The breeze was wafting towards them from the direction they were walking, though, so maybe it was ahead. She followed Wilson eagerly, and after a few minutes, the trees started to thin out.
They emerged from the woods into a gorgeous clearing. The ground was carpeted with grass and wildflowers—blue, white, yellow, pink, all twinkling amid the rich green. Mavis sighed with appreciation.
“Let’s stop here for a little while,” she suggested to Wilson.
He smiled and laid down his jacket on the grass for her. It was warm enough that they’d long taken their light spring jackets off—Mavis was even starting to sweat a bit in her long-sleeved shirt.
Struck by a whimsical impulse, before she sat down she spread her own jacket on the ground for Wilson, raising her eyebrows at him when he laughed.
“What?” she asked. “I want you to be just as comfortable as I am.”
“Thank you,” he said gravely, and they sat together in the grass.
Mavis leaned into her mate’s side, feeling a pleasurable warmth run through her. She was here, in the most beautiful place on Earth, with the best man she’d ever known, and she was ready to spend the rest of her life with him.
Nothing could have made the moment any better.
They sat in the sun for a while, just appreciating the beauty around them. Wilson put his arm around Mavis and tugged her close, and she relaxed into the rhythm of his breathing and the thump of his heartbeat. His body was so strong and firm against hers. She wondered if...
“Wilson?” she murmured.
“Hmmm?” he rumbled back.
“Would you—would you shift for me? It seems wrong that the only time I’ve ever seen it was at Daryl’s house.”
Daryl’s house. Not hers anymore, not ever again. The thought was so freeing.
Wilson made a dissatisfied noise. “You’re right. That’s not how it should be. Of course I’ll shift for you, love.”
The endearment made her flush with pleasure. She sat upright, and watched as Wilson stood and stretched—good God, his muscles in a T-shirt and jeans, it was enough to make a woman need to fan herself—and stepped a few paces away.
“Ready?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Whenever you are.”
And then his form shivered, and blurred, and standing in front of her was a snow leopard.
He was just as beautiful as she remembered. More, even, because out here, the sun dappled his coat with shining silver, bringing out the sleekness of his fur, and the way the muscles shifted underneath it.
He paced forward when she held her hand out, and nuzzled at her fingers. She petted his head, marveling at how soft the fur was, and then buried her fingers in the longer coat on his side. He leaned into the touch.
She petted along his side, and he stretched, looking as indulgent as any cat. The luxuriousness of his fur was unbelievable. Mavis ran her hands along his flank, his spine, touching his tail just for a moment before he flicked away—instinctively, she thought. But she moved her attention back to his head, running curious fingers over his ears, the delicate fur on his forehead. She avoided the extremely large, sharp teeth.
His eyes, though—his eyes looked exactly the same.
After a minute, he leaned forward, and delicately touched his nose to hers. Mavis laughed in delight.
Wilson pulled back and gave her a look that she could almost describe as—playful? And then he shot off into the trees, almost faster than she could follow. She gasped involuntarily—she’d had no idea that snow leopards were so fast. She’d seen the rest of the pack in their shifted forms every now and then, but usually just when they were heading out or coming back from a run, not at their full speeds.
He must have circled around, because he came back quickly, out of the trees and into the clearing like a shot. He raced past her, leapt for a tree, and scaled it almost all the way to the top. He ended up on the last sturdy branch, stretched out with his tail hanging down in a curve, exactly like a photograph of a big wild cat.
Mavis applauded, breathless with how impressive he was. The things a wild cat could do!
And he was hers.
After a moment, he made his way down the tree trunk, with no indication that it took any real effort to get down a straight vertical incline like that. He padded back over to her, nosed at her fingers again, and then blurred and shifted back.
“Like that?” he asked, eyes twinkling.