The elegantly lit royal gardens were decorated to within an inch of their lives, as the young royal family and their high society friends celebrated yet another year of easy living. After a long wet winter spent abroad the Princesses Beatrice and Candice had returned to the family home for the New Year celebrations with their parents.
The band had been playing for hours, and showed no signs of stopping as it neared midnight. The people were now whirling about, as the dancing grew wilder in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed by the rich young people.
Young unattached men and women were now pairing off under the watchful eyes of the body guards and gossip hounds. Max sat breathlessly still as another couple slunk just below her giggling softly and groping each other.
Her calves were beginning to cramp, but she paid no attention, as she crouched on the shoulder of an old statue beside the main entrance to the palace grounds. She had crept into place hours ago,as the grounds had dimmed in the twilight, and was not planning on moving anytime soon. The cat was still coiled inside her, and Max was hunting.
Max Seris was 24, and a shape shifter. She had been born with the ability to change into a black leopard. Her mother had died protecting the pack she had been commandeered into, when Max was 16. Alone and unwanted by the warring pack Max had been cast out to her own defenses.
Fortunately her shifter abilities allowed her to make a fairly decent life for herself as a thief. Her natural affinity with finding hidden information and her cats curiosity and lean supple body worked strongly in her favor.
Her features were delicate, and she would have been simply cute if not for her stubbornly set mouth, and arresting green eyes which transformed her into stunning. With her golden tanned skin, inky black hair and long lithe body, she was the feature of many men's illicit daydreams.
Her long thick hair had been twisted back out of her face, but that was many hours ago and the tendrils of her somewhat unruly mane were beginning to slip into her eyes. Her nipples were hard and sensitive, as they had been rubbing against her bra with every breath for some time now.
Max was aroused. She had been ever since that morning when she had caught a males scent while cutting through a construction zone to avoid the crowds around parade route for the crown princesses. This in itself was not strange. Her sense of smell, while not quite as developed as a canines, was still extremely sensitive. But this scent was different, it was sexy, and wild. The scent of this male made her nipples stand to attention and her centre ache.
It was a new and confusing state for Max as she had never felt the urge to lay with a man. She had simply assumed that she would not develop the primal urges that others seemed to have. True, when she changed into her cat form the stretch of her muscles and feeling of taunt readiness was almost orgasmic, but then she felt the same rush of endorphins after stealing a particularly challenging prize.
At the first scent she had been lost and scared, but achingly hot. She had moved to the shadows and changed immediately into a sleek midnight black large cat and inched closer to the source of the scent.
A big part of her had simply wanted to charge across the building site, bursting through the men and women lining the streets to twine herself around his legs and crouch down, offering herself to him.
Luckily her hunters instinct had won out and she had taken the safer approach.
Positioning herself on a small ledge in a large apartment construction zone she had waited as the parade swung around the bend in the road. In front walked a large dangerous man bristling with weapons, his mere presence enough to hold the crowds back.
Behind him came the limo containing the Kings two bored daughters, who Max dismissed immediately. Another golden headed man walked to the right of the limo, ready to defend the girls from any over-adoring fans. Both were watching the faces and buildings around them alertly. Last to come around the bend was
him
walking to the left of the vehicle.
He had dark hair pulled back out of his face with a leather thong. His body was clothed in black, strong, and toned. From the way he carried himself Max was willing to bet a good part of that muscle tone came from fighting. He didn't have the weapons the other two had, carrying just a holstered gun strapped to his belt and a small dagger at the small of his back, but he looked just as deadly to Max's cat eyes.
The pit of her stomach dropped as she realised that these were not human males. These were infinitely more dangerous. The hair on the ruff of her neck and spine rose, as her ears pinned back against her skull. They were her own species, and from her limited experience with other shifters, she knew she did not want to be caught by these.
Holding her breath as the males passed beneath her she wished that she had chosen a less precarious position to hide herself in. If any of them took it into their heads to shoot at her she would not be able to move fast enough to avoid it.
She needn't have bothered as the men passed beneath the building, too intent on the crowds to notice her. Relaxing Max released her breath and quickly froze again as the dark haired man turned and looked directly up at her hiding place.
For one of the longest seconds of her life Max waited for him to alert the others, or worse draw his gun. He left her even more confused and - annoyingly - still aroused as he did neither. He simply grinned baring his sharp teeth in more of a warning than good humour, and turned away to rejoin the group.
Back on the statue Max blinked once, hard, to clear her head, and sighed at her bodies reaction.
It was dangerous to be here in plain sight as the security guards would not hesitate to put a bullet in her if she was found. Unfortunately this was the only way she was going to be able to retrieve tonight's prize.
Having the other shifters on the premises complicated things, but she was hoping they would be too busy with the princesses to interfere in her business tonight.
The band went quiet as midnight approached. The King stood to make his annual ego stroking declaration. In the moment when everyone's attention was firmly focused on him she dropped fluidly from the statue, streaking towards the palace. Laughter from the guests accompanied Max as she scaled the wall, and covered the sound of the window being wrenched open by her.
After slipping into the room it took a matter of moments to locate the small safe and dial the code obtained through the assassination of a fairly large player in the business world. To be fair he had been thoroughly crooked, and had died fairly satisfied, having been in the middle of a rather energetic round of sex with a busty prostitute when Max's dagger had found his throat.
As the countdown to the new year began Max triumphantly slipped the CD's she had come for into the specially designed compartment in her black body suit. Theft was no longer about gold and glittering jewels, information was much more prized these days. As Max turned her eyes picked up a faint glitter from the back of the safe.
'Well most theft isn't about jewels any more...' She thought as she dropped the diamond encrusted necklace in with the CD's. She was always a sucker for accessorising...
Max turned towards the windows with a triumphant grin as the people shouted 'Happy New Year!' at each other. Instead of the bad striking up again however the alarm wailed through the building.
"Shit" was the only thing Max had time to say before the door burst open revealing the golden haired man from this morning.
"Double Shit" she managed before he was ordering her to put her hands above her head.
Moving slowly she did as he said, stepping back towards the window as she raised her arms. His face slackened as her scent reached him, and he paused as the realisation of what she was hit him. Max used that moment of stunned indecision to twist herself around and throw herself through the window shattering the glass outwards. As she fell she did a quick inventory of her wounds, thankfully just a few cuts and scrapes due to her thicker skin.
Max landed in a crouch at the feet of a somewhat stunned caterer. He stumbled back to reveal the black haired man from that morning pacing dangerously towards them. Her heart, racing from the adrenaline of the fall some how still managed to kick into over drive as he fixed her to the spot with his smoldering dark eyes.
Gabriel drew his gun the second the alarm went off, trusting Michael to watch Beatrice and Candice. Moments later the glass on the third floor study window exploded as a woman leapt though it, she executed a quick flip and landed neatly on the grass below. The woman's green eyes locked onto him as she crouched looking up. Then Grey shot her.
She was contemplating whether to submit to being arrested when a shot rang out, the bullet lodging itself in her side. Dimly she realised that the man from the room above had shot her, her body however shifted into survival mode.
Max shot to her feet using the momentum to get a head start on the male cat. She sprinted through the stunned party gores and slipped into the dark streets of the city in moments, the male hard on her heels. Though sheer gut determination she managed not to shift into her leopard form and draw even more attention to herself.
***
After running for what seemed like hours she managed to finally lose the black haired man. Her side was burning and she could feel the blood oozing down her hip as she limped towards home. The cold wind froze her exposed hands and face.
The gunshot wound had been bleeding steadily for an hour now, and Max was feeling the effects. Her body was ready to give out, and her mind was woozy from lack of blood. It took a supreme effort to move herself up the stairs, and to to door of her apartment.
Leaning there as she fumbled for her keys she realised she was going to have to get help as her fast healing body was not going to be able to fix the damage on its own this time. The room spun as she let herself in and she barely made to to her bathroom before her legs gave out and she slid to the floor against the bathtub whimpering.
***
"Easy kitten that's got to hurt." Gabriel murmured as he let himself into the bathroom.
He had followed her to the apartment, deciding to let her wear herself out before attempting to arrest her. Max started partially upright before wincing and being forced to sit back down by the knifing pain in her side and her spinning head.
Seeing her there like that felt like a solid blow to his chest. Instead of cuffing her and moving her back to the palace like he should have, he found himself gently examining the shot in her side. Max, now too weak to protest, found herself being gently stripped of her body suit, and lowered into the shower by a suddenly protective Gabriel.
