She felt her cat leap in anger. In a few sentences he’d reduced her real grief to self-pity. And maybe it was time someone did. She was tired of carrying her anger and wrapping it around her as armor. She’d run like a child and hid in the rain forest instead of tracking Conner down and confronting him as she should have. She’d loved him with every breath in her body, but she hadn’t even tried to find out why he’d used her feelings for him.
She hated that this man, looking so cool and calm, with the mist swirling around him and the night shining in his eyes, was the one to make her look at herself. She should have looked in the mirror and found the courage herself. She’d never been much afraid of anything, certainly not expressing her opinion or confronting someone if she had to. Yet she’d run like a rabbit, and hid herself away with her plants and work instead of picking up the pieces. Instead of admitting her father had been a criminal, she should’ve at least demanded some kind of closure with Conner.
When had she become such a coward that she needed a snarling leopard to threaten his friend because her little feelings might be hurt when someone told the truth? She was ashamed of herself. She straightened, letting go of her death grip on the cat’s fur. “Self-pity is insidious, isn’t it?”
Elijah shrugged. “So is righteous anger, of which I’ve felt plenty in my lifetime. Come on back to the cabin, you two. We have a lot of work to do in the morning. And, Conner, someone has to take that cub in hand. You didn’t let us kill him, so he’s on you.”
Isabeau scowled at him. “He fell in with the wrong crowd. He didn’t deserve to die. Are all of you this blood-thirsty? He can’t be more than twenty.”
“He sank his claws into a female, and you wouldn’t be saying that if Adan was lying dead at your feet,” Elijah pointed out, his tone mild.
She noted that he’d put the sin of clawing a female before killing Adan. She had a lot to learn about the world of leopards. It was strange how she was more comfortable with these men than she should have been. She looked up at the high canopy where the wind swirled the mist into strange shapes that wrapped around the trees, forming gray veils she couldn’t see through, not even with her superior night vision. This, then, was the world where she belonged.
Conner had said there was a higher law. Before she closed all doors and made judgments, she needed to learn the rules. In any case, while she was in the presence of so many leopards, she needed to learn as much as she could from them.
“I don’t think he would have killed Adan without provocation,” Isabeau defended. “He was actually quite gentle and a few times he whispered to me that he wouldn’t really hurt me.”
“That’s bullshit with his claws in your throat and blood dripping down.” Now there was suppressed rage in Elijah’s voice.
Isabeau felt the echo of it in the shudder that went through the leopard pressed so close to her. Jeremiah had come very close to death.
For touching her.
That was where the anger was coming from. Not because he’d threatened any of them or Adan. She was somehow sacred to all of them. Because of Conner? Because she was a female leopard? She didn’t know, but there was solace in the knowledge. A kind of security she’d never felt before.
There was also a newfound confidence that came with her knowledge. She realized Conner hadn’t shifted at the sight of Elijah, not because he was in a better position to protect her as a leopard, but because he didn’t want to embarrass her with his nudity in front of another man. He’d deliberately stayed in animal form, although he couldn’t join in the conversation. She stroked a thank- you down his back, trying to convey silently her appreciation.
Modesty was a foreign concept to these men, she was certain of that. Isabeau walked in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the way the mist enveloped them so closely. She couldn’t see very far in front of her, and the steam rose from the ground so that their bodies appeared to be floating through the clouds without feet.
“It doesn’t hurt,” she assured, when she caught Elijah examining her throat as she came up beside him.
Elijah fell into step with them, taking up a position on the other side of Conner so that the long, powerful body of the cat was between them. He moved easily, with that same fluid motion Conner had, as if he flowed over the ground in silence.
“The kid needs another beating,” Elijah hissed.
The cat made a rumbling sound of agreement deep in his throat, and Isabeau smiled. “I don’t think either one of you is very far from your cat.”
“Law of the jungle,” Elijah said as if that explained everything.
And to them it did, she realized. Another bit of information. Their lives were not more complicated because of their leopards, they were less so. They saw the world in black and white rather than in shades of gray. They did what it took to get a nasty job done, and if that meant seducing a woman to save children, so be it.
Why her heart squeezed painfully in her chest she didn’t know. The thought of Conner touching—kissing—holding another woman made her feel sick. And she’d brought him here to do just that.
“I guess I don’t understand these clear lines you all have drawn out for yourselves. Who determines what’s right and what’s wrong?” she asked.
The leopard nudged her thigh again, brushing close to her, and she felt her own reaction, the leaping of her senses toward him, a reaching she couldn’t prevent, as it happened too fast, too automatically. The least little touch of man or beast and she reacted with hope, with need, with an almost obsessive response.
Elijah shot her a look. “Are we talking about Jeremiah? Or Conner?”
“Both. All of you.”
“Talk to Conner,” Elijah advised. “He’s more knowledgeable of our ways than I am. I came to the clan late. And everyone makes mistakes, Isabeau. You. Me. Conner. Your father. My father. We all do.”
She kept pace with the leopard, looking straight ahead. Water splashed from the sloped hills into a narrow stream-bed. They walked over the rocks and continued wading through the water toward the other side where the bank was less steep. Isabeau felt a pang of uneasiness and then deep inside, her cat stirred, shuddering awake.
Something tugged at her ankle from behind and then she was down and the water closed over her head. Almost immediately she was tumbled over and over, as if in a washing machine, rolling while something wrapped tightly around her, holding her in strong, steel-like coils. She heard herself screaming in her head, but she had the presence of mind not to open her mouth beneath the water.
Her arm, where her wound was, burned and throbbed. Her left wrist, trapped in the thick coils, felt as if it might burst from the pressure. She tried not to struggle, telling herself Elijah and Conner would both come to her aid and not to panic. The snake rolled her over and she felt the cool night on her face. She gulped air, drawing a deep breath before it rolled her over again. Her face scraped along the rocks as it took her down along the bottom.
Elijah leapt over the leopard, a knife in his fist. Conner exploded beside him, roaring a challenge, whirling around and sinking his teeth deep into the writhing coils, holding the snake, preventing it from taking its prey into deeper water. The green anaconda was large, close to four hundred pounds of solid muscle, and it was hungry, determined not to lose its prey. The head was close to Isabeau’s head, the fangs dangerously near her neck. It didn’t have a fatal bite, or venom, but it would anchor itself there and hold her until it could constrict and suffocate her.
Elijah tried to move around the churning water to get to the head, but the snake continued to thrash and roll, keeping the water roiling, preventing the man from doing more than angering it by slashing at the coils of thick muscle as he moved around the constantly writhing snake. The cat gripped the tail of the anaconda in its mouth and began a steady backward pull toward the bank in an effort to drag the snake to shallow water to keep Isabeau from drowning.
The snake was quite large and obviously female by its size. She was dark green with dark oval spots decorating her scales up and down her back. Along her sides were the telltale ochre spots of the anaconda. Her head was large and narrow, running straight into the thick, muscular neck, so it was difficult to tell where the two separated, especially in the churning water. The eyes and nostrils set on top of its head allowed it to breathe while mostly submerged. At home in the water, it was using its adeptness to its advantage, fighting the pull of the relentless leopard.
As Conner took two more steps back, gripping more of the snake to get more leverage, Elijah circled to the front, reaching below the surface of the water and dragging Isabeau and the snake out so she could draw in another breath. Unfortunately, as she gasped, her lungs burning for air, the snake constricted tighter.
“Conner, hold the damn thing,” Elijah snarled, his teeth snapping together in frustration.
Time seemed to slow down for Isabeau. She could hear the leopard snarling, but her pulse was hammering loud in her ears. Her lungs felt starved for air and fear was a vile taste in her mouth. Every instinct she had told her to fight, to struggle, but she forced herself to stay calm, refusing to give in to the panic that threatened to reduce her to a screaming, mindless victim.
In her mind she chanted Conner’s name. She knew the instant he shifted—or maybe her cat knew. She couldn’t see him, and she could still hear the growls rumbling, reverberating through the water, but she knew he was using the combined strength of man and leopard to drag the snake onto the embankment.
Elijah kept going in and out of her line of vision, his face grim, his eyes locked on the head of the snake, the knife trying to slice through scale and muscle to sever the head. The snake knew it was in trouble now, and the only avenue left to it was abandoning its meal and escaping. The moment the snake loosened its coils, Conner reached past the thrashing body, wrapped his arm around her leg and yanked her to him. He all but threw her behind him. She caught a glimpse of that rock- hard, masculine body, ripped with ropes of muscles, as he plunged into the shallow water to help Elijah.
The snake coiled around the man in an effort to escape the blade of the knife, trying to use sheer weight and muscle to drive him back into deeper water. Conner gripped the thrashing body and held while Elijah killed the snake. The animal went limp and both men stood, bent, chests heaving from the tremendous fight against such a strong creature.
Conner turned to her, crouching low in the water to run his hands over her. “Are you all right, Isabeau?”
She considered screaming. Or bursting into tears. She’d nearly died, crushed by a snake, or drowned. But he looked perfectly calm as if it was an ordinary occurrence and no big deal. She swore he even looked regretful as he watched Elijah drag the carcass onto land. Was she all right? She looked down at her body. She felt bruised and maybe a little battered, but nothing was broken. She was soaked, but the rain had already done that.
She slowly took stock of her situation. She was still in the stream, up to her ankles, and she’d just survived an honest to God anaconda attack. Her heart pounded like thunder in her ears, her breath came in ragged, harsh gasps, but every single nerve ending was alive. The world was crisper, fresh, more beautiful than she’d ever seen it.
The mist hung in soft veils surrounding the black, whispering leaves peaking through as the wind swayed the canopy slightly. The water ran over the rocks, a dark, gleaming ribbon of silver as it moved. She could see the long, thick body of the snake lying on the bank. Beside it, Elijah sat, a small smile spreading across his face. She couldn’t stop her gaze from straying back to Conner, where his naked body rippled with defined muscles.
Conner grinned at her, a slow, very much alive grin that took what little breath she had and replaced it with a rush of heat and adrenaline. He raised a dripping hand to his hair and slicked it back away from his face. “What a rush, right?”
She nodded, fascinated by the sheer magnetism of his face. There was joy—
life
—shining in his eyes. Flames leapt and burned brightly in the golden eyes. He winked at her and butterflies began a serious migration in the pit of her stomach.
“Sorry about the lack of clothes. I thought your life was more important than your modesty.”
“At the time I did too,” she admitted. Although now she was more concerned with her virtue—what little she had left. She wanted him to stand up. His strong thighs hid the front of his body from her, but her mouth was watering. She knew what was there. And she knew he’d be rock hard. He usually was around her, and she hadn’t seen much difference since they’d been in each other’s company.
“I hated that we had to kill her,” Conner said, and this time there was no mistaking the regret in his voice. “She was a female looking for a meal is all. I hate losing any of them.”
“I’m grateful I wasn’t her meal,” Isabeau admitted.
“I should have been more careful,” Conner said. “They lie under the banks in the natural caves there where the water is shallow and a little sluggish. We aren’t at a very high elevation and I should have been more alert.”
Elijah snickered and Conner sent him a glowering warning. Elijah just laughed. “Clearly, your mind was where it shouldn’t have been.”
Conner’s glower turned to a smoldering glare. “Why weren’t you alert?”
The glare didn’t have any more effect than the glower. Elijah laughed out loud. “Trying to converse, you mangy cat. It isn’t easy trying to get your sorry ass out of trouble. It takes some thinking.”
Isabeau burst out laughing. “Both of you are insane.”
“
We’re
insane? You’re the one standing there laughing after a snake tried to swallow you whole,” Elijah pointed out.
“I’m sure it would have dislocated all her bones first,” Conner said.
She shoved him, hoping for a big splash. Her push barely rocked him, but he flashed her another wide grin that shook her up, and his smile was worth missing out on seeing him going facedown in the water. It was the respect on his face. In his eyes. He was proud of her and there was respect in Elijah’s eyes as well. She couldn’t help the small, blossoming glow spreading inside of her.