agree to—” He bit off his words as his mate came out of the tent and scowled at him.
Grinning, he said, “To play chess.”
Lucas snorted on the other end. “Yeah, I know that kind of chess,” he said with a grin in his voice. “You sure there’s nothing I need to know?”
Dorian had never lied to his alpha. “There is something,” he said. “Nothing bad, but something I need to work out for myself first.”
A pause, before Lucas said, “All right. You know where I am when you’re ready.”
Hanging up after a few more words, Dorian put aside the phone and watched Shaya come to him. “Hey,” he whispered before a wild craving tore through him.
Sharp concern in his mate’s eyes. “Dorian?” She dropped to her knees beside him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just . . . change of plans.” Cupping her face as he held back the shift so he could speak to her, he said, “The leopard . . . it needs your touch.” And then he surrendered to the painful beauty and sheer joy of the shift, allowing the human part of him to recede into the background as the leopard took center stage.
The leopard he was folded its legs and put its head in Shaya’s lap, its eyes closing as her hands stroked through its fur.
Peace sank into the bones of man and leopard both.
IV
Three hours after returning home from their camping trip, Dorian loitered in the trees outside his alpha’s aerie. He didn’t know quite how to tell Lucas, how to share the joy of what had happened. Any words seemed inadequate.
“Dorian?” Lucas landed on the forest floor in a smooth crouch, having jumped down from the aerie. He was dressed in jeans and a faded blue T-shirt, his feet bare.
Dorian shifted out of the trees. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Since when do you lurk?” His alpha walked over. “Come on up. Sascha’s mak—” Lucas froze, his eyes turning panther in the space of a single heartbeat. Then he moved with alpha speed to capture Dorian’s face between his hands.
Dorian felt his own leopard rise to the surface in response, knew his eyes were changing, his claws releasing. But the leopard stopped there, as if aware they both needed to be in this instant. The animal was as nervous as the man, though Dorian knew full well there was no cause for it—still, he felt like a cub for some reason . . . and then he knew why. This was the first time his leopard had come into direct contact with his alpha.
“Something?” Lucas said, his lips starting to curve. “You describe this as something?”
Dorian shrugged a little sheepishly. “I didn’t know how to say it.”
Laughing, Lucas wrapped his arms around his neck and hauled him close. Dorian went, returning the hug as fiercely as it was given. When he felt wet against his neck, he realized his alpha—his friend—was crying for joy for him. And damn, fuck, he was crying, too.
Drawing back, Lucas grabbed his face in his hands again, kissed him. It was hard, fleeting, and it held the power of the entire pack, Lucas’s veins pulsing with the energy that was DarkRiver. And that energy spoke to his leopard, told it that it was home, that it was welcome, that there was no cause to fear.
“Damn it, Dorian,” Lucas said, slapping him lightly as they both laughed through the tears. “You fucking made me cry.”
“Better not let Hawke see you,” Dorian managed to get out. “You know that wolf would never let you forget it.”
“Like I care.” Stepping back, Lucas gave a single nod.
Dorian didn’t know how he understood, but he did. Ignoring the fact that he didn’t have spare clothes with him, he allowed the shift to take him over, his jeans and sweatshirt disintegrating off him as he became the leopard that was his other half. When it was over, he found himself face-to-face with a black panther with night-glow eyes.
Lifting a paw, Lucas patted the side of his face as he’d done in human form, except this was harder. Cat to cat. Alpha to sentinel. A rough welcome that made his cat’s entire body vibrate with decades of withheld joy. When Lucas opened his mouth and growled, Dorian growled back.
Light sparked in the air, and then a man with black shoulder-length hair and green eyes, his skin muted gold, was crouching in front of him. “Well,” Lucas said with a grin, “thank God you’re not a white-blond fucking leopard. We’d have had