“I’m excited,” she said happily.
Trip put his arm around her shoulders, and they walked out the back door of the house and headed for the woods.They disrobed and shifted.El had hoped to one day be able to shift on her own, but so far she always needed her mates to help force her shift.Trip shook out his fur once he had shifted.El loved watching her mates in both their human and lion forms, but Trip lion was colored beautifully.He had a patch of just a shade lighter hair around his left eye that always caught her attention.
Trip tilted his head up into the air and took a deep breath.She could see his whiskers twitching, and when his head came back down, they were focused.El sniffed the air, but she didn’t smell anything abnormal just the trees and dirt around her.Mostly she just smelled Trip.Trip set off deeper into the woods so El followed him hoping she would soon be able to smell what he was smelling.
El’s interaction with Leilani had been limited, so it wasn’t as if she could just recall the woman’s scent.Trip weaved through the woods for a while, El hot on his heels.Even after an hour, she still couldn’t figure out what he was smelling.She was just about to give up and head back to the house to leave Trip to do his thing when a scent caught her nose.There was something familiar about it, but El couldn’t quite figure out what.
The scent pulled her away from the trail Trip was on, but El didn’t bother to alert him that she was going to split from him.She figured the scent would fade and she would catch back up with him.El followed the scent for a few minutes and started to wonder if she should turn back, but it was getting stronger.
El also couldn’t shake the familiarity of the scent.She really hoped that it wasn’t going to end up being something silly, too.The scent died off suddenly.El frantically sniffed around trying to pick it back up, but it had vanished.She didn’t know much about tracking, but she figured the scent wouldn’t just stop.She was missing it.
El circled around for well into an hour before finally giving up.Then she faced the problem of having wandered so far away from Trip that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get back to him.El took off in the direction she had come from when she had a thought.She circled back around to where the trail had gone cold and started looking up in the trees.One tree particular held the scent.
El had never climbed a tree when she had been human, let alone doing it on four legs she wasn’t comfortable with.Somehow the instinct took over and El climbed up the tree.The scent was strongest on a branch about halfway up.El looked down and realized that had whatever she had been hunting had been up there while El had been down below they would have had the perfect view to watch her.The thought sent chills up El’s back.She recognized the scent she just wasn’t sure from where.
The time came that she had to get herself out of the tree but climbing down wasn’t quite as instinctual as climbing up.Every time El tried to start down, she couldn’t seem to get past the mental block.
After several failed attempts and feeling on the brink of a full-on anxiety attack, El gave up.Her lioness let out a small cry.El continued to let out a cry every few minutes for what felt like forever before Trip’s scent finally filled her nose.When he came into view, El let out one long cry of relief.
His lion paced around the base of the tree as if he were frustrated but trying to figure out how to get her down.He shifted then and stood in the nude glaring up at her.
“When did you decide to just take off without me?Why would you climb a tree?Have you ever climbed one before?”
El couldn’t respond to the assault of questions, so she just let out another cry for help.
“El, your lion knows what to do just relinquish control over to her,” Trip explained.
El showed Trip her attempts to get down, which just made him laugh.
“Mate, I’m not sure how to help you here.I mean, you’re a 200 some pound cat I can’t lift you down.”
El wrinkled her nose up to his comment.She was positive there was no way she was coming out of the tree on her own accord.
“It’s either you get down yourself, or we’re going to have to get some sort of rescue service here to get you down.”
The thought of people showing up to help her out of the tree mortified her.It was one thing to have her mate help, but having strangers come was unacceptable.El gathered up her courage and tried again, and again, and again until finally, she managed to weasel herself out of the tree.
In her excitement at having made the climb down by herself, El shifted suddenly as she cheered for herself.Trip looked more excited to see her naked body on display than of her small victory.
“Whoa, ease there mate, we’re here on official business,” she told him covering her breasts and taking a step back.
“Says the woman who ran off on her own and got stuck climbing a tree,” he replied, his eyes glued to where her hands were doing a half hazard job at covering her.
“I didn’t just run off.I followed a scent,” El said proudly.
“Whose scent?”he asked, his eyes rushing up to meet hers.
“I don’t know, but it’s familiar to me.Can’t you smell it?”she asked.
Trip raised his nose in the air and inhaled deeply several times.He walked around the small circle of trees sniffing, but then came back to her and shook his head.
“Really?Smell this tree specifically.I think whoever it was climbed this tree to avoid detection.By the time I thought of that, they were gone, but they must have stuck to the trees because I couldn’t pick up the scent anywhere.”
“How long did you track this scent?”
“I don’t know.I mean how long have we even been out here,” she shrugged.
“A while now.The Pride territory line ends roughly a quarter mile that way.It’s strange that the scent was leading you right to it.Next time you catch this scent, I want to be the first one to know about it, okay?”
