He turned his head, looking around, savoring the mingled scents and noises of the jungle. Each sound, from the cacophony of the birds to the shrieks of the howler monkeys to the hum of the insects, contained a wealth of information if one knew how to read it. He was a master. Conner Vega flexed his muscles, a small shrug only, but his body moved with life, every muscle, every cell, reacting to the forest. He wanted to tear his clothes from his body and run free and wild as his nature demanded. He looked civilized in his jeans and simple T-shirt, but there wasn’t a civilized bone in his body.

“It’s calling to you,” Rio Santano said, glancing around at the few people along the riverbank. “Hang on. We have to get out of sight. We’ve got an audience.”

Conner didn’t look at him or the others maneuvering small boats up the river. His heart pounded so the blood thundered through his veins, ebbing and flowing like the sap in the trees, like the moving carpet of insects on the forest floor. The shades of green—every shade in the universe—were beginning to form bands of color as his leopard filled him, reaching for the freedom of his homeland.

“Hang on,” Rio insisted between clenched teeth. “Damn it, Conner, we’re in plain sight. Control your cat.”

The Panama-Colombia leopards were the most dangerous of all the tribes, the most unpredictable, and Conner had always been a product of his genetics. Of all the men on the team, he was the most lethal. Fast, ferocious, deadly in a fight. He could disappear into the forest and disrupt an enemy camp nightly until they were so distraught—haunted by a ghostly assassin no one saw—they abandoned their position. He was invaluable and yet volatile—very hard to control.

They needed his particular skills on this mission. Conner was born in the Panama rain forest to the tribe of leopard people indigenous to the area, and this gave them a distinct advantage should they come across the elusive—and very dangerous—shifters. Conner also gave the team the advantage of knowing the local Indian tribes. The rain forest, most of it unexplored, even for other shifters, could be difficult to navigate. But the fact that Conner had grown up here and used it as his personal playground meant they wouldn’t be slowed down when they needed to move fast.

Conner’s head turned in a slow freeze-frame movement indicative of a hunting leopard. He was close to shifting—too close. Heat poured off of him. The scent of the wild animal, a male in his prime, strong and cunning, ripping and clawing to break free, permeated the air.