Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
MALEK
Evie stayed later than she usually did that afternoon.
By the time she finally tucked her camera into its padded case, the light reaching the creek had changed from the pale gold of early afternoon into the deeper amber that appeared before the canopy swallowed most of the sun.
Evie sat with one leg folded beneath her, checking the last of the photographs she'd taken while Red watched from a branch overhead with the unmistakable disappointment of someone who had been told repeatedly to mind his own business.
She'd spent most of the afternoon arguing with animals about my suitability as a mate.
I had enjoyed that far more than I should have.
“All right, Cat. I need to get back before Mara decides I've finally been eaten,” Evie told me as she slid the camera into her bag and adjusted the padded divider around the lens.
Several strands had escaped the braid hanging over her shoulder, curling against her damp cheek and neck while she checked each compartment with the same care she gave everything connected to her work.
She would be wrong. If I were going to eat you, I would have done it before you started bringing chicken, I told Evie, lifting my head from my paws while the humid air carried the familiar mixture of field soap, warm skin, and the faint medicinal trace of her blockers toward me.
Evie stopped with one hand wrapped around the strap of her bag and slowly looked in my direction.
“Wow. Good to know the chicken is what's keeping me alive. Here I thought we'd built a friendship,” Evie replied, one eyebrow lifting as she settled the heavier bag against her hip and gave me an exaggeratedly wounded look.
The chicken helped, I told Evie, dragging my tail once through the dry leaves as the corner of her mouth twitched.
“You're terrible,” Evie informed me, pointing one finger in my direction before turning toward the shallow crossing.
She tested the first slick stone with the toe of her boot, shifted her weight onto it, and glanced back over her shoulder.
“And don't start anything with Red after I leave.
He's annoying, but I'm pretty sure eating him would be bad for local biodiversity.”
He starts it, I reminded Evie, stretching one foreleg ahead of me while she crossed to the next stone. From the branch above us came an indignant squawk.
Lies, Red declared, ruffling his scarlet feathers as he leaned forward and glared down at me. Spotted one is violent. I am charming.
“You are both exhausting,” Evie told us, laughing as she reached the opposite bank and looked between me and the macaw. “I'm not refereeing this tomorrow.”
Red flapped his wings once.
You will, Red informed Evie, sounding entirely confident as he climbed higher onto the branch. You always do.
Evie stared at him for a second before shaking her head.
“I hate that you're probably right,” Evie muttered to Red, adjusting the strap crossing her chest before turning toward the trail.
I should have let her leave without adding anything.
Instead, the familiar urge to follow tightened through me as soon as I saw the narrow path waiting behind her.
I'd checked the route earlier. There hadn't been fresh predator sign anywhere near it, and the research station wasn't far enough away to justify concern, but knowing that did little to silence the part of me that disliked watching her disappear into the forest alone.
Be careful on the way back, I told Evie, my voice quieter as I lifted my head and listened automatically for movement beyond her. Evie paused before entering the trees. The teasing softened from her face when she glanced back at me, one hand resting on the strap of her camera bag.
“I will. See you tomorrow, Cat,” Evie promised me, deliberately emphasizing the nickname she knew irritated me.
My ears flattened. Evie's smile widened before she turned and disappeared between the broad leaves crowding the trail.
Above me, Red made a pleased sound.
Cat, Red repeated, bobbing his head as if he'd just discovered the word.
Leave, I told Red, turning my head slowly toward the branch.
Very good name, Red informed me, spreading his wings when I rose to my feet. Short. Accurate. Easy to remember.
Now, I warned Red, taking one deliberate step toward the trunk. Red launched himself into the air with a burst of scarlet and blue, his laughter carrying through the canopy long after he disappeared.
I listened for Evie instead. Her boots remained distinct for several minutes, pressing into damp soil and occasionally scraping against exposed roots while the faint rattle of equipment followed each step.
Around those sounds, the rainforest carried on without concern for either of us.
Eventually Evie's footsteps blended into the forest and disappeared.
Only then did I stretch.
Several days ago, the movement would have sent pain along my side.
Now the healing skin merely pulled beneath my fur, and the leg that had been caught in the wire took my full weight without complaint.
I'd already run on it that morning and climbed one of the steeper sections along the northern boundary without difficulty.
There was no physical reason for me to continue spending every afternoon beneath the same roots where Evie had first found me.
There hadn't been for several days. That didn't mean I'd spent every hour here even when the injury was worse.
The first evening after Evie treated me, I'd missed a check-in with Tavian and Luca.
That alone had been enough to send both of them looking.
We had shared territory, work, and a home for too many years for one of us to disappear in the middle of a patrol without the other two noticing, especially when that missing Alpha happened to be the one responsible for knowing where everyone else was.
Tavian had found my blood trail first. Luca had followed the vegetation I'd flattened while dragging myself away from the wire.
By the time they reached the creek, Evie had been gone for hours, leaving them to find me beneath the roots with a cleaned wound, a wrapped leg, traces of human medicine around the bank, and the scent of a human Omega thoroughly worked into my coat.
Tavian had asked enough questions for three people.
Who was she? Where had she come from? Had she seen me shift? Why was a human Omega that deep in the forest? Why had she approached an injured leopard instead of running in the opposite direction? Why did I smell as though she'd been touching me for hours?
I'd answered the questions that mattered.
I wasn't dying. A human woman had found me.
She'd treated the injuries. She hadn't seen me shift.
And until I understood more about her—and about the strange fact that she could apparently hold conversations with animals—neither Tavian nor Luca was going anywhere near her.
Luca had examined my side and leg, decided her treatment was competent, and spent long enough studying the neat bandage around my leg that I knew his curiosity wasn't entirely medical.
Neither of them had pushed after that. That was part of why the three of us worked so well together.
Tavian might ask every thought the moment it entered his head, and Luca could notice things I would have preferred to keep unnoticed, but both knew when I wasn't ready to discuss something.
They trusted that when it mattered, I would.
Their willingness to wait hadn't made either of them less curious.
Especially when Evie's scent kept returning with me.
Every afternoon she came to the creek, and every evening I eventually returned to my pack carrying some new trace of her.
Soap, damp cotton, earth, sweat, camera equipment, whatever food she'd brought, and beneath everything else the warmer Omega scent her blockers dulled without completely erasing.
Neither Tavian nor Luca had commented. The restraint required from Tavian had been remarkable.
The morning after the storm had nearly broken him.
Evie had slept beside me for hours, leaving far more of herself behind than an afternoon sitting nearby ever had.
When I'd returned toward the temple later that morning, Tavian had been halfway through telling Luca about a damaged marker along the western boundary.
He'd stopped speaking the instant I entered the courtyard.
His nostrils flared once and his amber eyes moved over me.
Then he looked at Luca. Luca had been sorting herbs across one of the old stone tables. He paused with a bundle still in one hand, drew in a slow breath, and raised his eyes to mine before glancing toward Tavian.
I'd stared at both of them.
Tavian had opened his mouth. Then, in what might have been his greatest display of good judgment in years, he'd closed it again.
Luca had returned to his herbs.
Nobody had asked a single question.
I'd almost been proud of them. They knew there was a human Omega. They knew she returned regularly, knew enough of her scent by then to recognize it whenever I came back from the creek, and had certainly realized that my continued presence here had stopped being about recovering from the trap.
What they didn't know was Evie herself.
Once my side stopped interfering with movement, I'd resumed most of my normal schedule.
I patrolled early enough to cover the important boundaries before the worst heat collected beneath the canopy, hunted when necessary, and returned to the temple whenever something required my attention.
Tavian, Luca, and I had also spent hours searching the surrounding territory for some explanation for the snare.
Someone had gone much farther into our land than they should have.