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were watching the kids so he and Keisha could have a couple of hours alone together. They’d best make the most of it.
    Keisha cast him a sly glance. “You want to talk? An evening by ourselves and the man wants to talk? Give me a break!”
    She shifted in the midst of her laughter, hit the deck lightly on all four paws, and leapt over the railing with her plume of a tail held high. Anton followed right behind her.
    The night was warm, the air currents shifting before them as they followed the now-familiar path through the woods. With Lucia’s feeding schedule, they wouldn’t have long to run, or the time to go very far.
    No matter. Now, with children needing them close, every opportunity to run as wolves was a gift, each time they shifted a special occasion. Unfortunately, gratification of the sexual rush after running was often delayed by circumstances—generally in the shape of one or more of the kids needing something now.
    Dry grass and twigs crackled beneath their feet; the night was clear and stars sparkled overhead. Anton quickly lost himself in the myriad sensations of running as a wolf in the dark forest, following the ripe and seductive scent of his bonded mate, of the woman he’d taken to wife. No matter how often they sped down this same path, how many times he followed his female, it was always new, her allure as powerful as if he chased her for the first time.
    As familiar as it was to him, the path they followed was always filled with surprises along the way; the sensations he filtered through his Chanku eyes and ears, inhaled with each breath, always exciting. He knew he would never grow tired of seeing, smelling, and hearing the natural world—his world—through the senses of a predator.
    He couldn’t help but wonder if their children would appreciate this same sense of disbelief, the same thrill. They should all begin to shift once they reached puberty—for their generation, it was going to be a normal part of growing up. Would it still be as special?
    All the kids had known of their amazing legacy from the beginning. Already even the littlest ones were aware that grown-ups turned into wolves or leopards. The kids knew that when they got bigger, they’d shift, too. They also knew it was a very big secret, and so far, they’d honored their parents’ trust.
    Still, what an amazing thing, not to be alone with this. Always accepted for who and what they were—perfectly normal, not like outcasts as so many of the adults had been.
    He heard bats soaring overhead, and cocked an ear to catch their high-pitched cries. The soft chatter and squeak of their voices reminded him of the hours he’d spent in the cave today. Lily had kept Alex entertained the entire time, making up her long, drawn-out story about the beginnings of Chanku history and spirit guides and such.
    Her imagination was boundless, as unfettered and free as it could possibly be. She spoke with such authority that Anton and Stefan had joked about poor Alex growing up with an entire history lesson fabricated from a few scratches on the cave wall.
    Thank goodness the pack had the ability to homeschool the kids. The Montana school system was not ready for Lily Cheval and her merry band of shapeshifters-to-be. He didn’t even want to think of what it was going to be like when the kids actually started shifting.
    How did you deal with a teenaged shapeshifter’s hormones and the increased libido following a shift? That was something they’d have to figure out sooner rather than later. Hopefully not too soon, though none of them knew how long it might be before the older kids gained the ability to become wolves.
    Mei was the one who’d asked the question none of them had considered—since the adults all still occasionally took the supplement, didn’t that mean the babies got it from mother’s milk? They’d been exposed to the nutrients in the Tibetan grasses through their mothers from the time of conception to birth. Had that already