Page 32

“E asy, boy.”

The tall woman stared at the cat with her hands lifted up.

He thought it was to show she had no weapons.

He didn’t believe the show of meekness.

None of the others had showed weapons, either.

They’d all smelled of blood.

So did this one.

She crept a little closer and the light hit her face, showing bruises and an eye swelled nearly shut.

Odd.

He didn’t remember the others looking like that.

She smelled of her own blood.

That was…different.

He’d been smelling his own blood on his body for weeks.

And Nene’s.

Nene .

A voice inside his head cried out and for a minute, he almost remembered. He wasn’t a leopard, but a man. His name was .

But then her screams rose from his memory to taunt him and the festering wounds, the fever took her voice away and it was just the leopard, slowly starving and lost in this cold, isolated place.

They hunted him even now but he knew how to hide, how to climb. He’d killed so many of them, he’d lost track.

This one…she wasn’t like the others.

Her eyes softened as she studied him.

“Come on, honey,” she said gently. “I don’t want to die here and I don’t think you do, either. Let me get you away. You’ve got family somewhere, don’t you?”

Family…

He turned the word over in his mind, considered it.

Did he have family?

The thought hadn’t even fully formed when the answer was there.

A man.

Slim and dark-haired, with eyes that saw everything.

Father .

Not his first father, but his father, nonetheless.

He lifted his head and stared at the woman, misery washing over him.

As if she understood, she came to him and knelt by his side.

“It’s alright,” she told him. “I can get you out of here.”

Her fingers grazed the ruff of fur at his neck. And he scented something on her that he’d missed in his miserable state. But by the time he reacted, it was too late.