by Nalini Singh
“Dorian?” Lucas landed on the forest floor in a smooth crouch, having jumped down from the aerie. He was dressed in jeans and a faded blue T-shirt, his feet bare.
Dorian shifted out of the trees. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Since when do you lurk?” His alpha walked over. “Come on up. Sascha’s mak—” Lucas froze, his eyes turning panther in the space of a single heartbeat. Then he moved with alpha speed to capture Dorian’s face between his hands.
Dorian felt his own leopard rise to the surface in response, knew his eyes were changing, his claws releasing. But the leopard stopped there, as if aware they both needed to be in this instant. The animal was as nervous as the man, though Dorian knew full well there was no cause for it—still, he felt like a cub for some reason . . . and then he knew why. This was the first time his leopard had come into direct contact with his alpha.
“Something?” Lucas said, his lips starting to curve. “You describe this as something?”
Dorian shrugged a little sheepishly. “I didn’t know how to say it.”
Laughing, Lucas wrapped his arms around his neck and hauled him close. Dorian went, returning the hug as fiercely as it was given. When he felt wet against his neck, he realized his alpha—his friend—was crying for joy for him. And damn, fuck, he was crying, too.
Drawing back, Lucas grabbed his face in his hands again, kissed him. It was hard, fleeting, and it held the power of the entire pack, Lucas’s veins pulsing with the energy that was DarkRiver. And that energy spoke to his leopard, told it that it was home, that it was welcome, that there was no cause to fear.
“Damn it, Dorian,” Lucas said, slapping him lightly as they both laughed through the tears. “You fucking made me cry.”
“Better not let Hawke see you,” Dorian managed to get out. “You know that wolf would never let you forget it.”
“Like I care.” Stepping back, Lucas gave a single nod.
Dorian didn’t know how he understood, but he did. Ignoring the fact that he didn’t have spare clothes with him, he allowed the shift to take him over, his jeans and sweatshirt disintegrating off him as he became the leopard that was his other half. When it was over, he found himself face-to-face with a black panther with night-glow eyes.
Lifting a paw, Lucas patted the side of his face as he’d done in human form, except this was harder. Cat to cat. Alpha to sentinel. A rough welcome that made his cat’s entire body vibrate with decades of withheld joy. When Lucas opened his mouth and growled, Dorian growled back.
Light sparked in the air, and then a man with black shoulder-length hair and green eyes, his skin muted gold, was crouching in front of him. “Well,” Lucas said with a grin, “thank God you’re not a white-blond fucking leopard. We’d have had to dip you in mud before every operation.”
Snarling, Dorian head-butted his alpha and they sprawled to the ground. Where Lucas held up his hands, eyes bright with untrammeled happiness. “Want to go surprise the others? Let’s see if they recognize you.”
Dorian snapped his teeth and nodded, his cat excited at the game.
In front of him, Lucas shifted, then ran over to climb up to his aerie. When he jumped back down, Dorian growled a greeting up at a wide-eyed Sascha. His alpha’s mate waved at him, her lips curved in a dazzling smile. A second later, he was following his alpha carefully through the trees.
Lucas didn’t go too fast, and when Dorian stumbled, he didn’t baby him, just waited for him to get his feet back under him before they began to run again. They went first to his parents’ house, and hell, there were a lot of tears there, too, a lot of hugs and petting. His mom called him “baby” again and, grabbing his leopard’s face, smothered it in kisses.
The leopard, shameless creature, rubbed its cheek against her, a cub happy its parent was happy. It was the first time he’d seen such joy in his mother and father since they’d lost Kylie, and it meant everything. He’d already visited the pretty, sunny spot where he felt closest to his little sister, told her of the gift he’d been given.
I wish you were here, squirt. I’d finally be able to nip your butt when you got too sassy.
He’d heard his sister’s cheeky laugh on the air, had almost felt her slender arms wrap around him as she laid her face against his chest. I love you, Dori. Only Kylie had ever dared to call him Dori, the habit formed as a toddler when she couldn’t say his full name.
I love you, too, squirt.
Now, covered in the scent of family, he left his parents laughing and padded beside Lucas as they went hunting the other sentinels. Mercy had come off a night shift and opened her door with a bad-tempered look on her face when they scratched on it. “Do you two know what ti—” Her bleary eyes focused and then she screamed in delight and jumped on Dorian, shifting midjump to roll with him onto the pine needles that carpeted the area outside her cabin.
Growling and nipping at him as they tumbled like pups, she kept patting his face as if to make certain he was really there. When she shifted back into human form, her red hair cascading down her back, tears streaked her face. “I’m leaking,” she said in an accusatory tone. “Because of you.”
Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tight.
By the time he met the rest of the sentinels, he’d been pounced on multiple times, each and every one of his packmates recognizing him on sight, though they’d never before seen his leopard. “It’s the eyes and the scent,” Vaughn had said after knocking all the air out of Dorian with his enthusiastic welcome, the jaguar’s heavier body having taken his inexperienced one to the earth a few minutes earlier. “You’re still Dorian, just in a different skin.”
Yes.
Finally, he had the ability to live in both his skins, to be cat and to be human. But whatever shape he took, he thought as he returned home, he would always be DarkRiver . . . and he would always love Shaya and the little boy who was now his own.
Both were waiting for him at home, their identical eyes lighting up when he stepped into the room. Of all the gifts he’d been given, that was the biggest and most precious. Leopard and man, man and leopard, his mate and his child were his reason for living.
V
Dorian took a deep breath and gave in to the shift. The agony and ecstasy of it was beyond anything he could’ve ever imagined. His body broke apart in a thousand sparks of light, and then re-formed, and it amazed him anew to find himself so much lower to the ground, his body on four paws instead of two human feet.
When he moved, it still took him a second to find his balance. At least he no longer fell on his face, he thought with a huffing growl. The sound made the black panther in front of him turn, give him a questioning look. Dorian shook his head at his alpha, but Lucas’s eyes sparked with feline laughter.
If they’d been in human form, Dorian thought, Lucas would be ragging on him. Everyone thought it was hilarious that he was so clumsy in cat form when he was sniper-quiet in his human body. But there was a deep, deep joy mixed in with all the teasing, an almost crushing wave of love from the pack that had not only accepted him, but respected him exactly as he was—and who were now delighted with his happiness in being able to set his leopard free.
Thanks to Shaya.
His back arching at the thought of his mate, a low, pleased growl rumbling in his throat, he padded off after his alpha as Lucas led him on an easy run through the trees. He’d have stumbled over his feet at least five times by now only a few months back, but had no such trouble today, taking the small jumps over fallen logs with ease, even using flat stones to cross a tumbling stream.
Then Lucas disappeared in a streak of black lightning.
Dorian froze.
This was something he’d done to trainees all too often himself, though he’d been in human form at the time. The aim of the game was to track Lucas within a reasonable time frame—how long depended on the trainee in question. In Dorian
’s case, in human form, Lucas would give no quarter.
It annoyed him that he wasn’t as attuned to his senses in leopard form, but he still had his brain. Standing very, very still, he let the leopard rise to the surface. He’d become so used to controlling it that for the first month, he’d had real trouble letting go—until his mate had taken his face into her hands, kissed the life out of him, and told him that she wanted to speak to his leopard.
Turned out his leopard wanted to play with her, too.
“So beautiful,” she’d murmured as she ran those long, capable fingers through his fur as the leopard placed its head in her lap and closed its eyes. “And so lazy.”
He’d growled then, heard her laugh, both man and leopard entranced by the sound. No matter what form he held, he loved her, adored her. That simply, she’d made him understand that he was still himself, even when the leopard took precedence.
Today, the cat plucked out Lucas’s powerful scent from the air and began to run over the fallen autumn leaves, its steps light and silent. Deep within, the human part of Dorian watched in quiet pleasure—he wasn’t as clumsy as he’d thought, not anymore. Because though it had been forced to live within a human skin all those years, the leopard hadn’t ever given up. Instead, it had learned from the sniper.
Today it veered sharply away as it caught the barest whisper of movement from the right, rolling onto a heavy carpet of leaves just as a large leopard slammed out at him. The gold and black cat hit him on the side in a glancing blow, but Dorian had already danced out of reach. Snarling, he turned to bring down his opponent . . . to see Clay sitting there watching him with pure calm—as if he hadn’t just tried to make Dorian eat dust.
When he snarled again, his fellow sentinel laid his head on his paws and pretended to go to sleep.
This wasn’t only hide-and-seek. This was a hunt. And Dorian had just lost a point.
Exhilaration raced through him—because his fellow sentinels and his alpha weren’t cutting him a break. They were treating him as exactly what he was: one of them.
With that in mind, he began to move with even more stealth. All the sentinels were powerful, and they all had their own personal strengths. Vaughn, for example, was one hell of a climber, while Mercy could hide in plain sight by standing utterly motionless.
A new scent in his nose, so faint the man might have ignored it. But the leopard froze . . . and changed direction, to circle back in on its prey.
The jaguar lying in wait on a tree branch didn’t see him as he came around to stand below the tree, staring up.
Point to me.
He gave a pointed cough-growl.
Vaughn’s head whipped back, and even from this far away, Dorian could tell the jaguar was pissed at having been shown up by “the newborn,” as his friends liked to call him when they were trying to drive him nuts.
Snorting in disgruntlement, Vaughn padded down the branch and jumped off to disappear into the trees. Dorian smiled inwardly and was just about to head back on the trail when he was hit again—this time from above. And it wasn’t Vaughn.
Fuck! he thought as he rolled out of the way.
Except his attacker had his—her—teeth in the ruff of his neck and she wasn’t letting go. Twisting his body, he managed to nip her side enough to make her release him, but she was on him again before he could get out of the way, and she was trying to go for his throat. Protecting the vulnerable area by ducking his head, he plowed into her chest.
She growled, but didn’t back down, bringing up her clawed paw to rake him down the side.
Shit.
The marks were light, would heal within the next few hours, but the fight was done because she’d drawn first blood. Pulling away, he huffed as he caught his breath.
In front of him, the other leopard shifted in a shower of sparks to become a woman with flame red hair crouching on the forest floor. “Tut-tut,” Mercy said, waving a finger. “Overconfidence be the endeth of the man.”
When Dorian growled at her, she leaned down until they were nose to nose. “Listen to your leopard, Boy Genius. Stop thinking.” She tapped the side of his head. “The cat has had to trust you its whole life, but you’ve never had to rely on it. If you can learn to do that, you’ll be unstoppable—I would’ve never been able to get the jump on you in human form. But you can’t think like a human in leopard form or you’ll only hobble the animal.”
Lifting her head, she shifted back into her leopard form—which happened to be slightly smaller than his own. As he watched her leave, her tail curling lazily, he considered her words. Sure he’d given in to the cat, but . . . while the cat’s cunning had allowed him to sneak up on Vaughn, he’d relied mostly on his human mind, not trusting the leopard’s instincts.
For a man who had built his life around the word “control,” giving in was one hell of a hard ask.
“Stop fighting it! Dorian, please!”
His mate had said those words to him the first time he shifted. Stunned and in shock, and so in love with her it hurt, he’d done as she asked. And it had felt like . . . coming home.
Flexing his claws on the ground, he reached for the mating bond, for the love that had only become stronger with the passing days. Leopard and man, they both held on to it like a lifeline as he once more did as his Shaya had asked.
He gave in.
An explosion of scents and sounds, textures against his fur, so many noises to explore that it threatened to overwhelm. The man began to fight his way out, to take control.
“Dorian, please!”
Shaya’s voice again from that fateful day, reminding him that he was leopard and man both and this was the leopard’s playground.
The human part of Dorian fell back.
The leopard took a deep breath, separated out the important scents from the not-so-important—though it did pause to consider chasing a rabbit—and began to run after Lucas. Dorian felt his/their heart pump with exhilaration, their muscles flex, their fur rush back in the wind as the leopard, its mind sharp and cunning and furiously intelligent, caught Lucas’s double-back and switched direction so that they might be able to sneak up on their alpha.
Pride bloomed within the heart of the leopard as it thought of telling its mate of its skill, imagined her stroking those long capable fingers through his fur and saying, “Beautiful.” Later, after she’d all but put him into a coma with her petting, she’d laugh and murmur, “Lazy.”
The leopard halted, sniffed. And backed away.
Trap, it thought to the man when Dorian surfaced, and that was all that needed to be said as they switched back, skirting around the danger. Six more traps later, both leopard and man were snarling at his packmates. He’d avoided the rope tie, the tripwire, and two others, but they had managed to dump him into a slimy mud pool and successfully snapped a branch painfully in his face. His fur matted and his nose smarting from the trick—one his leopard was most annoyed that it hadn’t sensed—he almost walked right into a pit.
Pausing with one foot on the edge of the disguised hole in the forest floor, he didn’t back away but instead went right and into the forest, after Lucas’s scent. Instinct told him his alpha had created this trap while the others had been keeping him busy. Staring up at the trees, the leopard thought, Hmm, and then it jumped.
Dorian didn’t know which one of them was more surprised when they ended up on the branch with a single lunge. For a moment, the leopard retreated, startled by its own skill, and the man took control. Looking around, he realized exactly what his alpha had done. A second later, the leopard was back, its breath caught, and they began to race along the skyway of the trees, tracking Lucas from above—because Luc had underestimated him.
And Dorian’s nose was still smarting enough that he took great delight in jumping down on top of his alpha from his hiding place in the branches. Then he took even more delight in ensuring he got a
s much of the mud slime as possible on Lucas before letting go.
A sparkle of light and color and then a very dirty Lucas was sitting there scowling. “Damn it, Dorian. This stuff stinks.”
The leopard satisfied, Dorian gave in to the shift again, his human body covered in mud when he re-formed, his hair sticking up in spikes. The shift made clothes disintegrate like clockwork, but it was a crapshoot as to whether a single shift would get rid of ordinary stains or dyes, or stuff that was stuck to the body itself. Sometimes one shift and it was all gone, and sometimes it took six shifts to get even partially clean.
Today was clearly not a lucky day for either Lucas or Dorian. “Serves you fucking right,” Dorian told his alpha.
“Wasn’t my idea,” Lucas muttered. “Nate came up with that one. He wanted to join in even though we couldn’t shift the out-of-state meeting today.”
A feminine laugh from the right. “You have a stripe across your face, Blondie. Turning tiger on us?”
Dorian fixed Mercy with a narrow-eyed glare. “I know that was your trick.”
She blew him a kiss before shifting into animal form and scrambling up to lie on a tree branch as Vaughn and Clay prowled out of the trees. Vaughn shifted, while Clay curled up at the foot of Mercy’s tree. “I was hoping you’d fall into the pit,” the amber-haired sentinel said with a grin. “I told Luc to line it with banana peels and mushy apples, even stashed the supplies for him.”
Closing his eyes, Dorian wiped off a bit of mud that was stuck to his eyelid, giving Vaughn the finger with his other hand. It took him a second to realize the other sentinel hadn’t replied. Looking up, he saw Vaughn and Lucas had shifted back into animal form. They gave him a bare instant to complete his own shift . . . and then all four swarmed him, tumbling into him like overgrown kittens.
Startled, he kept his own claws sheathed and mock-battled with them.