“Mostly you win,” Isabeau interjected.

Conner nodded. “I have to win if I want to live. But the point, Mateo, is that for a long time I thought to be a strong man I couldn’t show emotion. I couldn’t ever lose control. Certainly I could never cry, no matter what the circumstances. But I was wrong about being emotional and not being a man. A real man knows it’s okay to show when he’s hurt. I’ll never get over our mother’s death. Not ever. I’ll think about her every day, and at night, I cry when I’m missing her. Isabeau puts her arms around me and then I don’t feel so alone.”

Mateo pulled his wrist away and wrapped both arms around his middle, as if hugging himself. “I don’t cry about it.”

“About what?” Conner prompted.

“My mom leaving.”

“She didn’t leave you, Mateo,” Conner said. When the boy remained stubbornly staring at the floor, Conner put a thumb under his chin and forced his head up. “Look at me.”

The eyes flashed at him. Anger. Unbearable sorrow. Fear. Conner’s heart contracted. “She didn’t leave us, Mateo. Someone took her from us. Isabeau and I killed him.”

Isabeau gasped, pulling her hand away from his thigh. Conner didn’t look at her, knowing she would disapprove of his methods, but he had been this very little boy with that same rage, that same fear. And he felt the same unbearable sorrow.

“We’re leopard, Mateo, and it isn’t always easy to contain that much hatred and rage, even though our mother told us we should be forgiving. We can never justify taking a life because we’re angry, but sometimes it’s necessary, we have no choice. Do you understand? Our mother wouldn’t want us to harm others, not even when we’re hurting, but we have the right and the obligation to defend ourselves and our families.”

“I hate him.”

Conner nodded. “I hate him too. But that won’t bring her back to us. She left us each other, Mateo. When I look at you, I see her in you. I hope when you look at me you can see her too. We’ll make her proud of us. When I’m having a hard time, when I’m so angry I want to hurt someone, I’ll talk to you about it and you will remind me what she would want. When you’re feeling angry, you talk to me and I’ll remind you. We can get through this together.”

Mateo looked him steadily in the eye, and Conner could see the leopard there, judging, weighing him, wanting to believe he could entrust the child to the man. Conner opened his arms. Mateo’s eyes went liquid, drenched in tears, and he stepped into Conner’s arms.

Conner enfolded him tightly and just held the sobbing boy. There was so much pain in that little frame, and Conner felt that same emotion deep inside. “We have a bond no one can ever take away from us, Mateo. Our mother. She’ll always tie us together, our love of her, our memories of her. It will always be us, you and me and Isabeau.”

Mateo sobbed out his anger and sorrow, hiding his face against Conner’s chest. Conner just held him close and remembered all the times his mother had done the same for him. Eventually he stroked the boy’s hair, waiting for the hiccups that signaled the storm was over.

“Isabeau told me Doc rescued some kittens from a poacher. Did you want to show them to us?”

Mateo nodded and sniffed. “He said they were on a freighter, stuffed in a box with sawdust, and their lungs were messed up.”

“Doc can’t keep them all,” Isabeau said helpfully.

The boy looked up at him with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Someone has to help him out.”

Conner’s eyebrow shot up. Now he knew what parents felt like when their child gave them that look. His heart did some kind of funny melting thing and he found himself looking a little helplessly at Isabeau. She laughed softly and took his free hand.

“Come on. These kitties are pretty big, Mateo. You’d have to help us with care and feeding and exercise.”

“I would. I really would.” Mateo skipped ahead of them to the corner of the barn where four little clouded leopards snarled and spit.

Conner limped after the boy, Isabeau at his side. “Funny what I’m already feeling for him.”

“Me too,” Isabeau acknowledged.

“I checked on Teresa, that servant girl you were worried about,” Conner said. “She’s a single mother and was desperate for money, so she went to work for Sobre in spite of the rumors. She sent the money home to her mother, who was taking care of her son. She was happy to be reunited with them. Adan found her a job.”

She smiled up at him. “Thanks. I couldn’t get her out of my mind.” Her gaze followed Mateo as he sank down near the tumbling, squirming bodies of small leopards, watching their antics with enormous eyes. “I can see why she’d do anything for her child. Mateo’s already getting to me, and I didn’t even give birth to him.”

He bent his head to the temptation of her mouth. Once he touched his lips to hers, it was the same flaring heat, lighting a match to an explosive. His fingers curled around the nape of her neck to anchor her to him while he lost himself in the exquisite taste of her.

“Oooh. That’s gross,” Mateo said. “Are you going to be doing that all the time?”

Conner grinned at him. “All the time,” he confirmed.

Mateo’s answering grin was slow in coming but when it did, it reached his eyes. “Guess I can live with that.”

“Guess I can live with one of those kittens then,” Conner conceded and watched the joy burst across the boy’s face. “But I don’t know about Isabeau. It’s a family decision, right?”