Chapter 1

Something rough, like sandpaper, was scraping against Franco's cheek. Over and over.

The sensation, paired with the hot, rhythmic puffs of air, pulled him from the depths of a heavy sleep.

Ugh, that stray from the alley again, he thought, his mind still thick with fog. He'd told his building's super a dozen times that leaving the fire escape door unlocked was just asking for trouble.

"Get off," he mumbled, swinging a hand to swat the creature away.

But his arm didn't move.

Instead, a bizarre heaviness anchored his shoulder. He felt a thick layer of something soft and dense covering his limb. Fur. His arm was covered in fur.

His eyes snapped open.

The African sun, a brutal, white-hot disk in the sky, assaulted him. The light was so intense it felt like needles in his eyes, forcing him to squint until his vision was reduced to a painful sliver.

Panic, cold and sharp, began to prickle at the edges of his consciousness. This wasn't his cramped New York apartment. This was... everywhere. An endless expanse of pale, sun-bleached grass under a sky too big to be real.

His last clear memory was the helicopter's controls going dead, the frantic beeping of the altitude warning, and then the sickening lurch of freefall. He had been a wildlife photographer for National Geographic, hanging out of an open door to capture the thunderous migration of wildebeest across the Maasai Mara. The helicopter had malfunctioned, rotor stalling, spinning down into the stampede below. There was the scream of twisting metal, a blur of horns and dust, and then nothing.

Now, this. This impossible body. This alien place. The air itself felt wrong-different gravitational pull, different scents, something he couldn't name. He wasn't on Earth anymore. He knew it with a certainty that bypassed logic and landed straight in his bones.

His gaze dropped, trying to focus.

Two small, fluffy creatures were perched on his chest. They were covered in spotted fur, with wide, terrified blue eyes staring right at him. Cheetah cubs. His photographer's brain supplied the information automatically, a detached, useless fact in the face of the impossible.

The smaller of the two cubs, Roy, let out a weak, mewling cry. But beneath the sound, something else echoed, a thought that wasn't his own, clear as a bell inside his skull:

Mom, I'm hungry.

Franco's brain blue-screened. What the hell was that?

But within seconds of waking-as if the crash had only now allowed his new brain to finish booting up-a flood of foreign memories surged through him. The cheetah whose body he now inhabited had been a native of this world, a place called Losa. Losa was not Earth. It was a planet where over eighty percent of the land was covered by sprawling grasslands and dense forests, and at the top of the food chain sat the great cats. Lions, leopards, cheetahs-they ruled this continent, and among them existed a class called the Evolved. These Evolved possessed intelligence rivaling or exceeding humans, could communicate telepathically in their animal forms, and, upon reaching eighteen months of age, could shift into a humanoid form. This body he now wore was that of an Evolved male cheetah, a rare creature in this brutal and beautiful world.

The original owner of this body had been hunting when he was killed-ambushed by a coalition of young male lions desperate for territory. The memories came fragmented: the scent of blood, the crushing weight of a paw on his throat, and then the slow darkness. The body had somehow survived, heart still beating, brain still firing, but the consciousness that had inhabited it was gone. And Franco, dying in a burning wreckage across the void of space, had somehow been pulled into the vacancy. Reincarnation. Soul migration. Call it whatever the hell you wanted-he was here now, in the furry, four-legged flesh of a predator.

He'd spent the first month wandering in a daze of pure, unadulterated bewilderment. He didn't know if he was still on some twisted version of Earth or if the helicopter crash had punted him across the universe. All he knew was the endless savannah, the burning sun, and the constant, gnawing awareness that he was utterly alone in a body that wasn't his. He searched desperately for any sign of civilization-a road, a radio tower, a plane trail in the sky. Nothing. Just grass, acacia trees, and the distant roar of lions. Disappointment piled on disappointment until the weight of it nearly crushed him.

He scrambled to sit up, but his body refused to cooperate. The simple act of rising became a clumsy, four-limbed struggle. He felt his center of gravity lurch, and he pitched forward, landing face-first in the dirt with a humiliating thud.

He spit out a mouthful of dust and looked down in horror.

Golden, spotted paws. Sharp, black claws embedded in the dry earth.

A gasp caught in his throat, but the sound that came out was a guttural, rumbling growl that vibrated through his entire chest. He tried to scream, to shout the FML that was exploding in his mind, but all he could manage was that same, terrifyingly animalistic noise.

The larger cub, Sean, cautiously padded over. He nudged his head under Franco's chin, a gesture of hesitant comfort, and a thought echoed in Franco's mind again.

Mom?

Franco recoiled as if electrocuted. He twisted his body, craning his neck to look at his own hindquarters. The physical evidence was undeniable. He was, unequivocally, male.

A wave of hysterical despair washed over him. He covered his face with his paws, the unfamiliar weight and shape of them a fresh torment.

I'm a dude! A man! It's Dad! the thought screamed through his mind, a silent, desperate roar. Call me Dad!

His violent reaction terrified the cubs. He recoiled as if struck, letting out a sharp, guttural hiss he couldn't control. They scrambled back, their tiny bodies trembling. Roy let out a pitiful whimper, fat tears welling in his big eyes.

These two cubs had been his salvation. He'd found them three weeks after waking, curled beside the rotting corpse of their mother. She had been killed-lion or hyena, the memories from his cheetah-body told him-and the cubs were nothing but skin and bones, too weak to even run. They had hissed at him with the last of their strength, tiny, pathetic little threats that had broken something open inside him. Their mother was dead. They would die too, without help. And Franco, adrift in a world that made no sense, had been drowning in isolation. Caring for them had given him a reason to function. He was grateful to them. They made him feel alive.

Though, feeding them had posed a significant problem. They were old enough to eat meat, thank God or whatever deity watched over this crazy planet. As a male cheetah, he lacked the equipment to nurse them. His first successful hunt had been a near-religious experience-a newborn black impala fawn, clumsy and slow. He'd botched it six times before sheer luck delivered the kill into his claws. When he'd finally torn into the warm flesh, he had nearly wept with relief. If he had to eat raw meat to survive, so be it. From standing on two legs as a photographer to crawling on all fours as a predator, he was still alive. He could make this work.

That sound, that pure, helpless misery, pierced through Franco's panic. It struck a chord deep inside him, a part of his human soul he thought had died the moment he woke up in this nightmare.

With a sigh that felt heavy enough to flatten the grass, he clumsily crawled toward them. He nudged Roy with his chin, the way he'd seen the cub do to him, a clumsy attempt at reassurance.

Just then, a new sensation hit him, more urgent and terrifying than anything before. Hunger. Not the polite, can-wait-for-lunch hunger of a human, but a raw, gnawing emptiness in his gut. It was a beast's hunger, a primal command that screamed eat or die.

The harsh reality of this world had beaten the remaining stubbornness out of him quickly. Cheetahs might be apex predators in theory, but on Losa, they occupied a precarious rung. Lions bullied them. Hyenas bullied them. Even leopards, those solitary bastards, bullied them. Every successful kill was a gamble. Out of ten hunts, he was lucky if he got to keep the meat two or three times. Lions would saunter in like they owned the place and steal his hard-earned meal. Hyena clans would cackle their way through the carcass while he slunk away, furious and humiliated. Each theft forced him to retreat with his sons, tail metaphorically between his legs, empty-bellied and seething. The frustration was indescribable-a human mind trapped in a cheetah's body, outranked by brute force at every turn. The only silver lining was that his hunting skills had improved dramatically out of pure, desperate necessity. Steal his kill? Fine. He'd just go catch another one. Through sheer stubborn repetition, he and the cubs had clawed their way out of absolute destitution.

He scanned his surroundings. They were in the middle of nowhere, a flat, open plain of dead grass with no cover. A death trap. His photographer's instinct, honed by years of waiting for the perfect shot, picked up a faint scent on the wind. Blood. And the distant, insane cackle of hyenas.

They couldn't stay here.

He had to move them. He tried to do what he'd seen big cats do in documentaries, gently grabbing Roy by the scruff of his neck. But he misjudged the force, his teeth too sharp. The cub yelped in pain.

Franco immediately let go, his heart clenching. Okay, human approach.

He nudged them with his nose, letting out a low, commanding rumble. Follow me. Stay close.

Sean, ever the mature one, understood immediately. He nipped at his brother's hind leg, urging him to keep up as Franco led them into the tall grass.

Suddenly, a fat, twitching hare burst from the brush right in front of them.

Instinct took over. Franco's hind legs bunched, muscles coiling like powerful springs. He exploded forward, a golden blur of speed. He was a cheetah. He was built for this.

But then, his human brain interfered.

Okay, calculate the arc, lead the target, adjust for wind resistance...

The clash between conscious thought and primal instinct was catastrophic. His legs tangled. He lost his balance mid-air, a graceful missile suddenly turned into a clumsy projectile, and crashed headfirst into a thorny bush.

The hare vanished.

Franco spat out a mouthful of leaves and dirt, staring at his own paws in utter humiliation. He had the body of the world's fastest land animal, and he'd just been outsmarted by a rabbit.

He heard a soft rustling. Sean and Roy padded up to him. They didn't laugh-could cheetahs even laugh?-they just started licking the dirt from his face with their small, rough tongues.

Their unconditional trust, their simple, unwavering belief that he was their protector, washed over him. It extinguished the last embers of his New York arrogance.

He took a deep breath, the hot, dusty air filling his powerful lungs. This time, he wouldn't think. He would just be.

He closed his eyes, letting his new senses take over. He pushed his human thoughts away and listened. He heard the whisper of the wind, the buzz of insects, and, beneath it all, the faint scratching of claws on rock.

A rock hyrax. Hiding behind a boulder.

He didn't think. He didn't plan. He let his body do what it was made to do.

He moved like a ghost through the grass, every step silent, his body a low, fluid shadow. He saw the hyrax, a small, furry bundle of nerves. His muscles tensed. He sprang.

There was no thought, only a perfect, clean explosion of power. A single, precise bite to the neck. It was over in an instant.

He dragged the kill, still warm and bleeding, back to the cubs. The smell of raw meat and blood made his human stomach churn. He wanted to vomit.

But he looked at Sean and Roy, at their hungry, hopeful eyes.

He forced himself to tear into the flesh, ripping off a piece and pushing it toward them.

They devoured it.

The cubs ate until their bellies swelled round and tight. They'd never touched the internal organs-some innate cheetah instinct steering them away from the offal. Franco had once tried a bite of liver out of sheer, morbid curiosity. The taste had been so violently repulsive that he'd gagged and pawed at his tongue for a solid minute. If he'd been reincarnated as a vulture, he would have immediately attempted to die again. The cubs, bellies full, set about grooming each other, tiny rough tongues cleaning the blood from their spotted faces. Once they were clean, they turned to Franco, licking his chin and muzzle with devoted thoroughness. Early on, he'd cringed away from the intimacy of it. But he had done the mental gymnastics required and made peace with it. They were his sons. This was what family did.

And as he watched them eat, the revulsion in his gut was slowly replaced by a strange, fierce warmth. It was the feeling of responsibility. It was the feeling of being a father.