They walked in silence for a while, Lynn breathing the crisp morning air and focusing on the woods around her, rather than the man at her side.
It occurred to her that this would’ve gone more quickly if they’d shifted. Ken would’ve had to carry his things on his lion’s back somehow, because objects didn’t shift along with a person like clothing did, but they could surely have rigged something up without too much trouble.
There wouldn’t be any risk of discovery, way out here. Almost no people came within miles of this stretch of forest, and they would scent or hear someone long before they came across them. Lynn wondered what it would be like, running through the woods with a lion.
She’d feel pretty small, that was for sure. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?
On the whole, Lynn avoided the other big, predatory shifters. Nina was an exception, and Lynn was starting to learn that the snow leopards were overall a decent bunch, if a bit insular. But she’d occasionally run into the local mountain lions while out shifted, and once or twice a wolf, and although lynxes were fierce, they were smaller cats. And if it was one of her and two of them…
Anyway, she didn’t have time for fights with other shifters, and so often they were for stupid reasons like territory—territory! When there was endless forest to roam in! Or just fighting for the sake of fighting. It had never occurred to her to try and make friends with any of them.
Making friends with a lion would be…something else.
And she wasn’t worried about Ken. She knew already, even though they’d only known each other a couple of days, that he wasn’t violent. He wouldn’t try to intimidate or scare her because he was bigger.
Lynn’s eyes caught on a familiar rocky outcropping, and she swung their path to the right. “Almost there,” she called over her shoulder.
Glancing at her watch, she realized that the hike had taken a bit longer than she’d anticipated—her fault, probably, for having a serious conversation in the middle of the wilderness. She was going to have to hurry to get back.
No sticking around to talk any more with Ken. She was surprised at the sudden surge of disappointment that brought.
They pushed through a last stand of trees, and Lynn came to a stop. “Here’s where they started logging, back at the beginning of the twentieth century,” she told Ken. “Grandmother never told me a specific date, but she knew it was before World War I. Probably around 1910 or so.”
“It’s amazing that you know all of this,” Ken said, letting his pack slip from his shoulders.
“Grandmother’s the one who found most of it out,” she said with a shrug. “I have to get back, I have a client to meet at six.”
“Will you come tomorrow?” he asked.
She hesitated. “I wasn’t sure you’d need me tomorrow.” But she didn’t have any early-morning clients tomorrow. She could stay longer. If she wanted.
“I could always use your input,” he said. Which wasn’t a yes. And if he’d just been another client, taking up her time without any real need, she might even have been annoyed.
But, well…she wasn’t.
“All right,” she said, aware that her voice sounded a little breathless, and annoyed about it. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll see you her
e.”
“Looking forward to it.” His eyes were smiling.
And then impulse took her. She needed to get back to her truck as soon as possible, so she wouldn’t be late for her client meeting. And she’d just been thinking about how best to move more quickly, hadn’t she?
It was like the quiet conversation they’d had, the way he’d freely talked about his history, his feelings, had broken down her own self-consciousness. His own openness was making her realize how closed-off she really was.
It made her realize that the intimacy she was afraid of…was already here. And it wasn’t bad. It was the opposite of bad.
Before she could hesitate any longer, she said, “Tomorrow, then,” and shifted.
She could feel her lynx rise up in her chest and take over, as her ears lengthened and her fur rippled into existence, her claws extending and her tail appearing. She fell to all fours, looking up at Ken with suddenly-sharpened vision.
She could scent him, now. He smelled like the forest, with a masculine tinge, and like a big predator. But there wasn’t a wariness to her sense of him, like there usually was when she encountered predators in the wild. He felt…strangely safe.
As she shifted, he’d taken what looked like an involuntary step forward. His lips were parted, his eyes wide. She could see his chest heave with a quick inhale of breath.
“Look at you,” he said quietly. “A lynx. You’re beautiful.”
Lynn didn’t know what to make of that, had no idea how she might respond.