Lonely Male
The leopard was crouched low watching the small group of animals before it. Not a muscle moved. The grey and white fur blended in with the snow and rocks around it perfectly. It was a large leopard for its kind and had an eerie unnatural intelligence to its green and grey gaze.
Suddenly it just exploded forward. The small goat-like animal didn’t have a chance. The leopard was on it and its teeth sank into the throat. The rest gave a panicked run for safety. The animal died quickly and the leopard used its powerful jaws to carry it off to find a better place to have its meal.
After it ate its fill the leopard turned and ran hard and fast. It looked like it was on a mission all of a sudden. After a bit, it started to slow and lopped into a crevasse. A moment later the leopard was no longer a leopard but a full-grown man. There was an odd tattoo-looking item on his back. A sickle with a curved line through it. However, there was an edging to it that looked like it shimmered almost.
He was nearly six foot, with black hair that had a swirl of white and grey in it. It looked like a detailed dye job but was just his natural hair color. His eyes were the green-grey of the leopard. His body was muscled, stronger in the chest but his arms had a roping muscle the same as his legs.
Cole reached down and grabbed some clothing items sliding them on and gave a sigh. He looked around the small cave-like area where he’d been camping out for the better part of a year now. Mostly because it was so remote that hunters would be stupid to climb up to this elevation to get him. Second, there was a small little town a couple of miles away that he could get stuff from.
He was currently in Bhutan. A country that was in the Himalayan Mountain range. Right in the heart of the snow leopard range. But he’d really chosen it because it was cold here most of the time. He liked that, plus it was out of the way. With the help he’d gotten blocking the tattoo on his back, he could live how he wanted. Reclusive was nice, he enjoyed it just as the rest of his kind did.
Besides if he really wanted to see someone, all he had to do was picture them in his mind or where they lived and he’d appear there.
See Cole was a shifter. One of maybe a few thousand left in the world, and maybe a few hundred leopard shifters if that. He knew that he had to be one of a handful of those who turned into a snow leopard. The rest were normally African or Asian spotted leopards. That wasn’t really relevant unless you met one who was snobbish about their heritage.
Which was the reason that he was in the predicament that he was in. Why there was a tattoo on his back imbued with magic to find him. Cole could transverse space, jump to any place as long as he’d seen it before. Something that had been passed to him by someone in his line. His family however was long dead. His mother and twin sister were killed before him. Then he’d been kept like some pet and used against his kind for the sick whims of hunters.
He’d been rescued and now he had those that he’d call friends, but still struggled to feel safe even with them. They had helped block him from the hunters as best they could. Though it wasn’t foolproof, the tattoo was part of him. The magic used was something they weren’t sure about. He’d even met an uni. The rarest shifter in the world and he had come up with the blocking on the tattoo but how to remove it he was at a loss.
So Cole thanked them for their help. He’d gone three years with only one hunter incident. That was saying something since it used to be nearly once a month they’d find him. Try and take him back.
Cole was enjoying his freedom and solitude like most his kind seemed to enjoy. Leopards weren’t all that social to begin with. Though he enjoyed a bit of company now and then. He’d made friends with a pride of lion shifters. Now that was a social group. He’d never seen a lion alone, and they didn’t tend to shut up. Liked to talk a lot. However, he cared for them and what they’d done to help him.
Walking out of the mouth of the small cave he looked at the frozen landscape around him. Then in the blink of an eye, he was no longer there. He appeared in a small town, or rather at the edge of it. He pulled a bit of local money out. He had a few things to get, he was out of water. He’d prefer bottles to melting snow or ice.
His talent to jump places was quite handy at times, and it was unique to him. He hadn’t met anyone that could do that. Though he knew a man who could walk through walls and a woman who could wield true magic. See each shifter had talents, some more than others. Some had extraordinary talents that set them apart. Like him, and they were the ones the hunters wanted dead first.
Cole moved into the town area. He’d have to get some containers if they didn’t have bottled water shipped into this small town yet. He was taller than most in the town. They recognized him instantly.
The first time he’d appeared they had eyed him suspiciously but now they didn’t seem to mind his presence. One thing he enjoyed about this small community. They were at peace with nature and the animals. Tales about humans that changed into creatures of land, sea, and air. It kind of made him smile. Most things didn’t nowadays.
He abruptly stopped where he was at the end of a small stand. There were some kids moving by laughing, but that wasn’t what stopped him. He heard a different laugh and glanced down. Cole was half-hidden and they couldn’t really see him, but he recognized them even though he’d never approached them.
There were two women and a man. The man was tallest about Cole’s height. The woman whom he had an arm around was heavily pregnant. The other woman had a smile on her face, and her laughter caught his attention like it had before when he’d been here. He normally didn’t come at this time of day because of this little group.
They were shifters too, leopards. Hence why he stayed away from them. He wasn’t looking to interact with his own kind. Mostly because he didn’t want to end up mated and pass on his curse to his children. Yet in the back of his mind, he knew that a large part of why he was still hanging around here was because of the last woman. Even as he told himself the reason for staying away. His kind could be very driven by their needs.
She was a leopard, and when he’d first come here he’d scented her and she had been in heat. The scent of that had hit him hard. Unlike any other before her. He’d been around a lot of shifters in heat, and even a few leopards. Which would be the ones that he’d be attracted to. See when a female of his kind went into heat, it was pretty much animal magnetism. Rational thought went out the window.
Typically you didn’t go outside your species, like someone that shifted into a bear didn’t mate with one that shifted into a lion. Though the felines had mixed a couple of times, but that was rare. Most times their children were unable to mate successfully. Nature enjoyed a balance, and once you were mated, that was the only one you were going to have children with. Unless your mate died before you.
There was no way for him to describe how she had smelled. He’d found himself following the scent until he’d spotted her and the other man. Now Cole knew that the man was mated to the woman that was pregnant. He was pretty sure that the woman was a relation to one of them. He thought it was the man. They had a similarity in their looks.
The pitch-black hair, and facial features, but she was fairer than he was. She had a grey blue eyes were he had an amber color. So did the other woman. It was odd seeing the group. Leopards didn’t tend to form family units. It was also something that drew him to them. Something that he would enjoy because he was an oddball in their world.
Cole's eyes followed the woman, he thought to just leave. He really should leave the area, but it just felt like his body wanted to stay here. Screamed at him for not taking advantage of the last time she was in heat. See he knew she wasn’t mated to the man because leopards could only have one mate. He was clearly the other woman’s. The only species that could have multiple were the lions and cheetahs. Then it was always relations. Sisters mated to one male or a pair of brothers to sisters. Just like in the wild.
Kasni, that was her name, she was extremely beautiful to him. He’d been stuck in hunter labs and whatnot long enough to hear everything that they had on them. Plus his own learning with his kind. It seemed that while most of the shifter community just went with the flow, there were those who just couldn’t. They tended to pass up the chance to mate until they found a perfect match. It was in every fiber of their being to only select that which completed and complimented them perfectly.
Cole tried to find the will to leave rather than stand there and watch her like some kind of stalker. Which made him smile. Unconsciously he had a feeling that he was waiting for her to come into heat again. So why was he standing here torturing himself? Either do it or don’t.
The woman picked up some item examining it and spoke to the other two. Then laughed, it was a soft laugh and he felt it like a touch on his body. Her hair was long and straight, a thick mass that went to the middle of her back. It was braided at the moment. She was near his age, but a bit younger he knew. Cole was in his early thirties now, which was still very young for his kind who lived to be two hundred or so.
Cole looked her over, the shape of her body and how she moved before he made a rather dark sound. Then turned and was gone. He’d come back later, he didn’t see that the woman’s eyes suddenly scanned the area where he’d been. Cole couldn’t help but think about the forbidden fruit he seemed to want a taste of. However his demons were far to aggressive in real life and his own head to ever indulge in such a simple temptation to the rest of the world.
