Read Online Leopard 01 - The Awakening by authors_sort - Free Book Online

my mother died that night, too—oh, not right away; she lingered for months before her physical body gave up.” He couldn’t feign his sadness. It was as real as her own. She saw it in his eyes, and his poet’s heart wept.
    She did remember the frightening, nightmare images—a leopard leaping, snarling, a mass of teeth and claws cutting a path while they ran with dizzying speed. She remembered her mother flinching as a shot reverberated. Her mother ran several yards, staggered, recovered valiantly, and continued. Maggie pressed a hand to her mouth. Memories? Were they real? Could her mother have run through the forest in the dead of night, away from all she had known? Away from her husband and people? Run with a terrible wound draining the life from her?
    She dragged in her breath. “And she took me to Jayne. Jayne Odessa.”
    “A very wealthy woman who had never had children and had always wanted them. Who was your mother’s friend and shared her concerns for the rain forest and endangered species. Who knew nothing about what your mother was, only that she loved her and would do anything to keep you safe. She witnessed your mother’s death and she took you back to the United States and legally adopted you.”
    Five
    Maggie stood absolutely motionless. It was insanity to believe anythingBrandt Talbot said, yet she knew it was true. She did have memories of that night. And Jayne Odessa had spoken often of a friend she loved very much who had died violently, tragically. A woman named Lily Hanover. The two women had worked tirelessly to preserve the rain forest and all the endangered species within it. Saving the environment had been the cause that had brought Jayne and Lily together. But Jayne had never told Maggie that Lily was her mother.
    Brandt caught her chin. “Don’t feel sad, Maggie. Your parents loved you very much and they loved each other. Few people ever have that in their lifetime.”
    “You knew them?” Her green gaze locked with his, daring him to lie to her.
    “I was a boy, but I remember them, the way they always touched each other and smiled at each other.
    They were truly wonderful people who always practiced what they believed no matter what the danger.”
    Maggie glanced up into the trees, caught sight of the several frogs sitting openly on the leaves. Their eyes were huge, enabling the amphibians to hunt at night. Higher up, clinging to the branches of a tree, was a small tarsier with its round shiny eyes staring down at her. He looked like a fuzzy, huggable alien creature. Her mother and father had seen these little creatures just as she was seeing them, perhaps had stood under the same tree.
    “Thank you for telling me about my parents, Brandt. I understand better why Jayne was afraid for me to come here to the forest. I used to talk about it all the time and she would get upset, even cry. I longed to come to the rain forest here and in South America and in Africa. When I became a veterinarian, it was with the idea that I would be working in the wild to preserve rare species.”

    “Jayne Odessa witnessed the poachers murdering Lily. She had no idea of Lily’s heritage, that she was a shape-shifter.” Brandt took a breath, let it out, all the time watching her expression carefully for signs that she was rejecting the things he was revealing to her. “It must have been so frightening for Jayne to know that poachers would murder someone just because they tried to protect the animals. And then you had to grow up just like Lily, wanting to save exotic animals.”
    He stroked her hair, the lightest of caresses, but the touch sent heat spiraling through her body. She ached for him but did her best to ignore it. Though he appealed to her on so many levels, she was leery of the sheer force of the attraction between them. “I may have inherited the tendencies from my birth mother but Jayne certainly influenced me, too. She surrounded herself with books and information on habitats and endangered