Nouri had suspected the humans would ignore the treaty. He hadn’t expected to be caught in a poacher’s snare—or to become a ‘pet’ to the young woman who found him. He certainly hadn’t expected to find himself torn between his desire for the Earthling, Cara, and his duties to his people. Cara hated everything about being a colonist on an alien world—until the day she discovered that the ‘sacred woods’ was as magical a place as it appeared to a young girl’s eyes and rescued a winged, lion-like beast that looked remarkably like the manticore of mythology. It was unfortunate that she came to think of the scared woods as her own special place since the natives considered it off-limits to all humans—not everyone except her.