Page 7 of Easy, Tiger

"Time for you to go home," I whisper when he finally pushes himself upright, muscles bunching beneath striped fur as he finds his balance. "Wherever that might be in these supposedly tiger-free mountains."

Turning toward me one final time, he leaves intense focus to steal the breath from my lungs. For a heartbeat that stretches into eternity, something passes between us I don't have words for, a recognition too strange and too unmistakable to be nothing. Whatever this moment is, I have the distinct sense it's altered something fundamental in both our lives.

Then he melts into the darkness between the trees, leaving only disturbed leaves and the lingering warmth where he'd lain.

In my haste to gather my scattered supplies, my hands shake from more than cold. Several graphite pencils and a tube of fixative slip from my fingers, tumbling into the dark underbrush, but I'm too exhausted and rattled to search for them. There are no tigers in Pennsylvania. There have never been tigers in Pennsylvania, none in any field guide I've ever illustrated or on any range map I've ever rendered. And yet I spent an entire afternoon stitching one back together beside a creek that doesn't appear on any tourist map. Someone would have reported an escaped exotic animal by now. Someone would have noticed. The absence of any explanation festers under my skin and refuses to leave.

The walk back to my cabin passes in a daze of replaying every moment beside the creek. By the time I’m in front of my front door, one truth has crystallized with uncomfortable clarity—saving that tiger's life has somehow changed mine, and I'm nowhere near ready to understand how.

4

NOLAN

Consciousness returns in fragments—the feel of human limbs instead of paws and the fierce, burning ache where a bullet shattered my scapula. As a shifter, my accelerated healing is already knitting the bone back together, expelling the damaged tissue far faster than any normal human or animal could manage, but the process is excruciating. I'm sprawled across a stainless-steel examination table in Sadie's wildlife rehabilitation center, the harsh tang of medical antiseptic and wild animal feed cutting through the fog in my head. Outside the exam room, I can hear the faint rustle and chirp of recovering wildlife in their enclosures.

"Jesus, Nolan," Owen's voice grounds me. Cracking my eyes open, I find my cousin resting against the doorframe, his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, relief and exasperation warring across his features. With a flick of his wrist, a ring of metal clatters onto the counter beside me. "Your truck keys. I found you passed out on enclave territory and hauled you straight to Sadie's center for Amelia to check you out. We thought you were dead."

Sadie hovers beside the exam table. My younger sister has her auburn hair pulled into its usual tight braid, her athletic frame dressed in the canvas pants and mud-crusted boots she wears for mucking out enclosures. Her bright green eyes shine with unshed tears.

Beside her stands Dr. Amelia Ross, the town's physician and one of the few humans who knows our secret. Practical outdoor clothing sits beneath a crisp white medical coat, framing a calm, professional demeanor alongside dark hair streaked elegantly with silver. Her attention is fixed entirely on the rough stitches binding my shoulder together.

"Someone got creative with field surgery," Amelia observes, her gentle, gloved fingers following the edges of the wound before applying a dark green paste over the stitches. It is her own specialized poultice—a shifter-specific remedy she spent years perfecting alongside the enclave elders, blending crushed stinging nettle, soothing arnica, yarrow, comfrey, and rare mountain mosses that uniquely react to our accelerated healing. "These sutures are amateur work, but they probably saved your life. That bullet shattered your scapula and did a number on the rotator cuff. It's a devastating wound."

"How bad is it, Doc?" Owen asks, entering the room.

"For a normal human or animal, this would mean months of recovery and possible permanent loss of function," Amelia says, her tone serious as she checks my vitals. "Even with your accelerated shifter healing, you're bound for a few days or so of rough recovery before that bone fully knits together. You need to take it extremely easy, Nolan. No shifting, no heavy lifting."

A jarring shock accompanies the memory of gentle hands working over a tiger form, a soft voice cooing reassurances while pain lances through my shoulder. Kneeling beside a creek with her shirt wrapped around my wound is that woman from town, an illustrator defined by sad eyes and intricate sketches.

"The new woman in town." The words scrape out of my throat like gravel. "Halsey."

Owen's eyebrows climb toward his hairline. "The artist? What about her?"

"She found me." Propping myself upright despite Amelia's gentle hands trying to urge me back down, I test the range of motion in my injured shoulder. "Spent all day yesterday patching me up while I was shifted."

"That's impossible." Sadie sinks onto the edge of the cot, staring at me like I've grown a second head. "No human would approach a wounded tiger. The survival instinct alone⁠—"

"She's not like most people," Amelia counters, securing the medical tape across my shoulder. "But Sadie is right. Approaching an apex predator in pain defies all logic."

Flexing my fingers, I remember the gentle pressure of her palms against my fur and the even sound of her breathing while she worked. "She did more than approach. Retrieved the bullet out with tweezers from a first aid kit. Stitched me closed with thread meant for torn backpack straps."

Owen moves closer, his skepticism melting into deep concern. "Nolan, you lost a lot of blood. Are you sure you're remembering this clearly?"

This is old information, really. I have known for days now, ever since I first caught her scent on the trail. But lying here with her stitches securing my shoulder together, the truth finally percolates all the way into my bones. She talked to me like I could understand every word. Tears tracked down her cheeks when she thought I might die. And when our eyes met, something fundamental changed in the universe.

"She's my mate."

For a moment, nobody speaks. Sadie's mouth falls open while Owen freezes like a statue, processing implications that stretch far beyond a human woman displaying unexpected kindness to an injured animal. Amelia stalls her cleanup, profound astonishment breaking across her calm features.

"Your mate is human?" Sadie's pitch climbs an octave. "Nolan, that's⁠—"

"Impossible," Owen finishes. "Humans have married into the enclave before, sure, but a fated mating bond? It doesn't cross species lines. It never has."

Swinging my legs over the side of the exam table, I ignore the protest from the healing muscle.

"Tell that to whatever force decided to bind me to a woman who spent her afternoon performing surgery on a tiger with craft supplies. She saved my life, and the moment I regained consciousness, I knew."

Sadie reaches for my uninjured arm, clamping down with a tightness born of worry. "What are you going to do?"