Chapter 3

The air was thick with humidity-a strange, clinging dampness that felt wrong for what should have been the start of the dry season. Franco knew, with a certainty born of too many wildlife documentaries, that this storm would be the last. After it passed, the water holes would shrink to nothing, and the land would turn to dust. If they were going to hunt, it had to be now.

After the lion's roar faded, a tense quiet had fallen over the savanna. Franco knew they couldn't stay in the mound forever. The cubs were growing, and their hunger was a constant, demanding presence.

He led them out into the heavy, charged air. The sky was a bruised purple, and the rumble of distant thunder masked the sound of their paws on the damp earth. He spotted a lone springbok fawn, separated from its mother, grazing nervously near a stand of acacia trees.

He motioned for Sean and Roy to hide in a thicket, their small bodies disappearing into the shadows.

He moved like a golden phantom, a blur of focused intent. The pounce was perfect. The kill was swift.

He was just about to call the cubs over to eat when two massive shapes exploded from the tall grass.

Two young, nomadic lions, their manes still patchy, their bodies lean and scarred from a life on the fringes. Franco's photographer brain, trained to catalog subjects for hours in the field, instantly assigned them labels. The bigger one-broad-shouldered, aggressive, the kind that would throw the first punch in a bar fight-he mentally dubbed Phillip. The smaller one, with the shifty eyes and the nervous tail-flick, became Aaron. Giving them names made them marginally less terrifying. Marginally.

Their eyes burned with the arrogant greed of their species.

Phillip let out a low growl and swaggered forward, making a clear claim on Franco's kill.

Franco's body dropped into a defensive crouch, a hiss tearing from his throat. But he knew it was a bluff. The size difference was laughable.

Then he saw it. Aaron wasn't looking at the kill. He was looking at the thicket where Sean and Roy were hiding.

A bolt of pure, cold terror shot through Franco. Losing the meal was one thing. Losing his sons was unthinkable.

Phillip lunged, a massive paw swiping through the air, claws extended.

In that split second, with death and loss bearing down on him, something inside Franco snapped. A primal, unknown power, a genetic lock he never knew existed, was forced open.

A blinding golden light erupted from his body.

The world twisted. Bones popped and elongated with an awful, grinding sound. Fur receded. His body contorted, stretching, rising.

Phillip's paw swiped through empty air. He stumbled, his brutish lion brain trying to process what he was seeing. Where the cheetah had been a moment ago, there now stood a tall, hairless, two-legged creature.

Franco was human again. Taller, more muscular than his photographer's body, but undeniably human. And completely, stark-nakedly, human.

He didn't have time to process the shock or the mortifying awkwardness of his situation. His only thought was the cubs.

He sprinted to the thicket, his long, human legs covering the ground in powerful strides. He scooped up Sean with his left arm and tucked Roy under his right, holding them tight against his chest.

The two lions stared, utterly dumbfounded. The scene was so profoundly wrong, so contrary to every law of nature they had ever known, that it broke their minds. They just stood there, frozen in confusion.

Franco didn't waste the opportunity. He turned and ran.

The first cold drops of rain began to fall, plastering his hair to his scalp and sluicing over his bare skin. He ran, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs, a silent scream of Are you f-king kidding me?! echoing in his head.

Phillip finally shook himself out of his stupor. He didn't know what that thing was, but it was running away with his dinner. He let out a roar of fury and gave chase.

The last storm of the season opened up. Rain came down in sheets, turning the parched earth into treacherous, slick mud. Franco's bare feet slipped and slid. He was fast for a human, but he was no match for a lion's gallop.

As he passed a large marula tree, a mother genet sheltering her kitten from the downpour peered down from her hollow. Her small, sharp-toothed jaw dropped. She had seen a lot of strange things on the savanna-two-headed calves, elephants walking on their hind legs to reach the highest branches-but a naked ape carrying two cheetah cubs while being chased by lions was a new one. Instinctively, she curled her tail around her kitten, pulling it deeper into the shadows.

Franco could hear Aaron's panting breath right behind him, could almost feel the heat of it on his heels.

He saw a low-hanging branch on a crooked acacia tree up ahead. Using his human agility, he leaped, grabbing the branch and swinging his body forward, using the momentum to launch himself through the air.

Aaron, unable to change course, slammed headfirst into the tree trunk with a loud thump.

Franco hit the ground, rolled, and scrambled into a dense, thorny thicket that would be impassable for the larger lions.

He collapsed into the mud, clutching the cubs, his lungs burning. The lions roared in frustration from outside the thicket, clawing at the dirt.

He was safe. For now.

He looked down at his bare, mud-splattered body. Then at the two terrified, wide-eyed cubs in his arms.

He had survived. But he had also just run naked through a thunderstorm in the African savanna while carrying two cheetah cubs. It was, without a doubt, the most profound social death he had ever experienced. The genet in the tree was definitely going to tell everyone.