Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 118860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
“Yes, I can even identify him specifically. His name is Percy Rios. I’ve had my eyes on him for some time. He’s been prowling around very close to Dominic and Solange’s territory. Solange has relatives who visit her often. In fact, they’re expected very soon. Juliette Sangria, her cousin, is lifemate to Riordan De La Cruz. They’re on their way. Her cousin Jasmine is married to Jubal Sanders. Both women and Jasmine’s daughter, Sandrine, are jaguar.”
“And you think this Percy Rios is looking to acquire one of them for himself.” She made it a statement.
“He’s stalking you.”
That was his answer? That made no sense. “How would he know I’m a jaguar shifter?” She wasn’t challenging his judgment so much as really needing to know. She thought she’d come prepared, but she was fast learning she didn’t know the first thing about the environment or the species she’d been born into.
“You smell like a female shifter.”
She winced. She didn’t like the sound of that. “That’s just lovely.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
He didn’t so much as smile. She had the feeling emotions like humor or sarcasm were lost on him. There was no faint smile in his eyes. Nothing at all. No emotion. Just those flat, cold eyes that were so intense that although they felt like ice, the ice burned wherever his gaze touched.
“No disrespect intended, Sarika. Were you aware Sarika was your mother’s name?”
She had been, but her aunt and uncle had never really talked about her mother, other than to mention in passing that her birth father had named her after her mother.
Luiz’s attention appeared to be centered solely on her, but Sarika knew it wasn’t so. He no longer scanned their surroundings for evidence of the male jaguar. He knew exactly where the large predator was. Deliberately, she raised her face to the canopy and inhaled the scent of flowers, shrubs, trees and the forest floor. Along with those scents came the information on the multitude of wildlife around them.
The jaguar male had to be downwind, but she caught enough hints of him being close enough to raise the alarm. She couldn’t pinpoint his exact position.
“How do you know where he is?”
“I smell him as well.”
“He’s downwind,” she protested. “He has to be, or I would smell him.”
Luiz didn’t look impatient, but she felt his impatience. “I am not only a jaguar shifter, I am also Carpathian. We will discuss what Carpathians are once I have you safe in my home.”
Did that mean Carpathians could smell even better than shifters? Carpathians were born in the Carpathian Mountains, weren’t they? He wasn’t making any sense. She could believe that he was of another species entirely. Was that what he was implying? That Carpathians were another species? It wouldn’t be so difficult to believe, after all—no one would ever believe in shifters, yet she was one.
Luiz Silva De La Cruz was her only living relative. She wanted to have a decent relationship with him. It made no sense that she was irritated with him. What had he said or done to cause her to be so nervous in his presence?
“I have all my things in my backpack,” she announced, deciding to risk it. She hadn’t come all this way to be a coward.
“I will carry you. It will be much faster that way.”
Chapter
2
“True black is the absence of light,” Tomas Smolnycki told his brothers, Mataias and Lojos. “Technically, it isn’t a color.”
Mataias gave an exaggerated sigh. “At least you aren’t lecturing us on saving the rainforest and all its inhabitants.”
“That’s coming,” Lojos warned. “You know how he is.”
The three were triplets. Tomas and Lojos nearly always had opposite points of view, and Mataias was the peacemaker. Down through the centuries, their discussions had become habit more than anything else. By taking different sides of an argument, they were able to look at situations completely rather than just one-sidedly. They always gave input on every subject to one another. Many times, throughout the centuries, those varying points of view had saved their lives.
“I find, as the years go by,” Tomas said, “that the two of you are becoming more contrary than ever. And perhaps you’re losing your faculties. Slipping just a bit.”
“It makes no sense that, as Carpathian hunters who have lost the ability to see color, we see gray and not black, if black is the absence of color,” Lojos said.
“He does have a point, Tomas,” Mataias pointed out. “We do not have the side of our souls that provides light. We are wholly dark and without color or emotion other than remembered, so how is it we see in gray rather than in black?”
Tomas heaved a sigh. “Seriously? Because we see in gray versus black doesn’t negate the fact that black isn’t truly a color. It’s the absence of light.”