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His ani as he slipped out of his jeans and thrust them deep in the other boot He needed to run free in his other for He took off sprinting through the trees, heedless of his bare feet, leaping over a rotten log as he reached for the change He had always been a fast shifter, a necessity living in the rain forest surrounded by predators He was neither fully leopard nor fullypain as his leopard leapt to the forefront, taking over his form as his body bent and the ropes of muscles shifted beneath his thick fur

Where his feet had been, clawed paws padded easily over the spongy forest floor He went up and over a series of downed trees and through thick brush Ten ether The jungle had sed hied His blood surged hotly in his veins as he raised his face and let his whiskers act like the radar they were For the first time in months he was comfortable in his own skin He stretched and padded deeper into the familiar wilderness

Conner preferred his leopard form to that of his man form He bore too many sins on his soul to be entirely comfortable as a human The clawhim for all time

He didn't like thinking too otten them or why he'd allowed Isabeau Chandler to inflict the as much distance as he could between him and his woman--his mate--but he hadn't been able to shut out the look on Isabeau's face when she found out the truth about hiht

He was guilty of one of the worst crimes his kind could commit He had betrayed his own mate He hadn't known she was his et close to her father, but that didn't matter

The leopard lifted his face to the wind and pulled back his lips in a silent snarl His paws sank silently into the decaying vegetation on the forest floor Hethe leaves of numerous bushes Periodically he stood up and raked his clan the trunk of a tree,the other males knoas home and someone to contend with He'd taken this job to stay out of the Borneo rain forest where Isabeau lived He didn't dare go there, because he knew if he stayed there, eventually he'd forget all about being civilized and he'd let his leopard free to find her And she wanted nothing--nothing--to do with him

A lol rumbled in his throat as he tried to choke off the ht and day It didn't matter that he'd put an ocean between them Distance would never nized her He had all the traits of a leopard, the reflexes, the aggression and cunning, the ferocity and jealousy, but most of all the drive to find his mate and

keep her The er a way his people could live, but here in the rain forest he couldn't keep the pri

He thought co back to his ho hient need until he wanted to rake and claw, to tear open an enemy and roar to the heavens He wanted to track Isabeau down and claim her whether she wanted him or not Unfortunately, his mate was a shifter as well, whichfierce, abiding hatred

He looked up to the towering trees, the thick canopy shutting out the sunlight Floound up the tree trunks, a riot of color, vying with ht above Birds flitted from branch to branch, the canopy alive with constant y floor ith reat chunky masses, hidden by broad leaves, and snakes wound around the twisted limbs, nearly i branches

He wanted to drink in the beauty of it all He wanted to forget what he'd done to his own et Her father, a doctor, had been the way into the enehter and you had the father It was easy enough Isabeau had fallen under his spell inetism, but because she had been his in a previous life cycle Neither had known