Chapter One

 

Kane Masters didn’t like the way Tore Mann stared at him. He shifted his attention to Dover, the owl. Neither male had much of a scent about them. That didn’t mean Kane couldn’t detect their anger. Their reaction to his statement was their problem, not his.

“The announcement on the website stated you’re seeking a new hunter,” he said, keeping his voice cool. “I’m here for the job.”

“You’re not what we’re looking for,” Tore told him, his expression remaining hard as he stood in the middle of the bar and grill, the owl remaining silently at his side.

Kane knew discrimination when he saw it. He’d lived with it all his damn life. Leopards didn’t trust white leopards, and most of his kind kept to themselves, living in small communities up in the mountains. But when all hell broke loose recently and leopards with visions were being tracked down and put in cages, it was more important than ever to step forward and use his abilities to protect his kind.

The PI website, PantheraIncognita.com, the site where leopards kept up on current events, announced recently the threat of Leo Pard, the insane monster who believed leopards with visions were better off under his care and bred against their will, was ended. Kane knew from his visions he was meant to ensure that threat would never happen again.

“Actually, I am,” he answered, looking away from Tore first and taking in the surroundings of the bar and grill. He didn’t smell any humans in the place, and those sitting at tables around them didn’t hide the fact they listened curiously. “I’ll take whatever challenge you offer.”

“Go back where you came from.” Tore turned, heading over to the counter.

When the owl followed him, studying Kane a moment longer with those oversized gray eyes before leaving him standing alone at the entrance to The Running Mate, the whispers around him grew louder the longer he stood alone. He didn’t have any intention of going back where he came from.

Heading outside, he embraced the icy chill in the air, filling his lungs with it. Sleet blew in the air around him, stinging his bare arms with prickly chills. It would be a cold winter.

Turning from The Running Mate, Kane headed down the main street of Kenora, ignoring the humans he passed, who likewise ignored him. Convenient thing about that species, humans didn’t pay much attention to anything around them, most of them too self-absorbed to even notice how foul their emotions stunk up the air.

There were other hunters in the area. Kane would seek each of them out. And as he already knew, each would tell him they weren’t interested in him, or that they didn’t need what he had to offer. They were all scared of white leopards.

And they were probably smart to feel that way, he thought to himself, reaching the corner and feeling the hair rise on the back of his neck. The leopard and owl had walked out of The Running Mate. They would follow him, see where he headed, because even though they didn’t smell shit on him, they didn’t trust him.

Damn his visions anyway for making the future so ridiculously predictable.

Turning right, he headed south. Kane didn’t know Kenora, but the town wasn’t big. And it appeared to him as it had in his visions, which were coming with annoying regularity these days.

Would he see the female who kept reappearing in his mind in this town?

Kane allowed his thoughts to drift, unconcerned about the leopard and owl trailing him. The wind picked up and the sleet sliced through the air, but he kept his pace, not hurrying or dawdling. There was time. His visions didn’t lie and until all were foretold, he wouldn’t become a hunter.

His vision this morning was exceptionally strong, realistic and bordered on annoying. Kane saw her again. The female who’d sauntered into his thoughts, appearing before him as real as if she were actually standing in front of him. He could smell her, taste her and see the pain in her eyes.

It was the only reason this morning he knew what he saw was another vision. The scene was too damn real. But her black hair, so shiny it glowed, and straight and thick. He felt it even now between his fingers, weighing heavily as he imagined stroking it as he had this morning.

He probably wouldn’t have questioned the hair if it weren’t for her eyes. And those incredible eyes confirmed what he saw was a vision and not actually transpiring in front of him as he woke this morning. They were so green. Too green. But he saw through them, saw beyond the colored contact lenses she used as part of her disguise and into the depths of her soul.

She didn’t approach him. That’s how it was when he saw her in her disguise. Not once in the many visions that seemed to haunt him did she seem aware of him watching her. It was more like a video, which wasn’t how his visions played out in his mind. Kane saw what would happen to him, and had since he was a cub. A convenient part of his brain he no longer questioned as a grown male but relied on to know where he would run next.

The only time he stroked her flesh, felt her soft body against his and knew her fiery spirit was when she shed her disguise. There were days when he craved those visions, knowing satisfaction in his visions, even if they left him hard and screaming for release every time they ended. Those tantalizing visions were erotic, sensual and stimulating. But they were up close and personal, and so far, not one of those sexually enticing visions offered him a good view of her face as she looked naturally, without her disguise.

But his visions of this tormented female were coming to him for a reason. And this morning her pain was stronger than normal. As she walked through trees, he saw the town as she did. He swore she stared down at Kenora.

When she jumped, disappearing from his sight, he remembered moving quickly enough in his vision to breathe in her determination, laced with trepidation. Whatever it was she planned on doing, she wasn’t looking forward to it.

Not to mention, she ran alone. Even with her silky-smooth scent filling his lungs, it rubbed him wrong that she ran without an escort. Although after seeing her, feeling her, watching the pain in her eyes through the colored lenses she used to block out the world, Kane knew the hot little female viewed herself as too jaded for anyone’s opinion of her to tarnish her reputation further. Whoever this female leopard was, she’d done things in her life she seriously regretted.

Kane reached the edge of town, his shirt stuck to his flesh as the precipitation increased, causing his pale blond hair to stick to the sides of his head. No one was around when he sprinted across the open field on the outskirts of Kenora. The leopard Tore Mann and his sidekick the owl apparently were satisfied he headed out of town. He’d lost the sensation they were following him several blocks back.

It was too early to change into his fur, but with the weather growing worse, darkness would fall sooner today and he would peel off his soaked clothes. Running in his fur sounded a hell of a lot more appealing. Kane didn’t get cold easily, but the moisture in the air was slowly sinking into his flesh.

At the two-lane highway, which would take him to the border leading into the United States, something hit him. For a moment, he thought another vision had started. Kane paused, glancing both directions and not seeing anyone. But he smelled something. Something a bit too familiar.

When he started walking alongside the road, there wasn’t much reason to hurry. He would reach Wheeler’s Point, Minnesota tomorrow, and the bulk of his journey would be in his fur. Once there, he would find the bar Pierce’s Lair, owned by another hunter. The announcement that went out a month ago, informing the leopard community through the PI website a new hunter would be announced after the beginning of the year, Kane decided then he would wait for the lame brains to prance into Wheeler’s Point thinking they stood a chance at filling the position. He wasn’t surprised when Tore didn’t tell him they’d already found a new hunter. And he wasn’t disappointed to be turned away. As well, he knew by the time he reached Wheeler’s Point, they would be expecting him.

Possibly he would stay at the sanctuary just across the border, run by Josh Bard, another hunter. His journey would put him in touch with three of the four hunters, which would be a majority. They were filling the position for the fifth hunter, although which one had stepped down was being kept a secret. It wasn’t until recently the names of hunters became public. Prior to the catastrophe inflicted upon his species by Leo Pard, the identity of hunters remained a secret.

Times were changing for his kind. Leopards were a stubborn lot, aggressive fighters who were deadly by nature yet held on to traditions for centuries, refusing to change. The announcement stating hunters’ identity would now be public knowledge, going as far as to state the names of current hunters and where their dens were located, appeared on the website earlier that year. Many howled the leopards ordained to protect their kind should maintain anonymity while others growled it made sense their identity be public knowledge.

Kane didn’t care. Protecting all leopards was in his blood. And he knew more than most the persecution his kind endured. Not only did he fight all his life keeping it a secret about having visions, especially when Leo Pard decided he wanted to gather all leopards with visions together and force them to breed and create some kind of better race of leopards. But he was a white leopard, a rare species even shunned by his own kind. If it weren’t for his visions, assuring him of his future, Kane might have gotten a complex over the persecution he’d tolerated since birth.

Once again a scent yanked him from his thoughts. He glanced at his surroundings, studying the rough terrain on either side of the highway as he strolled slowly. He inhaled and filled his nostrils with the same scent that grabbed his attention a few minutes before.

Kane wasn’t alone.

Coming to a full stop, he made a circle, taking his time, breathing and searching with his eyes, focusing on every blade of grass with acute, meticulous detail no human could match. If he weren’t so attentive, he would have missed her.

Kane smelled her determination and curiosity, but it wasn’t as strong as the sudden panic that ripped through the air. The little female, who was quite a distance from him across the field, took off in a high-speed run toward Kenora. It looked as if he wouldn’t be arriving in Wheeler’s Point tomorrow afternoon as anticipated. With his next breath, he recognized the scent.

The female in his visions.

Kane leapt over the ditch alongside the highway and broke into a run that was too fast for his human body. Although the female had a good distance on him and ran faster than her female body was meant to run, Kane was stronger, more powerful and cleared the distance between them as he reached the grove of trees.

“Little female, you can’t escape me,” he called out into the trees.

A wicked breeze, cold as hell, wrapped around the trees and stole his breath. It also cleared out her scent, and for a moment he lost her. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear the female commanded the elements and distracted him with the wind blowing in his face. He slowed but continued running and focused on the clearing at the other end of the trees. He immediately recognized the setting. When a figure appeared out of the shadows, dressed in an oversized coat and hat, the only part of her that made her a dead giveaway was the tight-fitting jeans that hugged her perfectly shaped ass.

He knew that ass.

“Don’t jump!” he yelled a fraction of a second before she again disappeared from his sight.

Kane raced through the trees, his damp shirt hugging his torso as the biting wind fought to lower his body temperature. As long as he kept moving in his flesh, he wouldn’t suffer. Either way, if the cold affected him in this form too much, he would change to his fur, in which case, he’d be fine.

It was just as he saw it in his vision that morning. The female disappeared over the cliff, her scent trailing after her.

Rocks flew over the edge when Kane slid to a stop. His vision hadn’t bothered sharing the good twenty feet drop below. Leopards might have higher metabolisms than humans, but they weren’t invincible.

“Crap,” he hissed, breathing in the fresh smell of wet dirt and the aromas from the variety of trees surrounding him. Squinting against the heavy sleet, he scoured the ground below him until he spotted her. “Are you simply running from me for the obvious reasons, little female?”

He wasn’t sure if any male leopard anywhere ever confided in a female that running from them turned males on. If the female held her ground from the moment he spotted her, although turned-on by her unmated scent, he wouldn’t have mounted her. Not that he’d attack a female even if she did offer an exhilarating chase. A female turning herself into the hunted was hotter than hell, but Kane never had problems getting females to put out for him. He would never take something not offered to him.

But as he sucked in a breath and then jumped, watching the ground come up underneath him with record-breaking speed, adrenaline exploded inside him, making it harder to focus on anything but the female who’d become his prey. He hit the ground hard, rocks and packed, frozen ground slamming against the palms of his hands and balls of his feet. At the same time, he gulped in her scent, riper and stronger than he’d ever smelled it before.

Kane cursed loudly when his body was racked by the impact but brought his head up, blinking a few times and focusing on his surroundings.

There she was, dirty and soaked, but that adorable ass up in the air as she crawled on all fours away from him. Her coat hung sideways on her and a backpack added to her bulk. As she stood and started to run, she appeared to trip and again fell to all fours.

“You hurt yourself, little female.” Kane took his time, watching her struggle to her feet and fail. His heart pounded in his chest and muscles bulged against his wet and dirty clothes. “Next time think twice before flying off a cliff.”

“Go to hell,” she cursed, rolling over so she sat facing him.

Kane stared into her eyes, shocked at how pale they were. She wore an oversized man’s jacket, which smelled as if she’d taken it from a human. It also covered her backpack, which he wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t jumped and fell. Her bulky attire hid the natural shape of her body. Her stocking cap completely covered her hair. If it weren’t for the undeniable scent that filled his lungs as he stared down at her, Kane would swear this wasn’t the same female from his visions.

 

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