Wild Embrace (13 page)

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 as 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.

And then, as Vaughn pushed him aside and Mercy took his side so that they could bully the jaguar, while Clay and Lucas stood there with feline laughter in their eyes, he understood.

No special favors.

No expecting anything less from him.

No being considered anything but capable.

He was a sentinel. He was one of them. Always had been. Always would be.

A crash of love down the mating bond, as if his mate had felt his elation. Laughing as he and Mercy managed to pin Vaughn, only to be attacked by Clay, who'd decided to turn traitor, Dorian thought his mate would surely help him devise a worse “foul” than a stinking slime pit or a snapping branch.

And then he stopped thinking and let the leopard
play.

Felix looked up
from checking a row of baby trees planted by a juvenile and found himself the target of a stunning smile. Bright green eyes, her hair in a million fine braids, and her skin bronze brushed with gold, she was more beautiful than any woman he'd ever seen. She was also a senior DarkRiver soldier who'd likely make sentinel in the next year or two if the interpack scuttlebutt was to be believed.

She raised a hand, wiggled her fingers, her eyes sparkling.

Blushing, Felix looked down at the plant he was checking. The juvenile had done a good job, but the boy was new at this . . . and he could still feel her looking at him. Glancing up from below his lashes a minute later, he found her leather-clad legs angled away, so he looked up fully. She was talking to Hawke, Felix's alpha having run down to see how things were going with the planting of the area that had been decimated during the battle with Pure Psy.

The beautiful green-eyed soldier's name was Desiree and, unlike Felix, she was a leopard changeling. The cats were pitching in to help keep the area secure during the replanting—the part of the forest that had been destroyed during the fight against Pure Psy was so open right now that they'd be sitting ducks otherwise. Similarly to the other wolves in SnowDancer, it had taken Felix a while to become accustomed to the fact that their pack now had a blood bond
with the leopards; the feline changelings were as welcome in their territory as the wolves were in DarkRiver's lower-elevation territory. Of course, it was still considered courteous to ask if you ran into a sentry, one predator to another.

Laughing at something Hawke had said, Desiree nodded and waved good-bye to the alpha. Hawke had already spoken to Felix, so the other man just shot him a salute before heading out. Which left only Felix and Desiree in this section. Felix had wanted to spend some extra time prepping the soil for the next day's planting after everyone else had left—everyone, that is, except for the evening security shift.

“Hey.” Booted feet hunkering down on the other side of the seedlings he was checking. “I'm Desiree.”

Felix knew he should be polite, reply with his own name, but Desiree's dominance was so overwhelming that his wolf quivered, ready to run. It didn't matter that she was leopard rather than wolf—she was a predator far stronger than him and his wolf knew it.

Angling her head a little to the side, her braids falling over her shoulder, she attempted to catch his eye. “I don't bite. Well, not until I'm asked, anyway.”

He felt his skin heat again. Damn it. He'd worked in the world of high fashion modeling, dealt with plenty of strong personalities without problem. Of course, none of them had been an astonishingly beautiful leopard female who made him want to touch when he knew it would be a very, very bad idea. Dominants ate submissives like him alive for breakfast, then got hungry for lunch.

A pause before Desiree rose to her feet. “I'll let you get back to your work.”

Felix watched her walk away, her body lithe with muscle, and had the strong urge to kick himself. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to know her . . . but he'd been down this road before. God, he'd been such a stupid kid, fallen so hard for the dominant who'd
been visiting from another wolf pack, had been ready to give up everything for her, including his first big modeling gig.

But after his heartfelt profession of love, every part of him vulnerable and laid out in the open, she'd patted him on the cheek, kissed him, and said, “I'm sorry, sweetheart. You're gorgeous and a delight, but I need a dominant as a partner.”

The thing was, she hadn't meant to hurt him. She'd really believed they were simply sharing intimate skin privileges as friends and that Felix understood the facts of life: that while dominants often mated with submissives, it was usually a male dominant with a female submissive. The opposite direction was far rarer, and when it came to dominant leopard females, he'd
never
heard of it. They were so wild and independent that it took a stubbornly strong male to haul them into a long-term relationship, much less a mating.

Riley's courtship of Mercy was the perfect example. The leopard sentinel had run the wolf lieutenant a merry chase. Fascinated and delighted for them, Felix had watched from the sidelines along with the rest of the pack, but that kind of a dance wasn't in his future. He'd make a wonderful mate, he knew that. He was loyal, good with his hands, and he adored children. However, that relationship wouldn't be with a dominant female.

No matter how beautiful.

He was through with being used.

•   •   •

Desiree
leaned up against a tree far enough into the shadows of the forest surrounding the denuded area that SnowDancer's horticultural expert couldn't see her, and watched him. Tall and muscled, with mink brown hair and thickly lashed brown eyes, he had strong hands that touched the seedlings with competent care, his expression intent.

He'd folded the sleeves of his checked work shirt to just below
his elbows, exposing golden skin with a powerful tracery of veins beneath. His skin made her want to lick; his hands made her want to feel their strong, callused heat on her skin. His touch would be rough, thorough, unhurried. It made her shiver just thinking about it.

First, however, she had to get him to talk to her.

Her cat stretched inside her, fur rubbing up against the insides of her skin. It, too, was fascinated by the man who worked among the newly planted trees with such total and quiet concentration. It wasn't his looks that had first drawn her attention—though the man was certifiably hot—it was the way he worked with plants. She'd watched him without him noticing her for over an hour, seen him handle the fragile seedlings with a breathtaking gentleness.

Yet the very hands that had done that had also lifted up a fifty-pound bag of soil as if it weighed nothing.

The combination of raw physical strength and incredible gentleness was deeply compelling. Add in the clear respect he commanded from even the most hard-edged men and women in SnowDancer, and there was something about this brown-eyed wolf that had Desiree's leopard padding inside her skin, wanting a taste.

He looked up at a hail from a SnowDancer lieutenant right then.

A jeans-and-T-shirt-clad Indigo crouched down beside him a moment later, her long black hair pulled into a ponytail, and the two of them fell into an easy conversation. He even laughed in response to something the wolf lieutenant said. So, he wasn't worried about talking to dominant females. It was specifically
Desiree
that he didn't want to talk to. That left her in a quandary. Leopard or wolf, some rules were written in stone.

If a submissive said or even intimated no, a dominant backed off. Immediately.

Submissives simply didn't have the ability to fight against a dominant, especially not when it came to sexual aggression from someone
they were meant to be able to trust—a packmate or an ally. The submissive would simply get more and more uncomfortable and distressed. Desiree scowled, hating the idea that she might hurt the beautiful man with the careful hands. She didn't want to; she just wanted to know him. One more try, she told herself, and if he made it clear he didn't want her, she'd clamp down on her need to touch him and no damn argument.

That thought was uppermost in her mind the next evening when she turned up before sunset to do a security shift. She liked the evening shifts up here—it was quiet, and thanks to the sizeable area they had to patrol, she rarely ran into the other soldiers. Desiree wasn't a loner by any means, but she was feline enough to enjoy a touch of peace and quiet at times, especially when the starlit night sky was as stunning as it got up in the Sierra Nevada.

Not that the sky was the focus of her attention tonight.

Felix, however, was nowhere to be seen. It hadn't taken her long to figure out his name—all she'd had to do was engage one of his packmates in conversation and it had popped out naturally enough, since Felix was in charge of this entire planting operation. Lips twisting in disappointment at not seeing him, she put down the gift she'd brought in the hope it would break the ice, and left to do a security sweep of her section.

After the way the packs had been attacked, no one was taking any chances. Desiree had fought in San Francisco itself, come up against Pure Psy attackers in hand-to-hand combat, but it had been the most brutal here. The reason for the denuded ground, however, was a violent power that had saved the lives of SnowDancer's soldiers and devastated the enemy.

Hawke's mate, Desiree thought, was one hell of a woman.

When she finished her sweep, it was to find her gift sitting exactly where she'd left it. Sighing, she leaned back against a tree . . .
and straightened almost immediately. There he was, on the very edge of the current planting area, using a shovel to turn some soil. She'd noticed that about him—even though he was technically the boss here, he liked to get his hands dirty.

About to head over to him with her gift, she glanced around to make sure no one else was nearby. It wasn't that she didn't want people to know she was courting him—hell, she was as possessive as any dominant and she
wanted
him. But it might make him uncomfortable. Only when she was certain the coast was clear did she walk forward, keeping her stride easy so as not to make him feel hunted.

•   •   •

Felix
had just bent down to plant a seedling in the new hole he'd created when the hairs rose on his arms, the scent on the air lemon spice and something wilder, more feline. Skin heating, he busied himself using his hands to scoop out a bit more soil and put it to the side.

She crouched across from him the same as she'd done before, but instead of speaking, she placed a small pot between them. It was boat shaped with a pale blue glaze and planted in it was a tiny, beautifully shaped maple tree. He couldn't help it; he reached out to touch the leaves of the masterful bonsai. He had nothing this stunning in his collection, having only begun to teach himself the art in the past year.

“I'm sorry.” It was a quiet feminine murmur.

Jerking up his head, he met the startling green of her gaze for a split second before breaking the eye contact. Dominant-to-submissive eye contact was difficult to hold at the best of times for a submissive; even more so when there was sexual desire involved.

“For coming on so aggressively yesterday,” she added in that voice with its slight husky edge that made his skin prickle. “I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. My only excuse is that I wanted to get to know the man who's coaxing this entire area back to life.”

His wolf stirred, the human part of him intrigued that she'd mentioned his horticultural skill rather than his looks. He knew he was good-looking—it wasn't something to be proud of, wasn't something he'd achieved. It was genetic luck. But this, the plants, the earth? He'd
earned
this through sheer hard work.

“If you want me to back off, I will.” It was a solemn statement. “I hope you like the plant—one of the other soldiers mentioned you had miniature trees and I figured they must be bonsai. My dad's into them.” She waited for a second before rising to her feet, and he knew she'd taken his silence as a response.

Desiree wouldn't bother him again.

“Did you get it from him?” he said before he could stop himself.

It would've been far more sensible to let her go, but he couldn't bear the thought that she'd believe he didn't find her attractive. He'd heard that, beneath their tough skins, dominant leopard females were touchy about things like that. No matter how much he wanted to protect himself, it didn't mean he had to hurt her.

A smile he could hear in her voice as she came back down on her haunches, the jeans she wore today taut over her thighs. “Yeah. He actually gave it to me for my birthday. I've been terrified I'd kill it the entire month it sat on the table in my aerie—I swear the thing chases me in my nightmares.”

His lips curved. “Won't your father miss it when he visits?”

“Actually, I'm fairly certain he's sorry he gave it to me.” Unhidden love in her tone when she spoke of her father. “It's one of his babies, you know.”

Felix nodded, as attached to his own plants.

“I think he'd be much happier to know it's with you.” Her braids brushed her thighs as she shifted a little. “He was talking the other day about how he approves of the plan you've come up with to reforest this region.”

Felix frowned. The alphas of both packs were aware of his plans, of course, but pretty much the only other person who had detailed knowledge of those plans was the DarkRiver ranger in overall charge of the flora in the leopard pack's territory. Heavily built, with tightly curled black hair threaded with a bare few strands of gray, Harry was a gentle giant of a man. “Is Harry your father?”

“Yes.”

That meant Meenakshi, the petite former classical dancer who was Harry's mate, and who'd dropped by with Harry a week earlier, was Desiree's mother. He wondered what her parents thought of their dominant daughter, but that was a very personal question and he wasn't going down that road with Desiree.

“So . . .” Desiree held out a hand. “Friends?”

Felix had soil on his hands, having not worn gloves because he loved the feel of the earth. He used the excuse not to touch her. Skin privileges were important and he didn't want to initiate them with Desiree . . . because he was afraid that once he started, he wouldn't be able to stop. And the line had to be drawn here, now. “Friends,” he said, flicking her a quick look before he glanced down.

She stayed with him for another few minutes, asking about the planting and the trees, questions which didn't stress his wolf and that he could answer in as much depth as interested her. Once again, he watched her leave, a strong, intelligent, and sensual woman who'd only ever see him as a pretty diversion. When it came time to choose a mate, she'd go for someone stronger, someone dominant, someone who was the total opposite of Felix.