threw my body upward, as if some great force had hit me from behind. I fell back to the bed, screaming with the pain of my abused body taking yet another hit tonight. I needed this to stop. We needed it to stop.

I saw the cats. The leopard looked small beside the lion. Small, sleek, and gleaming black. It had backed away from the larger cat. I didn't blame it. The lioness was huge, a great, tawny beast of a cat. Maybe it would have looked smaller if I hadn't been looking at wolf, and now leopard. The lion was staring at the leopard in a way that was patient, waiting for the leopard to decide what to do next. The lion had the confidence of several hundred pounds of extra muscle on its side.

I let go of Graham and used my good hand to reach for Nathaniel. He bent over my face so that when I touched him, his face was nearly above mine. I buried my face against the sweet warmth of his neck. He always smelled like vanilla to me, but underneath that was the scent of leopard. Sharper than the musk of wolf, less sweet, more exotic for lack of a better word. The leopard stopped being defensive, and looked up with eyes that were soft and gray, with just a hint of green in them. I didn't call Here kitty-kitty, but I called it all the same.

The leopard rose up through me, and hit the surface of my body. It filled me like a hand sliding inside a glove, so that I felt it stretch out and out, filling me. I waited for that fullness to finally split my skin and step out, but nothing happened. I could feel fur rubbing against my skin on the wrong side; I could feel it in there. I gazed down my body, and watched things roll under the skin of my stomach like the cat was rubbing against me. The sensation left me nauseous, but that was all. It wasn't as violent as the wolf had been, but I still wasn't shifting.

Graham and Clay slid off the bed so that Micah could move up beside me. "It's there, but it's not coming out—why?"

Nathaniel slid down so that the two men framed my body with their own. "I don't know," Micah said.

"Give your beast to me," Nathaniel said.

I looked up at him, and thought at the furred thing inside me. It was patient because I wasn't afraid of it. I'd embraced it, welcomed it. Now it slid inside me, waiting for release. A release that I couldn't give it.

"I've taken your beast once before," he said.

"I remember." I turned my head, just enough to see Micah's face. I looked a question at him.

"Give your leopard to him, Anita."

Nathaniel pressed his body closer to my side, so I could feel him pressed soft against my hip. He leaned over me, propping himself across my body