After Jomo cleared their plates, they solemnly filed out of the dining room and went to their rooms to collect their weapons. Ryenne removed the watch her mother had made her and slipped it into her pocket. She didn’t want it broken in a scuffle or lost in the woods, but she might need something hidden within the wristband. She smoothed her hair back in a ponytail and she was ready.

The guards watched them exit the compound in silence.

They made it to the woods without incident and Lucien led the way to the tree.

When it was in sight, in a stray beam of moonlight slicing in at an angle from above, Lucien made a twig crack and he was whipped into the air with a cry.

“Lucien!” Ryenne called. She looked up. He was dangling in a net from branches high above. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine but I can’t reach my knife.”

Ryenne looked around and located the nearest tree to climb to reach him. She moved toward it, a large, wide tree with spreading branches.

“Ryenne! Watch out!”

Twigs cracked behind her and she whirled around, whipping the dagger from its sheath at her back and faced a massive leopard. He seemed so much larger without the bars of her window between them.

The dagger was a great weapon and felt comfortable in her hand, but it was best for close fighting and she would rather not get too close to the sharp claws and deadly fangs of this beast. Transferring it to her left hand, her right arm swung up and over her shoulder to reach the cattle prod she had attached to her back with a makeshift sling.

The leopard growled and came closer. She put her arm up and out in a placating gesture.

“Okay, kitty, kitty, whoever you are. Nothing to see here. Move on past.”

“Be careful,” Lucien called from above.

“Trying.”

She stepped back, her hands out, still clutching both weapons. She knew she wouldn’t be able to go far before hitting the trunk of the tree. She could try scrambling up the trunk, but leopards could climb trees. She didn’t think she’d get very far.

Damn beast must have set a trap for them before they could set one for him. “Clever kitty.”

He backed her against the tree and swiped a paw at her. She batted it away with the cattle prod.

Her heart pounded, the leopard too close, the bark of the tree scratching against the back of her leather jacket.

Inching around the tree, she was able to maneuver faster than the massive animal and get into the open.

With a mighty roar, the leopard leaped at her. She jabbed outward with the cattle prod but the leopard’s forward motion was too fast for her to turn on the voltage. Before she could slash at him with the dagger, he pinned her to the ground, paws on her shoulders. The force knocked the cattle prod from her grasp but she held fast to the dagger. The paw on her left shoulder slid down to her bicep so that she didn’t have enough range of motion to stab at it again. “Clever kitty,” she muttered again, this time between her teeth.

She kicked her legs, trying to build enough momentum to push the beast off her. He roared in her face and opened his great mouth, dripping saliva from his fangs, and lowered his mouth toward her throat.

Warm saliva dripped onto her skin and she turned her head away from his hot breath.

“Ryenne, no!” Lucien shouted.

She wasn’t about to let herself get eaten by a rogue. Her right hand pushed at his head to little effect, but at least he couldn’t chomp down on her. She wouldn’t be able to hold him off for long. Already, her strength was ebbing away in the struggle.

A tearing sound came from above but she couldn’t see what was happening. All of her attention was focused on keeping the leopard from biting her.

Suddenly, the leopard turned away from her and his grip on her arm loosened enough that she was able to pull her left arm away. She stabbed at his chest, but the leopard jumped off her and toward a wolf that had joined them in the woods.

She didn’t have time to wonder where in the hell a wolf came from. She scrambled to her feet and took up a defensive position.

The wolf launched itself at the leopard’s hindquarters and bit down. The leopard whined.

Ryenne was torn between staying to make sure they got the leopard and running for her own life. She didn’t think she could face down two animals at the same time, especially if they were both rogue shifters. But she also couldn’t walk away from a job.

And for now, the wolf was on her side.

She glanced up to where Lucien had been swinging in the net. A gaping hole showed that Lucien was no longer there. The net was empty and swung in a light breeze whispering through the leaves.

Her gaze cut back to the wolf, now squaring off against the leopard. The wolf was definitely on her side, taking the leopard’s attention away from her, attacking the huge feline.

Could it be?

She’d never heard of a shifter being a shifter hunter, but it didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

And if the wolf was Lucien, then she had nothing to fear unless he couldn’t control himself in his animal form.

With another growl, less fierce than earlier, the leopard backed away to a point forming a triangle with Ryenne and the wolf. Ryenne and the wolf stepped toward the leopard at the same time.

The leopard shook his head, turned, and ran off. The wolf followed for a few steps then turned and looked over his shoulder at Ryenne. He limped behind a tree and a few minutes later, Lucien stepped out.

Holy. Shit.

Lucien was a shifter.

And he was hot.

His naked body was as magnificent as she thought it would be. Not that she had ever spared a thought to Lucien’s naked form, of course.

He hung his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“No, I understand,” she answered automatically. Shifters rarely announced their nature to others, especially to people they’d only just met. But now the adrenaline was fading, a sense of betrayal took its place.

“I wanted to tell you,” he said. “Especially after what you shared at dinner tonight. But I didn’t know how you’d react and we had a job to do.”

She nodded. “I get it, Lucien.” But his words didn’t calm the sting. She’d begun to trust him, accept him, but he was a shifter. And a wolf shifter, specifically. Shifters couldn’t be trusted. They killed people. Sometimes, people she loved. “We’d better find you some clothes. I assume they got destroyed when you shifted?”

He nodded. “I didn’t have space to remove them first and couldn’t reach my knife to cut through the netting. Shifting got me out of there.”

They walked through the woods, heading to the back of the compound. With a wounded leopard shifter on the loose, they couldn’t risk Ryenne walking alone to the compound to get him clothes.

As Ryenne suspected, there was a small iron door in the back wall of the compound. It wasn’t guarded on this side. If it was guarded on the other, at least she knew for sure she’d be able to get in and she’d make up some story.

She knocked on the door and waited.

No response.

Lucien sniffed and made a distasteful expression.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I smell the leopard.”

She whipped her head around. “It’s here?”

“Not now, but it has been. Possibly even last night.”

They looked at each other, the implications of his words sinking in.

No one answered the door so Ryenne pulled her watch out of her pocket and extracted a lock pick.

Lucien looked impressed. “What else do you have in those pants?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Despite her easy banter, her general mistrust about shifters dated back to her childhood. She couldn’t turn it off in a heartbeat.

She opened the door and stepped through, looking around. They were near the living room. No one was about.

She turned to Lucien. “Anything?”

“Yes. I smell him in here, too.”

“So, he lives or works here,” she said. “He has free access to this compound.”

“Yes.”

“Well that changes everything, doesn’t it?”