The Snow Leopard's Pack (Glacier Leopards Book 5)

  The Snow Leopard’s Pack

  Glacier Leopards, #5

  By Zoe Chant

  Copyright Zoe Chant 2017

  All Rights Reserved

  Author’s Note

  This book stands alone. However, it’s part of a series about snow leopards who work as rangers at Glacier National Park. If you’d like to read the series in order, the first book is The Snow Leopard’s Mate.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  The Snow Leopard's Pack (Glacier Leopards, #5)

  A note from Zoe Chant

  More Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant

  Zoe on Audio

  If you love Zoe Chant, you’ll also love these books!

  The Snow Leopard’s Mate | by Zoe Chant | Special Sneak Preview

  The mountain lion was back.

  Lillian Lowell clutched her car keys tighter as she hurried from the door of the CVS to her car. The mountain lion was crouched at the very edge of the parking lot, watching her.

  This was the second day in a row she’d seen it. Yesterday, she’d closed up the library and come out to find a big, dirty-yellow cat sitting calmly by the street. She’d stifled a shriek and run to her car, and called Animal Control as soon as she was safely away.

  She’d gone home feeling shaky and afraid. She hadn’t mentioned the incident to her mother, though, because the potential for overreaction was...high. Even though Lillian was a divorced adult woman in her thirties, her mother tended to treat her like a child.

  Anyway, Animal Control had told her they’d investigate, but they hadn’t known specifically what mountain lion she’d been talking about.

  This morning, after she’d arrived at the library, she’d waited in her car for several minutes while she craned her neck in all directions, trying to make sure it wasn’t still there. But there hadn’t been any sign of it, so she’d gone into work as normal.

  But now it was here at the CVS, several blocks from the library. Watching.

  She fumbled with her keys, hitting the button to unlock the door while she kept her eyes fixed on the big cat. She yanked the door open and got in, breathing out a long sigh. Safe.

  But then it stood up, yawned—showing her a set of enormous yellowed teeth—and stretched. Its body seemed impossibly long as it reached forward, flexing its claws. Lillian shoved the keys in the ignition, not taking her eyes off of it.

  Just as she started the car, the mountain lion’s body seemed to—shiver. Shimmer. Something.

  And then, as she watched with her heart in her throat, the cat transformed into a man.

  A shapeshifter.

  He was shortish, heavyset, with a scruffy beard, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Lillian didn’t recognized him at all. But he looked straight at her, grinned, and gave her a little salute with two fingers.

  Lillian pulled out of the parking lot with a shriek of tires, gunning the gas to get out on the road as fast as possible. It was loud enough that there was no way she could actually hear the man laughing behind her, but her imagination couldn’t let go of the idea.

  She started to drive home, wanting nothing more than to get to safety...and then hesitated.

  The shapeshifter had shown up at her job, and then at the store she always stopped at on the way home.

  If he was following her, he probably already knew where she lived. Maybe he’d show up there, too.

  And Lillian lived with her parents—had lived with them for years, since her divorce. If this shapeshifter was stalking her, wanted to hurt her or scare her for whatever reason, she couldn’t put her mom and dad at risk by going right home and just...waiting for him to show up again.

  Besides, that sounded like a nightmare. She’d be constantly checking the windows, ready to dial 911 at the slightest sound. She wouldn’t sleep a wink.

  She pulled over. She couldn’t go home, not until she knew it was safe. But then where could she go? Was anywhere safe?

  Lillian knew that the area around Glacier National Park, where she’d lived her entire life, was a place where shifters were very common. In most of the world, they were a secret. But there were some communities with so many shapeshifters that everyone knew about them, an open secret.

  Still, Lillian had managed to avoid them for most of her life. Shifters were supposed to be unpredictable and dangerous. There was no telling what their animal instincts might lead them to do, and it was safer to stay away from them altogether. Her parents had forbidden her to be friends with any of them in school, and she’d kept that up in her adult life.

  At least, that was what she’d always tried to do. Until several months ago, when her little sister Teri had become one.

  Since then, Lillian had been torn.

  Her mother, on the other hand, had declared Teri lost to the family. It wasn’t clear whether Teri’s change was her true rebellious nature coming out, or whether being turned had erased her whole personality, and put some animal in her place.

  Lillian knew it was the first option. Teri had always chafed against their mother’s controlling behavior. She’d never learned how to go with the flow, to steer their mom gently toward agreement.

  Teri always had to go her own way, and Lillian thought that meeting a snow leopard, shacking up with him, and getting turned into one herself was the all-out rebellion that had been stewing for a while.

  Maybe it was just because she couldn’t bring herself to believe that her baby sister was now a vicious animal. But she was pretty sure she was right.

  They’d barely talked since Teri had left with her shifter fiancé. Every few weeks, Lillian would call, just to ask her if she was all right. Teri would assure her that she was fine. And Lillian couldn’t quite bring herself to ask anything beyond that, because she was afraid of the answers.

  What’s it like, being a shapeshifter? What about your man, is he good to you? Is his family the family you always wanted? Better than us?

  Are you happier now?

  A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. Lillian jumped in her seat, heart pounding, as the mountain lion bounded past her car, settling on the grassy curb and staring at her.

  Lillian stared back at it. Why was it doing this? What did it want?

  Slowly, it lifted a paw, and flexed its claws.

  Lillian caught her breath. Was it going to attack her? What happened if she parked somewhere else and got out, and it was lying in wait? Would she be killed?

  Lillian was struck with the incontrovertible knowledge that she couldn’t handle this alone. She could try calling the police, but she didn’t know if they had any policy in place about how to deal with shifters, since shifters didn’t even have any legal existence.

  And maybe some of the police were shapeshifters. If so, would they be on the mountain lion’s side?

  The whole idea was terrifying. And Lillian had never dealt well with being scared. She didn’t like scary movies, was always afraid of walking alone at night, and hated any kind of fighting or conflict.

  It was a cliché, really. The spinster librarian, single at 33 and living with her parents, jumping at shadows and unable to take care of herself.

  But that was the reality and she had to accept it. She couldn’t fight off a mountain lion by herself. She didn’t know how any of this worked. She had no idea what had made this shifter target her, and she didn’t know how violent it could get. She didn’t know if there was some sort of...shapeshifter policing body that could stop it, or if all shifters sided with one another.

  But she did know someone who could find out.

  With shaking fingers, not taking her eyes off the mountain lion, she pulled out
her cell phone and called her sister.

  ***

  Cal Westland settled into his desk chair with a sigh. It was the end of the regular working day at Glacier National Park, which meant reviewing everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, then getting everything ready for tomorrow.

  This didn’t mark the end of his working day, though. Once he was done with all of the computer business, he’d head out into the Park itself. The sun would be setting by then—just barely, it was late these days, here in the middle of July—and he’d shift into his snow leopard form to do a long patrol of the major tourist areas.

  He’d check on anywhere that had been a problem; today, that was that area of the lake where the waterweed was out of control, and ready to tangle up unwary swimmers. Then he’d finish up with a good run along some path that he’d been neglecting lately, refresh his understanding of what the landscape was doing. Finally, he’d head home to his cabin.

  It was a satisfying way to spend a workday. Cal was aware that he was among the luckiest men he’d ever met. He’d come home from Iraq over ten years ago, sure that he was going to end up another out-of-work vet sitting around with his memories—good and bad.

  Instead, Major Wilson Hanes, the best officer he’d ever served under, had called him up about five minutes after his feet touched American soil again, to tell him he had a job for him.

  Major Hanes had set him up at Glacier. Knowing Cal was a shifter—Hanes was a snow leopard shifter himself, and involved in the top-secret military echelons who knew about shifters and used them to the best of their abilities—he’d found the place in America most likely to make a snow leopard feel at home.

  Cal had never had the chance to express his gratitude. But someday he was going to find a way.

  Now, he’d spent ten years working every day in the wild, rocky, endless natural expanse of Glacier National Park, and he wouldn’t give it up for anything.

  Cal was brought out of his thoughts by a knock at his office door.

  He indulged himself by playing one of his favorite guessing games. The knock was quick and confident, loud but not the echoing thump of a large fist—rather, the rap of a small one. Teri.

  “Come,” he called.

  Sure enough, the little blonde head that poked around the door belonged to Teri Lowell, his newest hire and the second-newest member of Glacier’s little cabal of snow leopards.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Teri said. Cal could hear the sir that she’d almost tacked on to the end of that.

  He wished he could police the silent “sirs” as thoroughly as he did the audible ones. No Marine gunnery sergeant wanted to be called “sir.” Cal worked for a living, after all.

  “I need your help,” Teri was saying earnestly.

  “Come on in, then,” Cal said, nodding to one of the chairs in front of his desk.

  Teri stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She looked nervous, Cal noticed, which wasn’t like her. Normally she was one of the most confident, chipper employees he’d ever had. Something must have gone wrong.

  “All right, out with it,” he said, mentally bracing himself for news of a missing tourist or an injury. Surely Teri would’ve learned by now that something of that nature needed to be reported right away, without any hesitation.

  “It’s my sister,” Teri said in a rush. Then she bit her lip.

  Cal frowned. That was unexpected. “Your sister’s at the Park?”

  “No, no.” Teri shook her head. “Sorry. This isn’t Park business. It’s...pack business.”

  Cal sat back in his chair, trying to look thoughtful, and not like he was possessed by a growing wariness.

  Pack business. What was pack business? Cal had done his very best, as more leopards showed up at Glacier and clustered around him, to make it clear that he wasn’t running a kingdom or a dictatorship, and that they were all adults who could live their own lives just fine. And if they couldn’t, well, they probably needed help he couldn’t give them.

  But now Teri, one of the most capable young women he knew, was coming to him with “pack business.”

  “My sister’s in trouble,” Teri said, leaning forward so her elbows were on her knees. “There’s a shifter stalking her. A mountain lion.”

  That stopped Cal’s thoughts in their tracks.

  “A mountain lion,” he said slowly.

  A mountain lion stalking a woman. A human woman? She must be: Teri had only been turned a few months ago, and Cal understood that there’d been some issues with her family not liking shifters.

  It wasn’t his business at all, so he’d kept his nose out and his attention on Teri’s work, not her family life. But if her sister was human, and a shifter was stalking her—

  “What do you mean, stalking?” Cal asked. “Just following her? Threatening her?”

  “She said he’s shown up outside her job, following her car as she went home, showing up in the parking lot where she was shopping,” Teri said, twisting her fingers together. “She’s afraid. She doesn’t know what he wants, or what to do. I’m the only shifter she really knows, but I’ve only been a shifter for a few months, and I don’t know much about the community here. Zach really doesn’t either.”

  Zach was Teri’s mate, who’d moved here with his brother to take a ranger job several months before. There was no reason for him to know the ins and outs of shifter relations at Glacier.

  Teri bit her lip. “Lillian’s scared, Cal. She has no idea what to do. She doesn’t know if calling the police would help, and she doesn’t want to go home, because she lives with our parents and she won’t put them in danger. She needs help, and I don’t know what’s best.”

  As a rule, Cal didn’t interfere with the lives of his employees. Sometimes, though, he found himself in a position where they were asking him to. For example, Joel, Zach’s brother, had come to Cal for advice about his mate a month or two ago. Cal hadn’t been about to turn him away when he needed help, so he’d talked him through the problem and sent him on his way.

  When he’d realized that Joel thought he needed Cal’s permission for his mate, Nina, to settle in town and join their community, Cal had told them that he wasn’t the sort to put his nose in other people’s business. They could live their lives without any interference from him, after all.

  On the whole, he found that discouraging people from coming to him for issues in their own personal lives just meant that they sorted those issues out just fine among themselves. And probably grew into better people as a result of it.

  But if an innocent woman was in trouble...that was a different kind of a thing.

  “Where is your sister now?” he asked.

  “On her way here,” Teri said. “I thought that, if nothing else, there’s a larger concentration of shifters here in the Park than in most places, so we could keep her safe if anything happened.”

  Cal nodded, thinking. Mountain lions.

  Well, he knew a mountain lion or two in town. And they were men who wouldn’t hesitate to frighten a woman if it would get them something they wanted.

  The question was: what did they want?

  “Go meet her when she gets to the Park, and have her come here,” Cal directed Teri. “Maybe we can get this sorted out without too much fuss.”

  Teri nodded vigorously, and hopped up out of the chair. There was that familiar energy, Cal thought, with a traitorous hint of fondness.

  He didn’t want to play favorites among his employees. He particularly didn’t want to be seen treating the leopards any differently from the humans. But he’d always had a bit of a soft spot for Teri.

  As Teri left the office, Cal found himself wondering if her sister was just like her. Tiny, blonde, and full of energy? Probably younger, if she lived with Teri’s parents. Maybe more impulsive. He pictured a teenaged girl with all of Teri’s willfulness and enthusiasm. He could see a girl like that not realizing how dangerous the local mountain lions could be, or maybe getting caught up in the thrill of poten
tial danger, and getting herself in trouble.

  Cal caught himself thinking, Well, I’ll get it sorted out, and shook his head at himself. He wasn’t here to manage other people’s lives. He had plenty to manage with the Park.

  He’d just make sure the girl was safe, and that would be it.

  Resolved to keep on minding his own business as much as possible, Cal turned his attention back to paperwork. He’d gone through most of the day’s business by the time there was another quick, pert knock at his door.

  “Come,” he called, and in came Teri, followed by—

  Cal found himself caught out. This had to be the sister, but she wasn’t anything like he’d pictured. Not a little bubbly blonde teenager at all.

  No, this was a fully-grown woman, older than Teri by at least a few years. In her thirties, definitely. A mature woman, taller than her sister, with generous curves—but conservatively dressed, with her hair twisted up into the sort of elegant coif that dared gravity to mess with it.

  And she was somehow...drawn in on herself. He couldn’t see Teri’s cheerful energy in this woman. There wasn’t any obvious upset, either. Instead, she presented a smooth, polite expression as she moved gracefully forward to take the seat he indicated.

  “Cal, this is my sister Lillian,” Teri was saying, nervousness hovering around her. “Lillian, my boss, Cal, and the alpha of the snow leopard pack.”

  If they’d been alone, Cal would’ve automatically protested that label. He was no one’s alpha; he refused to take away anyone’s freedom like that. The leopards at Glacier didn’t have to kowtow to him.

  But somehow, faced with this careful, composed woman, sitting perched on the edge of one of his office chairs, he found himself swallowing the protest down.

  She’s really scared, Teri had said.

  Lillian didn’t seem scared. She seemed calm, poised, and ready to have a reasoned discussion about the situation. Her eyes, a striking dark blue color, met his without any hesitation.

  But if he looked closer...her jaw was tight. One of her hands was clenched around the other. She sat ramrod-straight in the chair.

  And with his leopard’s senses, he could scent it in the air. Fear.