he had been looking away. Now, they were both staring at him, a slow, satisfied smile growing on her face as she continued to watch him.

“A cat, great.” The doctor sighed.

“What’s going on? My vision is all blurry. What did you do to me?” His voice rose in anger.

Valentina pulled a rolling stool over to him and undid the restraints that held his wrists down so he could sit up. The small amount of relief he felt was almost enough to quell his anger.

“I have something to tell you, and you may not believe me at first, but I can prove it if you give me the chance . . .” She trailed off, waiting for some kind of reaction from him.

He gave none. Elijah had no idea what this woman wanted from him, but he wasn’t about to respond to every provocation. He had to keep his cool, maintain control.

“All right, you probably weren’t aware, but there are beings in this world who refer to themselves as shifters. They can switch between their human and their animal form at will. Forget everything you learned from the movies about them being beholden to the full moon, or being some kind of grotesque half-man, half-animal hybrid. There is simply one and then the other. Ice is not steam, and steam is not ice, although they are made of the same substance.”

A laugh began to bubble up inside of him at the idea of people who could also be animals. Had he been kidnapped by a bunch of crazy people?

Before the laugh could escape, she added, “Would you like me to prove it to you?”

Something about her calm confidence, how in control and in charge she was, grated against his skin.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes. You don’t believe me right now, but I’m a jaguar shifter. In a moment, I will change into my animal. She has had a nice long run and is feeling docile, but I would prefer for you not to agitate her, if possible. She may sniff you, possibly lick you even, but she won’t be violent unless you are violent first. I retain some control, but if you make her angry enough, she will shut me out, so please try to remain calm.”

Elijah just gaped at her as she got up from her stool and turned away from him. Valentina pulled off the blue sweater that had made her look so touchable a moment before, revealing the olive-green spaghetti strap dress she had on underneath. Up to that point, he hadn’t even noticed she was wearing a dress, something he was actually proud of, but now it was all he could see. The way the stretchy fabric looked so comfortable to the touch and hugged every curve. The last thing he’d expected was for her to strip down completely, but that was what she did. The dress puddled on the floor around her ankles, displaying her tawny skin like a piece of art.

Before he could even take in the fact that she was removing her panties, her skin rippled, and suddenly, in a blur too fast for his eyes to track, she changed, her skin seeming to flake away from her, leaving something else behind. A large jaguar sat before him for a moment before shaking its pelt. The tan color shifted back and forth, moving the black rosettes so it almost distorted the color.

Liam sat on the floor in front of the big cat with his arms spread wide. The big cat padded over to the doctor and bumped its head into his, rubbing the fur just above its eyebrow along his jaw. The low almost-coughing noise coming from it was enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck, but when it turned into a low clicking sound, it reminded him of a cat purring. It took a couple big breaths, huffing them out, before it padded over toward him.

He froze. The cat’s yellow and gold eyes watched him with an uncomfortable intensity. Its mouth opened to reveal long white canines. It also made the growling noise louder, and when he flinched slightly, the thing hissed at him.

“Valentina, be nice to our guest,” Liam said quietly.

The cat turned and hissed at him before padding even closer to Elijah. It sniffed his foot, which was strapped down, so he couldn’t retract it, and then it sniffed his other foot before moving up his thigh to his hand. All he could do was sit there frozen and mentally will the cat not to eat him.

Just as suddenly as the cat had appeared, Valentina was there again, turning away from him and dressing quickly. When she turned to face him once more, he couldn’t look at her. It had to be a trick, right? Like a laser show or a hologram where they made dead musical artists perform again. Just smoke and lights.

“Do you believe?” Her smoky voice was even lower than it had been the first time, still feminine, but deep, like the jaguar’s growl.

“What—what was that? What are you?” He hated the weakness in his tone, but he’d theoretically just seen a woman change into a cat and back again.

“I think the question you should be asking is what are you?”

His mind went blank, as if she’d put up a brick wall and he could no longer follow.

“Haven’t you wondered why you are here and not in a hospital? A moment ago, your vision changed. It became a little blurry with the colors washed out, right? That’s because your shift started, but you wouldn’t let go, so it didn’t complete. I can make you shift if I need to, but you should do it yourself. It would be better that way.”

The phrasing she used brought a memory screaming to the surface of his mind.

“I’ll make you shift,” the man said to him after he’d been attacked by that black panther, although attacked was the wrong word. He had been put in a cage with the angry animal with nowhere to go and no way to defend himself.

Everything around him went blurry as the memory of what had happened suddenly rose up and overwhelmed him. He could do nothing to stop himself from reliving it as it played over his mind’s eye.

Elijah had been enjoying some drinks with friends, when the next thing he knew, the room went out of focus, and as he left to get some air, a pair of arms wrapped around him. A woman’s voice had whispered in his ear, “Don’t worry, you’re just having a bad reaction to the drug.”

He tried to ask her what she was talking about, but he couldn’t seem to get his mouth to work, and all that came out was an incoherent grunt. Nothing else seemed to make it through his swollen and slightly numb tongue.

“Now, let’s get you into this van, and we’ll get you taken care of, okay?”

His limbs were so heavy that he didn’t really have a choice, and when they gave him a hard push, he fell face first onto the hard metal and plastic floor of a delivery van. The sliding door closed behind him with a whoosh and a bang. The whole world seemed to be spinning, and as the van lurched forward, he had to close his eyes or risk vomiting everywhere.

It turned out closing his eyes had been a mistake, though, as he promptly passed out. The next thing he knew, he was being woken up with a bucket of ice-cold water thrown over his face. His body still didn’t completely function, but sensations were slowly returning as he was dragged half naked through a hallway into what looked like an old abandoned warehouse or storage room of some kind.

In the center was a large cage. Bars as thick as his forearm surrounded an area about half the size of a basketball court. There was something large and lethal moving around behind a curtain on the other side of the cage. Something he didn’t want to encounter, but had the sinking sensation he would.

“In we go,” the woman’s voice said again as she and a man pushed him into the cage.

Without their help, he couldn’t stand up and collapsed onto the ground. A low growl sounded from behind the curtain.

“How are you feeling?” a man asked as he approached the edge of the cage in a white lab coat with clipboard in hand. He had a slight accent, something European.

“What the hell did you do to me?” Elijah’s voice was hoarse and slurred, as though he had downed a whole bottle of bourbon instead of one glass.

“Well, that is a little complicated, and I’m afraid in your current state of mind, you will neither understand nor remember this conversation. So, if you can just tell me what you are experiencing right now, that would be wonderful.”

“Screw you.”

“Anger, that’s good. Do you have sensation in your legs yet?” When he received no response, the man turned and addressed the couple who had carried Elijah into the room. “I understand he had an adverse reaction to the drug?”

“We couldn’t even get him out of the bar before he lost control,” the man said.

“Also, he was unconscious for longer than normal,” the woman helpfully chimed in.

“I see. It will be interesting to see how he reacts to the bite. I have a theory that the stronger the reaction, the weaker the animal produced will be, so this will give me another data point to use.” The doctor seemed to be talking more to himself at the end than to anyone else.

Elijah felt as though he was in a teaching hospital and the doctors were discussing his condition as though he weren’t even a real person. He heard movement behind him, but didn’t want to, no, didn’t have the energy to turn around. He was stuck in some kind of nightmare, and all he wanted was to wake up.

Something cold and hard landed on the underside of his foot, and he instinctively yanked his leg underneath him, trying to protect the sensitive skin.

“Feeling has returned to his feet,” the doctor was saying, and when the large metal rod came into view, it was swinging toward him through the bars of the cage, and judging from the trajectory, it would smack him in the head if he didn’t stop it.

His hand moved, batting it out of the way, not quite dexterous enough to grab it like he wanted to.

“Movement has returned to his arms,” the man continued. “Please stand.”

Elijah didn’t move. He’d be damned if he’d give them what they wanted. His fury was rising, and that wasn’t good for anyone. If he could get close enough to one of them, he might be able to use them as a human shield, force the doctor to release him.

The next thing he knew, a searing pain flew through his whole body, making every muscle go rigid. He couldn’t focus on anything, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. His world dissolved around him to the pinpoints of pain that existed for him.