by Kym Dillon
Marcus made a sound that was a great deal more like a growl than Marnie would have thought could come out of a man's throat. The sound was so alarming that Marnie took a step back. Instinctively she reached for Jessica as well, but Jessica shook her off, shaking her head with fury.
"Go on, try to defend yourself," she snarled.
"I shouldn't have to," Marcus roared. "I come back because I love you, and I haven't gone running after anyone. Jax came back here torn to ribbons last night, do you even care?"
"I care about the fact that you seem intent on making a fool out of me," Jessica shouted. "I care about the fact that you care so little for us, so little about what you mean to me or what I mean to you..."
Marcus looked as if he had reached some kind of breaking point. His face was contorted in anger and his body was trembling in rage. For a moment, Marnie was afraid that he would do something terrible, and then... he did something else entirely.
The transformation was nearly instantaneous. One moment, there was an angry man looming in front of them both. The next, there was a pure black panther in his place, its ivory fangs bared in a snarl. Marnie had one moment to look at it horror and surprise, and then it was gone, tearing off towards the jungle, leaving a sad pile of shredded clothes and a pair of boots behind.
No. This is not a thing that happens. I don't care where I am, whether I'm in Cleveland or Cairo or Rio de Janeiro. I don't care. I did not just see a man just turn into a… panther...
She turned to Jessica pleadingly. Surely her friend would make it right. Surely Jessica could tell her what the matter was. Her best friend was still livid, however, and now all that rage, denied a target in Marcus, was turned squarely on Marnie.
"Oh, I suppose you’re loving this," Jessica snapped, and Marnie recoiled in hurt.
"Jessica! I have no idea..."
"Oh, I know," Jessica said bitterly. "You have no idea, you have no clue why the boys always like you best, why everyone seems to like you best, little miss sunshine! You know, you've always been like this, and it's always made me fucking sick!"
Marnie stomach roiled. She wanted to take off across the grassland herself, but she was frozen to the spot. Jessica's anger towered over both of them, drowning out the friendship that they had shared through thick and thin.
"All our lives, you swanned around as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, and why would it? You've always had protectors around. The minute you even fell and stubbed your toe, there was someone around who would pick you up and tell you it was all right, that it wasn't your fault, and now, even Marcus..."
"He... that wasn't what was going on," Marnie protested frankly, spinning from the poison that Jessica was spitting at her. "He wasn't..."
Jessica's face crumpled, and for a moment, Marnie wondered if she had gotten through to her friend. Possibly, just possibly, if Jessica took a moment to think about what she’d actually seen, Marnie could reach her.
"He's not my boyfriend," she said instead, and Marnie paused in surprise.
"He's not my boyfriend, or at least, that's not what he's supposed to be," she whispered. "God, what we went through in the forest, the Kingdom of Trees, the snake, all of it... I thought we were... we were something amazing. Something bigger than all this petty shit. We were fate, destiny. That's what it felt like, I've never felt anything like it before."
For a moment, Marnie felt a rage in her that equaled Jessica's. She wanted to find Marcus, no matter how big he was, no matter that he could turn into a panther. She wanted to maim him for hurting her friend like this. However, when she reached out to touch Jessica's arm gently, her friend jerked away.
"Goddamn you," Jessica spat. "You've always loved seeing me like this, miss perfect!"
Before Marnie could protest how overwhelmingly unfair that was, Jessica's hand slammed against her cheek, the slap ringing across the open morning sky. The blow stung viciously, and Marnie fell backwards, her hand reaching up to touch her face.
As she watched in pain and heartbreak, Jessica stalked back towards the camp.
5
Marnie knew that she could not stay on the edge of things forever. She might have wanted to, but there was work to be done. She and Jessica had been friends long before medical school. They’d met back in grade school and had become fast friends, a close friendship that had carried through to adulthood. If Marnie hadn’t seen with her own eyes, she would swear the woman who’d just confronted her was not Jessica. When she crept back through camp, she felt as if everyone was watching her.
This was the first time she had been able to see the camp properly in daylight, and it struck her that it was far larger than she had thought. The WHO's research camp was large, but there was also a small village adjoining it, equal in size. The people of the village spoke Chaga, and she slowly saw how many of them were employed in the research camp, taking care of logistical matters as well as providing assistance when needed.
She saw a pair of women dressed in brightly colored dresses glance up at her as she passed, and she told herself that she was simply imagining them laughing behind their hands at her. This wasn't high school, and she wasn't a shunned and ostracized gawky teenager again.
So why are you going to go hide in the science lab? asked a vicious little voice in the back of her head, and she ignored it.
Life in Tanzania was terrifying. There was a kind of medieval plague rearing its head, people apparently transformed into panthers, and her best friend had turned on her. That was fine, just fine. The only thing she could depend on was her knowledge of anatomy and of blood, and that meant that she would go to a place of comfort, a place where she was useful.
The laboratory trailer was exactly as she had left it... except for the man sitting on the ground inside.
Jax grinned at her. Washed and dressed in clean clothes, he was stunningly handsome, but Marnie was so emotionally drained that she barely reacted at all.
"How did you find this place?" she asked, closing the door behind her. It occurred to her that she was shutting herself in with a man that she barely knew, but at the moment, she didn't care.
"I wanted you," he said simply. "This place smelled like you far more than the tent that I bribed someone to show me to. So, I waited. And here you are."
There was something direct about him that warmed her. Everything around her seemed to spin, and when she reached for the tests that had been ongoing since the night before, her hands were shaking. Before she could touch them, however, Jax unfolded from his seat easily, his hands coming to cover hers.
Oh my, he has beautiful hands, she thought. They were brown and lean with graceful fingers and short nails. There was something oddly sensuous about them, and she felt slightly shy when he touched her.
"Are you sure you should be doing that right now?" he asked softly. "You look a little bit shaken, sunshine."
His endearment, coming on the heels of Jessica's tongue lashing, made her flinch slightly.
"It's all I know how to do right now," she retorted, and she pulled away.
Jax subsided, watching her as she went through the motions of testing her samples and finding the results. She recorded what she had learned, but it was far from conclusive. There were a few conclusions tugging at the back of her mind, but it was still too much to put to words yet. She set her tests in motion again, and by that time, she was shaking hard.
Marnie barely finished her tests before she sat down on the ground in the trailer, pulling her knees up to her chest and covering her face in her hands. She tried to stop herself from crying, but soon enough, it became an inevitability. Her shoulders were shaking, her chest rose in jerky breaths before collapsing into a sob, and hot tears were running down her face.
She had almost forgotten that Jax was silently watching her. When he reached for her, Marnie almost resisted, but she was too far gone to resist comfort, even if she did not know the man who was offering it. She allowed him to pull her into his lap as she cried, and she took a strange amount
of comfort in his soft nonsense words of comfort.
It came to her that strangely he was not speaking English. Italian? His words were soft and sweet, though, and that was all that mattered. It seemed to take an eternity, but finally her tears slowed and stuttered to a stop.
"There now, love," Jax said, offering her a surprisingly clean handkerchief. "Tell me what's the matter."
Marnie bit down a childish protest that everything was simply so strange and foreign in camp. Instead, she used the handkerchief to clean her face, and when Jax offered her a cup of water from the sink, she took it. He came to sit down next to her again, one arm over her shoulder as if they had been friends for years. She thought about everything, and when she spoke, her words were measured.
"Are you a werepanther?" she asked.
Marnie thought that the question was quite reasonable given everything that had happened to her since she had come to Tanzania, but Jax laughed.
"God, no," he said, and she shook her head in despair.
"I just don't know," Marnie babbled. "I don't. It feels like everything's been turned upside down since I arrived in this place, up's down, my best friend hates me, people transform into panthers..."
"Not just into panthers," Jax said. He stood, stripping his clothes off expertly, and then he was gone.
In his place was an enormous tiger, sitting back on its haunches and with a smug look on its round face. Sitting up, he towered over her, and his teeth were long and looked razor sharp. The vivid orange and white and black of his coat were so bright they seemed to bleed into the air, and Marnie reached out a hand in awe to touch before remembering herself and yanking it back.
Jax didn't seem to mind, however. Instead, he butted his head underneath her hand like every house cat she had ever met, and when she tentatively scratched him behind the ears, he rumbled ecstatically. It wasn't a purr, it was simply too loud to be one, but it calmed even as she smiled.
Then suddenly he wasn't a tiger any longer, but man, one unashamedly naked, sitting on a pile of his own clothes with his head nearly in her lap and her hand ruffled in his hair. Marnie yelped, and Jax sat back with a laugh, completely unconcerned with his nudity.
"I thought you could use the laugh," he said guilelessly, and she laughed ruefully in response.
"I suppose.... could you maybe put on your clothes? I'm not sure that I am going to be able to have a conversation with, um.."
"As the lady wishes," Jax said, speaking as if he were granting an enormous favor. She kept her eyes lowered as he slipped back into his clothes, but she couldn't resist a quick peek as he finished. He was strong and powerful in every way, and the wounds on his chest were well on their way to becoming a memory. When he came back to sit next to her, her expression was thoughtful.
"You are not quite human, are you?" she asked, and Jax shrugged. He sat close enough that she could feel the warmth from his body, and without thinking, she nestled a little closer.
"Not entirely, but I'm not so far off, either," he said, looking as if he had made a decision. "My kind, we were once human, we think. Beyond that, well, I suppose everyone has a theory."
"A theory... you make it sound like something that science could understand."
"Don't get any bright ideas, sunshine," Jax said warningly. "None of my people like the idea of being turned into science experiments in captivity."
"Oh, I would never!" Marnie protested, suddenly aware of what she had been saying. "It's just that I never knew that such a thing was possible. It defies all scientific understanding."
Jax smiled at her a little.
"Probably just as easy to say it's magic," he suggested, and Marnie snorted.
"No one ever learned anything by saying it was magic," she protested.
"I suppose not. My kind have been around a long time. Shifters, I mean. We walk in the shadows, and we do our damnedest to keep those shadows from growing deadly."
There was a darkness in his tone, and without thinking, Marnie reached out to touch his chest, where the wounds had changed to thick ropes of scar tissue.
"Was it one of those shadows that reached out for you yesterday?" she asked, and he nodded soberly.
"Hyenas. They have been at war off and on with my people for quite some time now. Sometimes things get quiet, lets us both lick our wounds, but it seems as if we can never stay away from each other's throats for very long. It's a dark thing, and it seems to be rising up again.
"That's why we've come, to inform Dr. Carter of what's going on, that defenses need to be mounted. She knows what she's doing, I think, but the casualties could be high."
Marnie shook her head.
"It's all so much to take in," she said quietly. "A war, people that change into animals or animals that change into people... and all wrapped up in it is Jessica, who is someone else completely now, someone who hates me..."
She knew it was ridiculous to be so overwrought over something that was comparatively quite minor, but she still felt grateful when Jax threw an arm over her shoulders.
"Well, that I can explain at least a little," he said. "The problem is that she's bonded with my friend Marcus."
"Problem?" echoed Marnie. "If they've found each other and they love each other the way that they say they do, shouldn't that be a good thing?"
"It's an amazing thing," said Jax immediately. "Most shifters can go their entire lives without bonding. And it is love, but there's more than that. The love they share is wrapped up with fate and destiny, and maybe just a good old-fashioned dose of pure instinct and pheromones. There's no take backs, and no second chances. A mate bond is for life, and it's stronger than steel.
"The problem is that defying a bond can really screw someone up. It may be worse for humans. I don’t know, but even for shifters, it can make a person angry, depressed, sick... well, you saw some of that, I'm sure."
Marnie flinched remembering the alien rage on Jessica's face. She wondered if it was wistful thinking, but it really did seem as if her best friend had been taken over by something beyond her command. Jax nodded as he saw that she understood.
"The truth is that things like this are usually resolved very quickly. They figure out that they need to stay close, at least until a child is born, and that separation from one another is painful. However, right now, Marcus and Jessica don't have much of a choice. He's needed on assignment, and she's needed here, doing what she can to keep this damned epidemic in check.
"They're both bound to their duties, and I guess Marcus thought they would be fine, but from the shouting that I think just about everyone in camp heard... maybe not."
"She looked as if she was in such torment," Marnie murmured, and to her surprise, Jax kissed her gently on the forehead.
"You care about your friend a great deal," he said quietly. "I've always been drawn to those who put others first..."
“Is that why you... you said what you did this morning?”
“Hmm?”
Now that he was this close, there was something intoxicating about his presence, about the way he smelled, even the way his breath ruffled her hair. Marnie could feel her heart beat a little louder, her blood run a little hotter in her veins.
Almost as if he could sense her thoughts, Jax cradled her cheek in his hand.
“Can you feel that?” he asked, his voice hushed.
Marnie swallowed hard. She knew that she should have been more experienced with this sort of thing. Certainly, Jessica thought that she was. However, she knew now that there was absolutely nothing in the world that could prepare her for this man, this moment. She wanted to behave like a woman of the world, one who could answer him with a flirty wink and a laugh, but in the end, she could be no one but herself.
“Feel what?” she asked, blushing even as she said it.
Instead of being irritated or dissuaded, Jax only laughed a little.
“This,” he said, and he kissed her.
6
Jax's kiss was like nothing that she had ever ex
perienced. She had been kissed by men before, of course, even initiated the kisses on one or two occasions. She had always thought it was pleasant enough without ever knowing for sure what everyone was going on about. Now, however, as his soft mouth slanted over hers, as his tongue caressed her lower lip, she knew exactly why some people got so excited over this simple act.
His kiss was unfailingly tender. When his tongue insinuated itself between his lips, she moaned but allowed him entry. Marnie touched his tongue with hers, shyly and nervously, but the shudder that ran through his body encouraged her, gave her the ability to be bold.
Without thinking, she reached for him, her hands wrapping around his shoulders. There was something perfect about the thickness of his muscles. He was poetry in motion as a man or as a tiger, and her body sang in response.
"Do you have any idea how delicious you are?" Jax murmured. "I dreamed of you, and I knew that you would be just like this, just this perfect..."
She started say something in response, but then his mouth came over hers again. This time there was just the edge of aggression to his kiss. There was a beast there as well as a man and perhaps that should have frightened her, but it did not. Instead, she felt an answering wildness come from deep inside her, and she dug her nails lightly into his shoulders.
Marnie knew that her nails were sharp, but Jax reacted as if someone had taken a whip to his shoulders. He hunched over her, and she could feel his muscles moving under her hands. There was suddenly something more primal about him than there had been before, and she shivered, eyes wide.
"What... did I do something wrong?"
Jax's laugh was more a growl than anything else, and he buried his face in her neck. When he spoke, she could feel the heat of his breath against her throat and just the hint of sharp teeth.
