Snow

By Katriena Knights

Jayanti is pissed. The last thing she knew, she was cavorting with tigers in Rewa, India. Then suddenly she's abducted and dragged off to a zoo in the US with no safe way to shift back to her human form.
Dr. Logan Carter, DVM, has worked his whole life to try to preserve white tigers. When an apparently wild white tiger arrives at his zoo, he sees hope for a new genetic line to revitalize the animal.

But it's not long before Logan discovers his new tiger isn't what she appears to be. And that's when things really start to get interesting...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notes on Vellum
• Release date: Jan 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370274581

Katriena Knights

An Adams Media author.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Jayanti paced the width of the grassy area inside the big cat enclosure, muscles roiling under her white, black-striped fur. She should have known better. The trip to India, a Christmas gift to herself, had been intended to bring her closer to her roots, remind her where she’d come from. Instead, running with the wild tigers in Rewa, she’d ended up here, in a zoo, stuck in her tiger form until she could figure out how the hell to get out. She didn’t even know where she was, although she was fairly certain she’d somehow been transported to the US. The last few days had been nothing but tranquilizer darts, cages, and wooziness.

They’d put her in her own enclosure at least, isolated from the other tigers. She could deal with wild tigers, but zoo tigers were a different matter. They always seemed so desperate, and the ones she’d seen briefly as she was being processed had looked at her as if she were a threat. Wild tigers had territories, sure, but they were a lot more laid-back. They had room to run, after all.

A figure appeared outside the glass. She recognized the man—he was the veterinarian who had given her her checkup. She’d tried to shift back to human form when he’d taken her from the cage, but he’d tranquilized her—again—making it impossible. He was tall, with dark hair and green eyes, and he watched her, frowning, as she stopped and stared straight at him.

She bared her teeth at him. Might as well let him know how she felt. To her surprise, he set his hand against the glass. He spoke to her. She couldn’t hear the words through the barrier of the glass, but she was almost certain he said, It’ll be all right.

Like hell it would.

Logan Carter, DVM, stood a moment longer outside the glass, watching the white female tiger resume her pacing. They were often like this when they were first brought into the zoo—uncertain, afraid, restless. He wished he could do more to reassure her, let her know what they were doing was for her own good. The last white tiger seen in the wild had been shot by hunters in 1958, and he was certain the same fate would have awaited her if she’d been left where they’d found her.

He hadn’t believed the reports of a wild white tiger when he’d first heard them, until they’d brought the tiger herself to him, accompanied by video of her cavorting with the other tigers in Rewa. She was beautiful, he thought, smaller than the other tigers, with blue eyes and white fur laced with black stripes. He’d never seen anything quite like her.

He watched for a few more minutes, until she moved away from the glass to drink from the small pool in the enclosure, then he turned and went back to his office.

The zoo’s head veterinarian was there, apparently waiting for him. He had a folder full of papers under one arm and a somber expression on his face.

You know she’s probably just an escapee from a zoo or a carnival somewhere, he said by way of greeting.

Logan frowned at him. Dr. Mendel hadn’t made any effort to hide his skepticism from the very beginning, but Logan was growing weary of it. Her DNA’s being evaluated. We’ll know soon enough.

Well, don’t get too attached, Mendel said. We don’t have room to keep her, and we can’t breed her. If she’s not sick or malformed or unmanageable, we’ll probably have to pass her on to someone else.

Does she look sick or malformed? Logan shot back. She was small, which was strange—most white tigers were considerably larger than regular tigers—but he’d seen no other signs of deformity. She wasn’t even cross-eyed. He couldn’t speak to the unmanageable comment—they were all unmanageable at first. And if she’s legitimately a wild white tiger, she’ll be the first we’ve seen in sixty years. We might want to breed her.

Mendel shook his head. We can’t, and you know it.

Logan bristled, but quickly stood down. There was no point prolonging the argument. We’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. He nodded toward the papers Mendel held. What’s that?

Just paperwork. You’ll need to fill out her health profiles, and then you need to get the right papers back to the Indian government. They might insist we send her back, no matter what kind of agreement you made with the officials in Rewa.

Logan waved that off mentally. He’d take care of whatever paperwork or red tape needed to be dealt with. No matter what it took, he wanted to keep this tiger here.

Mendel just gave him a patronizing look, as if Logan were a recalcitrant child. Just remember you might not get your way on this one.

I know. He took the thick folder Mendel proffered and took a seat behind his desk. Was there anything else?

Not really. Get back to me when the DNA results come in.

Logan watched Mendel depart the office, somehow not feeling quite safe until the man was out the door and out of sight. Finally he turned his attention to the pile of paperwork and his own notes.

Logan had first become interested in the plight of the white tiger early in his teens, when he’d seen one at a Vegas show. He hadn’t known then what he knew now—that the tigers were produced through continuous inbreeding, and that they had so many genetic defects that numerous tigers were often euthanized before one was born healthy enough to appear in a