Jake shook his head as he approached his friend. Drake’s shirt was slashed to ribbons and there were bloodstains on his chest. “Are you hurt?”

Shame burned through Jake. He prided himself on his control, but he’d barely managed to stop the beast as it attacked Drake. He was grateful he hadn’t attempted to turn himself over to the leopard. Drake and Joshua were from different bloodlines, they clearly didn’t have the madness that ran in his veins.

“Just a few scratches,” Drake answered casually. “I’ve had far worse playing around with friends in leopard form.”

Jake stretched his tired muscles. The rain had slowed to a fine drizzle. “I’m sorry, Drake. I could have hurt you.”

Drake sent him another small grin. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

“Then you knew more than I did. Where’s Joshua?”

The grin widened. “Sleeping like a baby. He wasn’t worried about you.”

“He does a good job of pretending,” Jake said. “He worries. Why do you suppose he left the rain forest? He isn’t all that happy here, but he doesn’t want to go back.”

“Joshua is Joshua. He doesn’t share much about his life. Whatever happened must have been bad or he never would have left. No one leaves because they want to.”

“You did,” Jake pointed out.

“I couldn’t stay in the forest without letting my leopard run, and I can’t shift. It became . . . difficult.”

“Did the doctors try grafting your own bone?”

Drake nodded. “It didn’t work. I didn’t understand the entire process, but some of us have the ability to regenerate bones and others don’t. I apparently don’t.”

“Did you try using someone else’s bone?”

“Like a cadaver?” Drake made a face. “We incinerate our dead immediately. It’s the only way for our species to survive, to keep our existence secret. And it doesn’t make much sense that if I can’t use a piece of my bone, then someone else’s would work, now does it?”

“They can do all sorts of things now, Drake. You just have to find the right man.” Jake opened the door to the pickup and paused to look around.

He owned everything for miles. He’d patiently acquired acre after acre, adding on to the land his great-grandfather had given him until he had a sanctuary. He’d turned miles of that into a shaded, wooded area for his leopard. He had built a cattle empire. Step by step, patiently. And he had slowly begun drilling for the oil he knew was on other tracts of land he’d inherited. Recently he had acquired several large pieces of property he was certain concealed natural gas just waiting to be developed. Looking at Drake—his friend—the one person who had stood for him, he realized that all of his accomplishments stacked up to very little. Billions of dollars maybe, but the money was a tool for him. And he knew what he had to do with it.

Drake needed a solution. In comparison to his friend’s problem, the years Jake had put into his plan to take down his enemies seemed a waste when a man as good as Drake was suffering.

Jake cleared his throat. He found it strange to think about another person, to worry about them. Emma’s influence. She was doing something to him with her presence that he couldn’t quite understand, but he knew she had changed him somehow in the brief two years she’d lived in his home. He didn’t know when the change had occurred, but he knew Drake was more important than any revenge possible.

Jake pulled open the door. “Do you want me to drive?”

Drake shook his head. “I’ve got it. Just shove Joshua over.”

Jake gave the other man a good-natured push and Joshua lifted his head and growled a warning. “Get in the back,” Jake said. “You can sleep there.”

Joshua snarled but complied, curling up to go back to sleep even before Jake slid into the passenger side. “Who did your surgery? Are there doctors in your village?”

“We have one doctor for our people, but no specialist like I needed, and my bones won’t graft and shift.”

Drake sounded matter-of-fact on the surface, but Jake listened with heightened senses. Drake didn’t show by his expression that he was depressed, but Jake caught the heavy note in his voice and looked at him sharply. “I need you here, Drake.” He kept his voice low, the admission churning his gut. He hated that feeling, the sudden clawing fear at the idea of losing his friend. He wasn’t supposed to need anyone. It made him feel vulnerable and small.

He took a breath. No. It wasn’t really fear of losing Drake. He had asked Drake to come to him, to leave the rain forest and help him. Drake was his responsibility. That was all. The way Emma and the children and even Joshua were his responsibility. He needed to find a way to help the man, to save him, because there were few good men left in the world.

Drake didn’t pretend to misunderstand what they were talking about. “You’re going to find out soon enough that a leopard can’t be suppressed forever. I don’t have a lot of time left, Jake. And frankly, what the hell is there left for me?”

“Surgery. Don’t be an idiot. You don’t give up until you’ve tried everything, and you haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. Your bone won’t work. We don’t have a cadaver, but you have me. Or Joshua. One of us might have the ability to regenerate and if we don’t, we’ll find someone who does have it.”

Drake shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. “I doubt it’s that easy.”