“Back in the old days we weren’t as concerned with behaving the way humans do,” Georgina added, moving so she was arm to arm next to John. She beamed up at him, as if searching for praise in knowing their history.
“We’re scanning each piece of paper, ensuring everything written on the page is legible, then encasing the page behind clear plastic. There is also a typed version printed since each page is being saved in a document on the computer.” John gestured as he spoke, pointing to an assembly line set up along the wall of the gathering den where a scanner and piles of paper were stacked on a long, narrow table. “After a page is translated, two other jaguars are going over each page, comparing it to the original. Ran found old scripts using the same written language online and everyone helping with the translation has worked to learn how to compare words so they knew they are accurately deciphering what is being said. This way there won’t be just one jaguar deciding on the meaning of our laws and traditions once they’re translated.”
Georgina cut in, sidling up next to John. “John is scanning the written pages and I’m doing the copying. In the end, there are two copies, written and typed. It really isn’t work at all. It’s fun. Right, John?”
“Are all the laws and traditions just going to be kept in that book?” Anna asked. “Do you think somewhere along the line another jaguar won’t try to steal them?”
Georgina’s eyes grew wide. She smelled of a mixture of shock and surprise, as if she would never disgrace John by mentioning anything about his dead littermate and the fact that he’d tried to steal them, and couldn’t believe Anna would do that to him. Anna ignored her, focusing on John.
“If we’re all expected to follow everything they say and run accordingly,” she added, and then took her time glancing at Georgina, “it would be better if they were accessible to everyone.”
“They are.” John frowned and if he caught Anna’s meaning when she looked at Georgina, he ignored it.
“What I mean is jaguars might not want everyone being able to sniff out what they’re doing if they want to check a certain law or tradition. They should be put online or something.”
“They will be.” John put his arm around Anna and led the way toward the table where Ran VicMoran and his mate were already hunched over a few sheets of paper. Fortunately, John didn’t interrupt them for proper greetings but moved to the other end of the table and spoke quietly. “Ran is building a website where all of the laws and traditions will be accessible so any jaguar anywhere can read them. But the translation process, which is what he and his mate are doing now, is slow. That’s why it is taking us a while to copy the pages and insert them in plastic. The originals have already been copied and are actually what VicMoran is working off. Once he finishes a page of translations, we take it from there.”
Anna did enjoy herself and soon forgot about the world around her as she sat at one of the tables. She slid a freshly copied page behind plastic then inserted it into the three-ring binder. It was hard not to read the page once she had secured it in the binder. More than once she glanced down to the other end of the table, impressed at Ran and his mate’s efforts to so accurately translate. Once, Ran returned her brief stare. Although definitely not as muscular, he was obviously Rafe’s littermate.
Anna listened to John and Georgina’s amiable chatter at first but quickly became bored with their conversations over the laws, how they might have come to be, what motivated the author to put them on paper and how life might have been for jaguars so long ago. Instead, she began reading the page she’d just slid into the plastic covering.
A litter shall work together, in fur or flesh, as they build the den to protect and shelter them. No one shall work less than the other—all shall contribute based on their abilities. It is the duty of the litter to allow all littermates to develop and train their natural-born gifts and use them to make their litter stronger. A litter who doesn’t use each littermate to their fullest ability is destined to decay and return to the earth just as their den shall if not maintained.
A well-built den always smells of happiness and love. If a den continually holds on to the spicy smell of anger, inevitably its walls will crumble and return to earth. There is no strength in negative emotions. As well, if the stench of a den impacts its community, every member of the litter living there shall be committed to a month living in their fur outside their community in order to expunge the stench of their rage.
A litter who runs and hunts together then shares their kill while it’s fresh will prosper and know true love and happiness.
Anna stared at the following sentences. Ran and his mate were translating the laws and traditions by hand, but then as well entering them on to a computer document. Anna was enclosing both the typed and written version of each sheet. As she reread the next paragraph, she glanced at the handwritten sheet, unsure why she sought clarification when several jaguars had already gone over them.
When a male and female agree to a mating, they will swear always to hunt together. They must promise always to fight together, honor each other and agree to the terms of death if either of them were to stray from these promises or sniff out another.
She couldn’t count the times when she knew of a mated couple who suffered from one of them having sniffed out another. There wasn’t anything worse than a mated male smelling of another female, or a female prancing around with a male’s scent on her who wasn’t her mate. It was a sad affair, but not once had she known of the betrayal being resolved by death.
Mated jaguars shall honor each other, accepting the gifts and talents each of them brings to the mating. Neither shall be the weaker or the stronger. It is by running side by side that a mating truly knows its strength.
Anna fought not to growl. An unmated female was to be hauled around on a leash and no consideration was given at all that she might know her own mind. Yet, once mated, suddenly she was equal in all ways to her mate. Did mating somehow suddenly make a female smarter? This time she did growl. Who decided some group of jaguars centuries ago had it all figured out and that jaguars today must run according to these ancient jaguars beliefs?
“Anna,” John said, pulling her out of her thoughts.
John grinned and held up a piece of paper. He smelled excited and didn’t seem to notice how Georgina had cuddled up against him. “Come look at this. It’s a den tree, actually quite a few of them. More like an entire forest,” he said, laughing.
“Den trees?” Anna imagined if she were latched on to Rafe’s arm the way Georgiana was to John right now, he’d fly at Rafe and ask questions later. She stood, deciding she’d had about enough fun with their laws and traditions.
“Check this out.” John held the paper out for her to take.
“Oh damn,” she whispered under her breath.
“There are a lot more.” Georgina actually released John as she rushed around him to grab the rest of the diagrams showing generations from one den after another.
Anna bent over the table, studying them, and wondered when Ran and his mate had left. Apparently she’d been more wrapped up in the ancient writings than she’d realized. She also wondered where Rafe was. Usually when she came to center ground, or anywhere in Guarida, he showed up at some point.
“I wonder if we can find ours,” she said, and looked at John.
He wasn’t looking at her though. Anna frowned at the change in his smell but only for a moment as trickles of awareness raced up and down her spine. She breathed in the rich, strong smell of male jaguars and at the same time goose bumps rushed over her flesh. She turned around and watched Rafe and his two littermates enter the gathering den and move like a mighty force across the large room to join them.
Rafe moved with the silent coolness of a predatory male comfortable with his environment. His two littermates were to his side, and all of them made a formidable presence. Anna was acutely aware of her littermate standing on the other side of the table, of the immediate silence as the VicMoran litter crossed the gathering
den and joined them, and of Rafe when he glanced past her at John then settled his gaze on her.
“Did you find something?” Ran asked, sniffing the air.
“Check these out.” John held up the den trees.
“Fucking tail,” Ran muttered under his breath as he looked at page after page then handed them to his mate. “This is incredible.”
“I just noticed they were in the pile we haven’t gone through yet when you came in.”
In spite of the spike in testosterone and the sudden increase of wariness, their excitement over finding the den trees still lingered. If Ran noticed any other emotions at play, he either didn’t care or chose to ignore them.
Ran nodded. “All of our history might be here.”
Rafe was easily the best-looking male in his litter. While Raul hurried to the table to join Ran and John, his expression and scent showing easily how excited he was about their new discovery, Rafe moved slower. His brooding expression was hard to read. But when he looked her way, his gaze capturing hers and holding on, those dark-green intense eyes of his burrowed deep into her soul.
He moved so he stood next to her, and although he glanced at what his littermates were looking at, his attention drifted to the paper she still held in her hand. It was so hard to keep her heart from beating too fast that her chest suddenly hurt. At the same time, a quickening deep inside her swelled and created a pressure she was positive would change the scent in the room.
“I’ve got the laptop,” Olivia, Ran’s mate, announced, holding up a thick cloth bag that held the computer as she hurried into the gathering den. “But, Ran, when I entered our den and went over to your computer, I took a minute to refresh the page.” Olivia glanced at the small group she faced, making eye contact with Anna for a fraction of a second before continuing. “Natasha Kalusian has commanded everyone in Colony acknowledge her as the alpha female. She’s taken over Colony.”
“You were on Colony’s website?” Raul asked Ran, frowning and staring at the laptop Olivia passed over to her mate.
“I hacked on to it this morning,” Ran explained, and continued studying two den trees he’d placed on the table. “Since it takes time to get on each time, I just kept it logged on when I left to come here.”
Anna moved in next to Rafe, breathing in his natural earthy, all-male scent as she glanced at Raul’s mate Angela. Other than Olivia, all of them had lived in Colony most of their lives. Angela’s den was Kalusian before she became Angela VicMoran. She was Natasha’s littermate.
“This shouldn’t surprise me,” Angela muttered under her breath, smelling more angry than upset. “Although I don’t get how all those jaguars would let her do this.”
“The little bitch,” Ran growled at the same time, and ran his hand up and down Olivia’s back.
“We need to monitor that situation very closely,” Raul decided, speaking louder than the others and drawing everyone’s attention. He focused on Ran. “Give me a detailed update once you’re back at your den.”
“I want those details too.” John focused on Raul for only a moment before shifting his attention to Anna. “My littermate and I will be here if we aren’t at our den,” he informed everyone. “I want to be kept updated on what’s going on.”
Everyone concurred and began discussing life at Colony, Natasha and the safety of Guarida. Anna managed not to curl her lip at her littermate and even kept her emotions hidden so no one would smell how John’s words pissed her off. He had no right to decide where she would be and when. His statement had been made only to make it clear to Rafe that she would never be alone.
The discussion turned lively, and at one point Rafe moved his hand and touched her back. Anna looked up at him, the heat inside her suddenly so overwhelming she had to suck in a quick, deep breath to prevent her scent from changing.
“Go running tonight,” he whispered, his words barely audible and his lips hardly moving.
Where her heart had pounded against her rib cage way too hard and fast a moment ago, now it stopped. Anna stared at him, studying his brooding expression. His scent hadn’t changed, and if it weren’t for his fingers barely touching her back, she might have convinced herself she imagined him speaking.
“Around midnight,” he added, speaking so only she heard him as the others continued with their heated discussion over the wrong doings of jaguars. “I’ll find you.”
Chapter Four
Rafe was sprawled across the couch in his living area, nursing a beer and listening to the wind pick up outside. It would rain again tonight. Would Anna use that as an excuse not to sneak out of her den and meet him?
No one else had noticed the slight change in Anna’s scent when her littermate announced she would be at the gathering den or her litter’s den earlier that day. Rafe might not have, and he’d been standing right next to her, if he hadn’t been waiting and sniffing the air at the right moment, searching for her reaction. Already he’d learned Anna wouldn’t run down a certain path simply because she was told to do so.
Rafe downed more of his beer and glanced at his window as it started howling outside. Tree branches scraped over his roof. After being here several months, he had a decent grasp on how different types of storms smelled and sounded. He’d already secured the shutters over his windows and they rattled impatiently as the building storm outside prepared to release its fury on the forest. Rafe might be powerful, have a lot of control over many things, but the weather wasn’t one of them, nor would it ever be. He finished off his beer, placed the empty bottle on the coffee table next to the others and clasped his hands behind his head as he stretched out on the oversized couch he’d designed himself so he could do just this.
More than once now, Rafe had tried to remember why he hadn’t sniffed after Anna when they all lived in Colony. Granted the growing stench in the air had preoccupied all of them. Change was happening, and not for the better. It was a valid reason not to seek out a female to run with longer than one night.
Rafe wasn’t sure if Anna ran with different males while in Colony or not. He curled his lip at the thought. It wasn’t knowing she would willingly engage in promiscuous activities that bothered him. As much as he’d howled in favor of the laws and traditions when they were first found, Rafe found himself distancing from them now. He definitely smelled the same reaction on Anna. Rafe didn’t blame her. Jaguars were a vicious species, aggressive and wild at the least. Other species on earth sniffed them out warily if they did at all. Now suddenly everyone around him seemed to think they could all wear collars and prance around with virtues so strong they smelled worse than their sins. Many of these same jaguars were more promiscuous than him less than a year ago. No, Rafe didn’t blame Anna a bit for not wishing to smell like a hypocrite.
This line of thinking unnerved him. Rafe almost leapt off his couch, his growing restlessness making it impossible to remain still. There was less than an hour before midnight, but even then he had no way of knowing if Anna would take that run or not. Waiting wasn’t bugging him as much as the direction of his thoughts was. Since when had he been so damn concerned about sniffing out how a female thought?
Anna was sexy as hell. He visualized her standing at the top of her stairs, completely naked and holding her bundle of clothing to her breasts. She shaved between her legs, which he loved. Picturing that smooth pussy, her long slender legs, and how her hair had draped over her shoulders, falling to her slender waist, made his dick stretch uncomfortably in his jeans.
Rafe adjusted himself, and kept his hand over his cock, feeling the heat and swelling as he stroked himself. Anna better show up at midnight. He wanted to see her in her fur. Anna would be slender, her smaller muscles fine-tuned. A young female in her prime, Rafe knew she would be cocky, confident in her surroundings as she strutted through the rain forest she’d marked as her own.
Rafe would wait in the forest outside her den, watching, sniffing the air until the moment he picked up on her scent. Once he did, Rafe would pounce into action. W
hether she put up a chase or not, the instant he leapt into the air, landed on her and the two of them tumbled to the ground, their bodies immediately tangled together, would make all of this worth it.
Another gust of wind shook his den. If he lay there much longer, he’d be masturbating to images of what he imagined the two of them doing later. He’d spent enough nights getting himself off. Tonight he would hold out for Anna. His cock throbbed in anticipation. The pain from waiting would be worth it. If she showed up. Rafe stared at the walls for a moment before deciding to head out. He secured his den then headed down the stairs.
The air was thick and heavy with the ripe smell of pending rain. It would be here soon, and by the strength of the variety of odors coming from the forest and in on the wind, it would be a strong, powerful storm. He prayed it didn’t hit before midnight.
He was halfway around Guarida when a large raindrop fell off a leaf above him and splashed against Rafe’s face. He smeared the water away from his eyes but slowed his pace. It would be smarter to run in his fur. Rafe could probably run on two legs and make it to the creek running to the side of Anna’s den, but he didn’t want to arrive stinking from sweat with his clothes sticking to him all wrong.
After sniffing the air and smelling nothing but the rain, which was waiting for just the right moment to begin, Rafe stripped out of his clothes. They wouldn’t do him any good if they were soaked, and he would need them when he resumed his human form. Meeting Anna, if she showed up, without any clothes on, wouldn’t work either. Although he did let his mind envision a few favorable scenarios if he were to approach Anna without clothes. Twisting his shirt and shorts into a knot-like rope, he stuffed his boxers and socks into his shoes then secured them around his waist and allowed the change to release inside him.
An image of Anna, stretching with her hands over her head as she pulled her clothes off her slinky body was stuck in his brain as the change embraced him. He howled in spite of himself as sparks ignited, zapping up and down his spine, instigating the shift inside that allowed his muscles to alter shape and his bones to take on new form.
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