Savage Nature by Christine Feehan Page A

stay in fighting shape, although he hadn’t believed he’d ever have the chance to allow his leopard freedom. Jake and his surgeon had brought about a miracle. He’d ended the first battle almost before it had begun through sheer surprise.
    Drake carefully assessed every aspect of his fighting technique. He’d been fast, but not fast enough. He needed more time for his leopard to run, to once again feel the strength and power in its body. He had experience on the members of the Louisiana lair, but the lair had numbers and if he’d had to fight them all, even one at a time, he would have been in trouble. Dion had scored some heavy gouges and he’d lost blood. Loss of blood meant weakness.
    Toweling off carefully, he examined every wound. Cats could leave venom behind and infection resulted quickly. That meant the hated burn of the iodine. He poured it liberally into his wounds, breaking out in a sweat as he did so. Cursing with every stitch, he sewed up the three worst wounds, steri-stitched the others before putting an antibacterial ointment on each and covering them with gauze. All in all, he wasn’t in too bad shape. He had no doubt that in the morning he’d feel every bruise, but right now, only sleep mattered.
    He scrubbed away the evidence of blood, carefully locked up his room and laid down gingerly on his bed. Smiling, fingers linked behind his head, he drifted somewhere between awake and asleep. At once Saria was there, a smile curving her soft mouth, her eyes bright with mischief. He reached for her, wanting to draw her down onto the bed with him. His heart pounded and he tasted desire in his mouth and he groaned with need of her.
    A single sound escaped. Penetrated his layer of sleep. Not her answering moan, not even a whimper of desire, but a soft whisper of movement. His eyes snapped open and he lay silent, with the taste of her in his mouth and his cat roaring. Something moved out on the lawn. He eased to his feet, conscious that other leopards heard as well as he did. Very carefully, he padded to the French doors on his balcony and opened them enough to allow his body to slip through.
    Below him, the yard was mostly shadows, but with his night vision, he could easily make out Pauline Lafont moving around the yard in her bathrobe. She held a shotgun in one hand and a large trash bag in the other.he meticulously picked up every scrap of cloth from Drake’s shredded clothes as well as his shoes and socks. She took her time, making certain to remove every tiny string and thread.
    He stayed motionless, knowing she couldn’t see him. She wasn’t leopard, he knew that, he would have scented her leopard. She’d been forthcoming with information about the seven families that leased lands in the swamp and he hadn’t scented one lie, but clearly, she was aware of the leopard fight. She must have heard the horrendous noise. Leopards in a fury weren’t quiet about their rage. She had a shotgun for protection, but she didn’t seem too frightened. A woman alone out in the middle of nowhere, far from help, with leopards fighting on her front lawn should have been terrified. Yet Pauline Lafont walked slowly around her property, meticulously removing all evidence of the battle.
    She had to know about the shifters. Her family had lived in the area for a hundred years and obviously had lived beside the shifter families. They’d intermingled. She’d said her sister had married into one of the families—the Merciers. Was it possible her brother-in-law or a nephew had been present and she was destroying the evidence to cover up for them? It made sense. Family was family and no doubt they’d been protecting their own for hundreds of years—just as the lairs in the rain forest did.
    Pauline shined her flashlight down in the trees where the fight had taken place. Two alligators, no doubt drawn by the scent of blood, slithered back into the water as the light hit them. She studied the splashes of blood before going back