Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Vittorio

I drive to the house in Brax Hill, a rural community about two-hundred miles south of the city. We own eleven houses here. Two apartment buildings, too. I arranged all that in high school, trying to help my father along to a legitimate business process. All of them are rented out except this one, which the family keeps for times like now.

At the house, I change into a jogging suit and then get out through the backyard. I jog a mile or two into the forest until I come to a small hut. We own the hut, too. We own the land I'm on as well. In the hut is a mountain bike, and the mountain bike takes me over three or four miles of trails to another hut. I put the bicycle in the hut, strip, and shift.

And everything returns to focus.

The perspective is entirely different as a lion. Perhaps the most significant change in relation to perspective is just the awareness of the ground. I've come to believe that humans are unaware of the ground for the most part. This is why they trip over things they don't see. Their center of gravity makes focus higher.

Of course, lions in human form are also less aware of the ground.

Now, though, with my head in a different position, I am fully aware, and the change is refreshing and exciting to me. The truth is my eyes are still almost six feet above the ground. Shifters are about half- again larger than the natural animals. I weigh almost a thousand pounds. In the wild, a very large male lion might get to six hundred pounds.

But the position and the nature of a lion's body make me more aware of the terrain. I'm also aware, of course, of the wildlife. I'm instantly distracted by an Iberian pig, a feral boar. I don't intend to hunt when I come here but now that I hear it rooting a short distance away, I'm in a different frame of mind about that entirely.

I haven't hunted in a long time. Back home, it isn't really something I get much time to do. Even though I'm with Company 417, which is entirely composed of shifters, we are still an active fire company. We also have to keep our nature secret. Even though shifters came out to the world, most people do not really believe in our existence.

There is a good deal of worry that perhaps the world is not ready for a shifters' positions in important services to be revealed. We are drawn to such services. Fireman. Police officers. Military. Rescue. Anything that requires physical activity and physical strategy.

Some of us, Lions in particular, are drawn to business, which makes my family's business unsurprising. The criminal nature of things isn't surprising, either. For thousands of years, shifters' very existence was hidden from humanity. The idea of operating in the shadows is part of what we are.

But that is changing, and so, too, my family is changing.

The pig is a more interesting thing to consider now. I am downwind from him so stalking him will not be as difficult as it might otherwise be. That is not to say that it will be easy. On the contrary, I am so large that there is no way to move silently in this forest with leaves, twigs, and more covering the ground. The most I'll be able to manage is to move quietly.

I can feel the excitement of the hunt rising within me. I am an African lion, far more at home hunting in grasslands than forest, of course. Nonetheless, this is exhilarating.

Perhaps not as exhilarating as being right on the edge of making love to Isabella but if for some reason the boar gets away, I won't be nearly as crushed. I can promise you that.

I get to a point where I can see the boar. I'm amazed I've managed to get this close. I crouch and slide closer on my belly. The boar's head comes up and he sniffs the air and grunts. His tail switches. I freeze. Seconds go by and neither of us moves.

And then I pounce.

My leap covers the distance between us easily, but this boar was already on the alert and it bolts to the side just in time to avoid my claws. I turn rapidly and start after him. He's not far enough to make me expend much effort. He's mine, if I want him.

I speed up a little and the distance closes. He decides to turn and fight. He's small in comparison to me, but he's wily and he's a fighter. He snorts and I can tell he's actually going to run at me. The insanity of it makes me leap aside when he gets to me. I suddenly am not interested in taking his life. He's brave and deserves to live.

I trot off into the forest, lengthening the distance between me and the boar very quickly. My heart races with the unspent adrenaline. I feel very alive and everything, every sense, is heightened. Isabella pops into my mind and I feel a thrill excite me. I run faster through a clearing and dive into the trees again.

It is strange still for us Leonis to be running through forest. America was not our first home. We originated from Africa, but around 1779, my ancestors decided to migrate to Italy. About a hundred years after that, along with so many others, another ancestor, my great-great grandfather, Agosto Leoni, came over to America with his wife and their three cubs…kids.

He was a bookkeeper in Italy, with a small shop of odds and ends on the side. His ability to understand numbers is what first gained the attention of his mafioso neighbor. That guy brought him to the boss at the time and, well, the rest is history.

Agosto was the first Leoni to work for the mob. He worked his way up and brought more lion shifters over, eventually, to form his own crime family. When I say he was wily, I mean it. He managed to outsmart quite a few tough guys. He knew numbers well enough and accounting, he could hide money he was skimming from the top. Not a great role model, but I understand why he did it.

Now, though, there isn't the need for all of that illegal bullshit to continue. It's a business that I want to end with me. I have no intention of entering into the illegal side of things, but my father is making that difficult.He wants me to take over whether or not the legitimization is complete.

And then there's Isabella.

Her family have been involved with the business almost as long as my family. It would be just as hard for her to cut ties with it, but I remember how she seemed so certain that she wanted to leave it all behind. That is what helps me to believe she could be the one to help me legitimize things. She is the mate I'm looking for, the one who would understand. I sensed it the moment I saw her again.

I stop where I am and let the forest envelop me. Sounds and smells shift like the light, and I try to sink into my lion senses and forget, for just a moment, that I'm even a man. I have the strongest urge to roar and let all my frustration pour out of me, but it would be heard for miles. It doesn't sound like the lion at the start of movies. That's a tiger.

As I head back, though, I realize I feel better. A shifter always feels more clarity after going wild. It's especially needed in the times we're living in. Free space to roam in is becoming in short supply. Thankfully, this land was available.

I make it back to the house, shifting back before I leave the cover of the woods. I slip on the stash of clothing I keep by the garden wall for these occasions, just a shirt and a pair of sweatpants. I get back into the house and I have the strongest urge to call Isabella to come out and meet me here.

I pick up my phone and stare at it like an idiot, and then I put it down.

All of this would be a little much for her to handle, I think. I know because it's almost too much for me.