“Maybe we should pull out of there, regroup and come back in force,” Jake suggested.

Drake cleared his throat. “I can handle it, Jake. There’s no need unless one of the leopards here has been killing innocents.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Drake?”

Drake cursed under his breath. There was no getting anything past Jake. The man was as shrewd as they came. “There’s a female close to the Han Vol Dan. I caught her scent and my cat went crazy.”

“And?” Jake prompted.

“So did I.” That said it all. Everything. A warning. A challenge.

Jake went silent. Drake refused to be drawn in. He stayed utterly still, staring out over the water. Darkness had long since settled. Bullfrogs called back and forth. Crickets sang insistently. The heat in his veins crackled with the same powerst Jakethe veins of lightning lining the black clouds tumbling in the sky.

“Drake, if you’re dead, she isn’t going to do you any good.”

“I won’t be the one dead.”

“If these people are her family and try to protect her, she isn’t going to be thrilled with you killing them,” Jake cautioned.

Drake found himself smiling, and some of the tension eased in his gut. He had come from the Borneo rain forest in order to teach Jake the way of the shifter—and keep him calm and under control. It took a great amount of discipline and power to keep a male leopard under control, and Drake was renowned for his control, holding together teams of shifters in tense situations, yet his own student was now cautioning him.

“I guess she won’t be,” Drake admitted. “I’ll call you when I’ve checked out the body.”

“The boys are on standby, Drake. Use them if you need them. And let me know if I can send Joshua. In the meantime, I’ll contact Rio.”

“Give my love to Emma.”

Drake hung up the phone as he studied the layout of the grounds below the balcony. He had to know how the shifters would come at him and he had to be prepared. He didn’t have a lot of time for recon. Saria had left him an hour ago, heading back to her home. He was reluctant to let her go, but there was no reason he could give to keep her there, and it was just as well that she wasn’t in the middle of whatever battle was coming. He didn’t want her to be afraid of him.

He took a breath and leapt over the balcony to the ground below. Landing in a crouch, his legs acted like springs, absorbing the shock. It was the first time he’d really tested his leg to see if it would hold up to the rigorous needs of a shifter. As tests went, the drop was a fairly good one, as he’d been on the second story. He landed a little harder than usual, which didn’t surprise him, as he was out of practice, but the surge of wildness rising like a tidal wave did.

Beneath his skin, fur rippled and itched. His jaw ached with the need to accommodate the change. He wasn’t going to be able to wait. His cat needed—and so did he. Elation swept through him. He didn’t want to be cautious or patient. He wanted the absolute freedom his leopard provided. No, he needed the freedom to let his real nature out, that savage, primal nature that was more instinct than reason. He had been forced to suppress it for too long, and his entire body ached with urgency. Bones hurt. Muscles throbbed.

He dragged his shirt over his head and hastily bent to remove his shoes. Already his knuckles bent and the tips of his fingers burned as the skeleton designed for maximum flexibility lying dormant along his human frame stretched in anticipation. He clawed his shoes off and reached to peel back his jeans, shrugging out of them fast as the heat took him. Bones cracked. Muscles contorted. The wrenching, painful experience felt wonderful, a release, that first overwhelming flush of freedom.

Pain stabbed through his leg, robbing him of breath, but even that was welcome as he felt the bone shifting, reshaping, finally complying with his leopard’s demand. His heart stuttered and deep inside he felt claws unsheathe, felt his feral nature leap to the forefront. He leapt toward it, embracing that side of him, grateful he was alone with no young males to keep in line. This first emergence after so long deseved to be untamed, uncontrollable, a rough, fierce—even violent shifting of pure foolishness.

He went to the ground, to all fours, letting the pain and beauty of the change take him. Roped muscles slid over his entire frame, his muzzle extended, mouth filling with teeth. Strong muscles and sinew formed over bones in a loose, supple, very pliable structure, giving him his graceful, feline sinuous movement. Fire pierced his leg, ran from hip to paw, flames licking over his bones, as they shrieked and protested that reforming, but he gloried in the ability, no matter what the cost to him. His fur went damp and dark as his body shuddered, trying to overcome the twisting of that last bone.

At last he stood, fully formed, a large, heavily muscled leopard, shaking itself, feeling every individual muscle, savoring the moment as it slowly absorbed the fact that after more than two years of not being able to shift—of believing it would never happen again—he had done it. He was large for a leopard—most shifters were quite a lot larger than their wholly animal counterparts—but he weighed in close to two hundred pounds of solid muscle. Even for his kind, that was a large leopard.

Each leopard had a unique spotted coat, a beautiful blend of golden fur splashed liberally with dark rosettes so that when they remained stationary, the pattern created an optical illusion of moving spots. Thick, but loose, the coat provided ample protection in a ferocious fight. Drake was a vicious, skilled fighter, very experienced, and bore the scars to prove it. He was abnormally strong in a world of shifters who had enormous strength.