They say if you stare into the eyes of a leopard long enough they take a small piece of your soul with you when they go. She remembered when she was young Cora would tell her of fierce and cunning leopards turning into beautiful women. Drawing men to their deaths.

Living in a small town in Appalachia surrounded by poverty with only her eldest sister to support her she fell into the stories. She lost herself in them. Until the day she woke up and realized that she was the leopard.

The small town of Sterling in Harlan county Kentucky housed far more shifters than her own small family. There were the wolves, lions, the solitary tigers, the occasional cougar, and even the hyenas and painted dogs. They were all at peace with each other surrounded by and outnumbered by the small number of humans in the area.

She often wondered why so many shifters called this small poverty stricken town their home. Was it the lack of humans that talked about the strange noises at night? Was it the geography that gave each clan their own territory with river valleys and ridge lines? Was it the surrounding nature? Many long since her first shift she had pondered this question, she still didn't have her answer.

In the calm dormant power grid of all the clans of shifters and humans all it took was one day. She had witnessed it's very beginning first hand. One bad day for all of that to change. With the violent take over of the local lion pride by two new males.

Two males that stood for no intermingling between clans. Males that would kill any caught of their turf. And the whole community was consumed in the fires of change and the power struggle was alive and flowing through every member of every clan.

She and her sisters were silent watchers of this struggle. Too small of a clan to be bothered to play in this game. Though the anger she felt at seeing her friends suffer made her want to let her claws out a bit. She could do nothing.

She waited. If leopards were good at anything it was waiting and sensing the change to come. Confusion was an advantage. She knew something was coming what it was she didn't know.

But she lived for it.