"She'll have easy scavenging for a few days, with the hyena bodies, but other animals will come around for those, too. We should move them a safe distance away. She'll take her cubs somewhere else as soon as she's able to. Mother cheetahs move their den every few days to keep predators from finding the babies. She's not chipped, so I can't track her⁠—"

  "Oh," Shannon said, obscurely disappointed. "You mean you can't use like a super secret cheetah sense to find her?"

  Aeolis grinned. "Sorry, no. Not reliably. You're taking this very well."

  "You didn't see me staring at your hat and gibbering for ten minutes after you shifted and ran off. Why didn't it change with you? Your clothes did."

  "I have no idea," he admitted. "Hats never do."

  "What about sunglasses?"

  "I don't wear them."

  Shannon said, "Oh," in disappointment again, then turned her focus out the front windshield again. Thirty-six hours earlier, she'd been in a small Colorado skiing town, elbow deep in snow if she left the house, looking forward to a new adventure, one that would let her forget about the shattering of her dreams for a while.

  Thirty-six minutes earlier, she hadn't known that shapeshifters existed, or that she'd signed on for an adventure that would change everything she knew about the world.

  And now there were dead hyenas twenty feet away. Flies buzzed over them as their blood sank into the ground, and small animals approached to see if they were really dead, and therefore safe to eat. Shannon didn't recognize this version of the world, not on any level at all, and yet she absolutely didn't want to give it up. Not for anything.

  She couldn't decide if that scared or thrilled her more.

  "Aeolis?"

  "Yes?"

  "When you said you needed a sharpshooter to protect the reserve…who exactly were you hiring me to protect?"

  Aeolis exhaled. "The true animals. There are poachers, ivory hunters, sometimes just people who think killing an endangered animal is a mark of⁠—"

  "Manliness."

  His full lips thinned. Shannon, watching his mouth, wet her own lips, and almost missed his response. "They're usually men, yes. And although in one to one combat, many animals can hold their own, they are at a disadvantage with hunters carrying distance scope elephant rifles."

  Air huffed from Shannon's chest, sort of a laugh. "Most things are."

  "True enough. But we shifters at least understand who's hunting us, and what weapons they use. We're not as easy prey."

  "But you are being hunted," Shannon said quietly.

  "And the reserve is a place of safety for my kind as well as true animals," Aeolis concluded, then glanced at her. "For shifters in general, not just cheetahs. And of course, a wildlife reserve in South Africa is safer for a cheetah or a hyena shifter than a bear or a wolf, if we want to take our animal shapes. To see bears here would raise questions, and our only wolves live on the northern part of the continent."

  "There are hyena shifters?" Shannon looked in dismay at the dead animals in front of them, then sent a querying glance back at Aeolis, who chuckled and shook his head.

  "There are, but those aren't among them. She's had another cub." He smiled briefly at the thicket. "I'm going to move the hyenas to keep scavengers away from her cubs."

  "Do you need help?

  "You've only been on the reserve an hour," Aeolis said with another rueful smile. "I'll leave 'moving bodies' until day two. You could⁠—"

  Shannon said, "Don't keep me in suspense," when he clearly wasn't going to finish the sentence. "I'm here to help. What can I do?"

  "Animals can smell the cheetah in me," he said slowly. "But you're human. If you left your scent around here, it would help to scare other animals off. I can probably make the queen understand that you're not a danger."

  A little grin started on Shannon's face. "Are you asking me to go pee strategically around that thicket?"

  Aeolis took another deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. "I don't think that would have occurred to me, no. Not in so many words. I was thinking…shuffle around barefoot, maybe."

  "You wouldn't believe how many times I've squatted in a bush while training," Shannon assured him. "Is there anything that's going to bite me on the ass, or that I need to not touch because it's a poison death thorn?"

  "This is not Australia," Aeolis said in mock offense. "Not everything in Africa wants to kill you. But…perhaps you should touch as little as possible."

  "Terrible stereotype," Shannon said as she got out of the Jeep. "If you want to look at North America the same way we make 'Australia is trying to kill you' jokes, it's worse. At least everything in Australia that wants to eat you lives in the water."

  "Do you know, Shannon Kavanaugh, I think you'll fit right in here?"

  "I hope so, because I don't go around peeing on thickets for just anybody." Shannon couldn't quite believe those words had just come out of her mouth, but literally nothing had gone the way she expected it to since seeing the teeny tiny airplane that morning, so she didn't feel that should stop her.

  "Let me warn the queen." Aeolis followed her out of the Jeep, shifted, and crept into the thicket on his belly, obviously making himself as small and harmless as he could. A series of snarls erupted before he backed out and shifted again, looking chastened. "I'm not sure she believed me, but she's still in labor, so she's not in much position to argue."

  "Can you actually talk to her?"

  "Not in the way humans talk to each other. I can't say 'you're safe, the human female is trying to protect you'. I can show her I'm not afraid, and there are communications you can't hear that indicate safety or danger, but even if she wasn't birthing, female cheetahs tend to be solitary, so I couldn't even go lie down with her to show her it's safe. It'll have to do."

  "Great," Shannon said brightly. "You go move hyena bodies and I'll go pee all over everything. This is an amazing first day on the job."

  CHAPTER 4

  By sundown, even if his cheetah hadn't told him that Shannon Kavanaugh was his fated mate, Aeolis Savio thought he would have been madly in love with her anyway.

  She had, in fact, scent-marked the whole area where the queen was hiding, and even the bugs seemed to be avoiding it after that. He'd dragged the hyenas away one at a time, hauling them in his jaws, until she was done. Then Shannon, looking exasperated, had found chain in the back of the Jeep, wrapped the remaining hyenas in it, hooked them up, and pulled them all away together. Afterward, sweating, slightly blood-stained, and bright pink from heat even though she swore she wasn't actually sunburned, she'd helped him set up a camp far enough from the queen's den to not threaten her, but close enough that Aeolis could keep an eye out for predators.

  "I'll drive you in to the village tomorrow," he promised apologetically. "I'm sorry. This isn't how your first day was meant to go."

  "It's fine. Nothing like throwing me into the deep end, right? Besides." She was sitting on the Jeep's back bumper, a few feet away from the emergency tent they'd set up, and her gaze was on the stars. "Look at that sky. I've spent a lot of time away from light pollution while I was training, but I've never seen this sky. The only constellation I know is the Southern Cross."

  "Ah, but there are different names, down here. Different stories, to go with the stars. The cross is giraffes, or the tree of life, depending on who your people are."

  Shannon laughed, a beautiful, rich sound of surprise. "I don't think I've got enough imagination to see it as giraffes. I can see a tree, though."

  "It takes quite a lot of imagination to see Ursa Major as a bear," Aeolis pointed out, and Shannon grinned at him in the darkness.

  "It's easier to see as a giraffe, in fact. The Big Dipper's handle could be its neck and head. I always thought it should be that way around anyway. Bears don't have long tails." Her gaze went to the sky again, allowing him to look at her without fear of being caught. She was very pale, even under the starlight, but she'd been right about not being sunburned. She'd just turned hot pink from the heat. He wondered if all of her had turned that pink, or just the visible bits, and decided that was none of his business.

  Bet it could be, his cheetah purred.

  She's my employee, Aeolis replied. I don't care how amazing or fated she is. That's an abuse of power. If there's going to be any relationship there, it can't happen now, or like this. Or maybe ever, but that, even just a few hours after meeting Shannon, was too awful a thought to contemplate. Aeolis would quit his job, before he'd risk losing a woman who would hop off a plane and immediately throw herself into an entirely new world, without even waiting for job orientation.

  'Abuse of power' and 'job orientation' were not concepts cheetahs held dearly. Aeolis earned a golden-eyed gaze of mystification from his cheetah, who said, But she's your fated mate, as if that sorted everything out.

  I know. And like I said, I'll quit my job if I have to.

  But the true cheetahs need you!

  Aeolis said, "I know," aloud, if softly, and Shannon smiled at him again momentarily.

  "Giraffes do, though. Longer than a bear's, anyway. Are there shifter giraffes?"

  "Uh." It took him an embarrassingly long time to remember what they'd been talking about, and to realize that his 'I know' could have been construed as a response to 'Bears don't have long tails.' He said, "Uh," again, then shook himself with a feline ripple. "There are. Or were. Almost anything that fought in the arenas bonded with humans and became shifters, at one point."

  "They fought giraffes in the coliseums?"

  "Giraffes, goats, hawks, elephants, bears…pretty much anything they could lay their hands on, and they laid their hands on a lot. Some of us have survived better than others. Big cats, birds, even bears can manage to hide in the remaining green places, even in the modern world. It's hard to hide when you're fifteen feet tall, though."

  Shannon's eyebrows lifted and she gave a little nod at the Southern Cross. "Yeah, I guess so. So, um. Are there a lot of shapeshifters working for the reserve?"

  "Not in so many words, no." Aeolis leaned against the Jeep's bumper, too, folding his arms and looking at the sky so he didn't stare at Shannon. Not that he needed to, since if he closed his eyes he could already see her, strong-jawed and slim with her hair loose over her shoulders right now. She hadn't shown any indication of the injury that had ended her Olympic career, but then, he wasn't asking her to ski through miles of snow right now, either.

  Or likely ever, given that while it did snow in South Africa, it was generally limited to the mountains. Imvelo Reserve was well above sea level, but not that high. Aeolis hadn't seen snow in years, except at a distance. Which was fine with him: cheetahs were not naturally snow-loving creatures. He knew shifters who were, but most of them weren't working—or hiding—at a South African wildlife reserve. "Shifters come here to recover," he said, afraid his silence had gone on too long. "Not necessarily from injuries. We usually heal very fast, but sometimes we just need a safe place to be away from the world. Somewhere we can be ourselves. Imvelo isn't safari-oriented, so photographers don't accidentally get pictures of us shifting."

  "But there are hunters," Shannon said, still to the stars. "Do they know what they're hunting? Who they're hunting?"

  "Some of them. Others are just poachers."

  "As if that wasn't bad enough." Shannon glanced at him, her eyes clear and green in the starlight. At least, they were to a shifter's vision. Aeolis supposed an ordinary human might not be able to pick out their color so easily, in the faint light. She said, "So tell me. Am I here to protect—what did you call them? True animals? Or shifters?"

  "I think that's your decision, now. I hired you to protect the true animals. To help us deal with poachers, not hunters. But I didn't imagine I'd be telling you who I really was five minutes after you landed, either."

  "Or ever?"

  Aeolis sighed. "Or ever. We don't, generally. It's not safe."

  Her hand stole out brush his upper arm, barely a touch, but one that sent electricity through him. "That must be hard. I won't tell anyone."

  "I know." He unfolded his arms enough to let himself cover her hand with his for just a moment. There was an astonishing amount of strength in her hands, obvious with even the slightest contact. But then, she gripped ski poles and gun barrels for a living, so her strength shouldn't surprise him. "Thanks."

  "No problem. Now, look." Shannon retracted her hand and yawned suddenly, so hugely that it made Aeolis yawn too, until his jaw cracked. She said, "Sorry," through another enormous yawn. "I just got off a plane from Colorado, where it's…I don't even know what time."

  "Eight hours behind us," Aeolis volunteered. "So it's about two in the afternoon there."

  "God, that's awful, it should be five in the morning after a bender, the way I feel. But in my defense I've been traveling for, like, forever, with no real sleep, and it's been a very long and somewhat strange day. I'm gonna hit the hay."

  "Only somewhat strange?" For some reason, that lit a smile and a kernel of hope in Aeolis, and it burned hotter when Shannon gave him another yawn-riddled smile.

  "Dude, I'd say it's been the strangest day of my life, but I don't want to give tomorrow any ideas about clearing that bar."

  Aeolis, smiling, said, "I thought only Californians said 'dude' like that."

  "Oh, no, it's infected the whole country. Not much difference between a surfer boi and a snowboarder, when you get right down to it, they're just riding different forms of water." Shannon stretched, then stood and eyed the tent. "How do we do this, both in the tent, one in the Jeep, one in the tent?"

  Both in the tent!

  Aeolis felt that as strongly as his cheetah did, but bit his tongue on saying so aloud, hissing, inappropriate! at the big cat instead. To Shannon, he said, "I'm happy to take whichever you think is probably less comfortable. Cats can sleep anywhere."

  "Oh." She blinked a few times, then laughed again. "Oh, right. Um, okay, look, this is probably weird and totally out of line, but I have no idea how cold it's going to get tonight. I'm sure it won't be cold-cold, not for somebody who lives in Colorado, but…is it totally weird to say it'd probably be kind of great to have a giant cat to sleep with?" She screwed up her whole face with the last words, but Aeolis's heart leaped with hope.

  Before he could speak, though, Shannon stiffened her shoulders and shook her whole upper body side to side like she was trying to cast off what she'd said. "No, no, that's really weird, I'm so sorry."

  "It's fine," Aeolis said hastily. "I wouldn't have thought of it, but I'd be happy to. It gets to about fifteen or sixteen degrees—" He broke off at Shannon's expression before they both said, "Celsius!" and Shannon laughed.

  "I just left fifteen degrees Fahrenheit and I was like 'no way is it getting that cold tonight'! Fifteen C, that's like…" She turned her gaze to the stars again, allowing him to admire the line of her jaw and collarbone. "About sixty, I think? That's not bad for running around in, but it'll get cold to sleep in. Not that there's not gear." She gestured at the little camp site, then looked embarrassed. "I shouldn't have asked."

  "Ms. Kavanaugh. Shannon," Aeolis corrected himself. "Have you ever met a cat who didn't want to sleep on somebody? With? I'm not sure there's a word here I can use without it sounding wrong," he added apologetically.

  To his relief, Shannon smiled. "On, with, by, beside, whatever. And yes, I have met a couple of cats who didn't like sleeping on people, but I admit they were the exceptions. Are you sure? I don't want to be weird. It's too late," she said, obviously to herself. "You're being super weird."

  Aeolis, determined to end the discussion, shifted into his cheetah form and sat down politely, tail wrapped around his feet, to wait for Shannon to enter the tent. Her breath caught and she just stared down at him a moment, her fingers twitching. "Would it be very rude to pet you? I don't even know if you understa—oop!" Aeolis shoved his hand under her hand, purring as loudly as he could when she began to scritch his scalp. "I guess you can understand me," she said, obviously thrilled. "I didn't know cheetahs purred. That's amazing. Okay. Okay, then, I guess this is how it works. Who's a good kitty, hm? You're a good kitty. You're a goo—oh, god, I'm sorry. That's not appro…look, I'm just going to bed now, before I dig any deeper of a hole."

  She ducked into the tent and scuffled around a moment before calling, "I don't know if you're waiting for an invitation, Big Mr. Kitty, but you can come in now." Much more softly, again to herself, she said, "You just called your boss 'Big Mr. Kitty', you twit," and when Aeolis padded in, she'd buried her head under one of the small flat pillows and was muttering at herself like she needed a good scolding.

  Aeolis lay down beside her and pushed his head up into her armpit until the muttering from under the pillow became a giggle. She said, "Stop that," without heat, and he began purring again.

  To his delight, Shannon Kavanaugh took her head out from under the pillow, put her arm around his furry chest, and with a contented sigh, went to sleep.

  CHAPTER 5

  Shannon's hip hadn't hurt like this in months.

  She woke up to the pervasive dull pain like it was an old, unwelcome friend, unable, at first, to even figure out what was wrong. The light was strange, much too green and warm, coming from the wrong angle, and for an incoherent few seconds she thought that somehow it had settled in her hip to make it hurt. She dragged a deep, pained breath, and realized she'd gone to sleep on the bad hip, then hadn't moved at all, all night.

  Possibly because there was a cheetah with its head wedged between her ribs and her hip, and an enormous paw draped over her torso.

  The details of the last day came flooding back to her and she rolled onto her back, hissing with pain as her weight shifted off her hip. The cheetah—Aeolis Savio—sat up with lazy golden eyes, then abruptly changed to human form, his face drawn with worry. "Ms. Kav—Shannon?"

  "I'm okay." Not even she thought she sounded okay, with the words spoken at the back of her throat, as if agony couldn't escape if she kept them there. "I just. My hip. Whoo. Slept on it." She exhaled another whoo and tried to claw a deep breath back in. "On the ground. Not a great idea. I guess. Whoo." A tight smile formed and disappeared again. "Honestly, I'm not a liability. I just hadn't tried sleeping on the ground since the fall."

 

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