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up with for everyone concerned, he thought angrily. Even if he thought she would be safer with them, she would’ve slowed them down, increased their chances of getting caught and that wouldn’t go any better for her than it did them.
    They were going to have to live off the land, keep moving. She wasn’t in any shape to handle what they were going to have to handle.
    He was still trying to convince himself that she was going to be fine when he heard the sound he realized he’d been listening for since they’d left her. His blood turned to ice with the first scream. Sheer terror filled every note.
    He stopped abruptly, lifting his head to determine the location. Beau, Hawk, and Cavanaugh halted, as well. Dropping everything abruptly, he launched himself into a run, battling his way through the heavy underbrush that reached out and snagged him like manacles. He felt the change coming over him as his fear and frustration mounted. For once, he didn’t fight it. He relaxed, let it take him, welcomed it. By the time she screamed again, he was in full transition, racing faster, unimpeded by the jungle growth that had been slowing him before.
    The smell of the men reached him—their excitement made his stomach churn, increased his rage. He could smell her fear, hear her panting breaths of terror. Uttering a howl of rage, he pushed himself to run faster still.
    Bursting through the heavy foliage at last, he landed in sand, whipped his head around and spied the knot on the beach. The men had all paused at his roar, lifting their heads. He could see the whites of their eyes as they spied him and the others.
    One man screamed and whirled to run. The others seemed too frozen to move for several moments. Abruptly, one of the men screamed ‘ Chupacabra !’—goat sucker—
    grabbed his machine gun, and began firing. The moment he did, the others released Sylvie and scrambled for their own guns.
    Bullets whizzed past him like angry hornets, but he barely even registered them.
    Sylvie hadn’t moved. She was naked, her skin so pale it shone—and he saw blood.
    Around him, the others howled their rage and raced him to reach the men first. He slammed into one with a satisfying crunch of bones—the man’s bones. The man uttered a gurgling scream as he tore his throat out with one swipe of his claws and then looked around for another to kill.
    Hawk bounded past him, racing after the man who’d run. Beau and Cavanaugh were shredding two others. He glanced down at Sylvie, torn between the need to see if she was still alive and the greater need to rend and tear and break bones. As he caught a whiff of the men escaping, that need took precedence and he bounded after them.
    He managed to catch one of the fleeing men and settled to dismembering him, dimly aware of the screams around him as Beau, Cavanaugh, and Hawk managed to catch their own prey. By the time he’d finished, he discovered the others were well away and still running. Gasping for breath, he hesitated again, trying to decide whether to chase them down and kill them or go back to check on Sylvie.

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    That time the urge to check on her took precedence. Turning away, promising himself he would hunt them down if they’d hurt her, he began jogging back toward the beach. It didn’t occur to him until he’d reached it that he was liable to scare her to death if she wasn’t dead already. Dragging in a deep breath, he focused on tamping the rage.
    As he regained his control, he felt the change overtake him again.
    He glanced down at his hands and discovered he was bloody all over, but he saw hands, not the paws of a monster. “Sylvie!” he called, stepping from the jungle and looking around for her.
    The churned up beach was evidence that he had the right place, but he didn’t see any sign of Sylvie until he’d surveyed the beach from end to end. He caught sight of her as she raced along the water’s edge. The jiggle and bounce of her bare ass riveted his attention the