The Last Were-Jaguar

Jack pushed his thick black hair back from his eyes. He could never get used to how it always flopped down across his forehead in his human form, and he hated it. Sighing with frustration, he crawled over to his backpack, hidden inside a bush. Just where he left it, he unzipped the bag and pulled out his clothes, hoping they wouldn't be terribly wrinkled when he put them on. The clothing he pulled on was relatively simple, nothing expensive, just a plain black t-shirt and a pair of jeans that were a bit worn.

Shape-shifters were not necessarily immortal, but they did live a very long time compared to humans and all other mortal species on Earth. There are a lot of different kinds of shape-shifters as well, and it's a common misconception that shape-shifters can change into anyone or anything. In fact shifters that could change into more than one thing were rather rare, but not entirely unheard of. And mostly the ones that could do that were also something else, like vampires. Some would say that werewolves were a kind of shape-shifter, but others would argue that they were just too different to count.
None of that bothered Jack either way. What may or may not have bothered him about it all is that there were no longer any others like him. In fact, most of the supernatural world thought that there were none left at all. Jaguar shape-shifters were thought to be extinct. Around the time of Jack's birth in the late 1800's, it was thought that other shifters and supernatural beings had hunted the jaguar shifter population straight into extinction, mainly for their pelts.

Jack's parents had stashed their only son away in a remote Brazilian village, begging him to never change into his jaguar form, to never tell anyone what he was. Not long after that, they were killed for their own furs. He didn't know for sure he was the very last one, but in all his years since that time he had never met anyone else like him, and from the way others in the supernatural community spoke of the jaguars, Jack assumed he was right in thinking he was rather alone.
Despite all this, Jack was a rather upbeat, happy-go-lucky type of guy. The only ill side-effect of being the last of his kind was that he tended to not get close to anyone. His lovers were few and far in between, because he couldn't stand to lead someone on or let someone get too close and thereby get hurt by him or vice versa. He clearly couldn't tell anyone. Somewhere inside him was a little boy terrified to reveal to anyone what he was.
Truthfully he did spend a lot of time out in his second form, but not where any humans or other shifters could see him. He'd left Brazil, the only natural habitat of regular jaguars left, some time ago. Jack had migrated north, into North America, and only recently come even further north, into the United States.

After he finished tying his plain black boots, Jack straightened up and brushed off the front of his jeans, the stray pieces of grass falling to the ground. At his full six-foot three-inch height, the were-jaguar kicked his bag back underneath his usual bush and walked back out of the woodline, toward the dusty country road.
Jack worked as a line cook at a small diner in a pretty small, dusty town in Texas. Despite having been from Brazil originally, he had almost no accent and spoke fluent English. Even so, with no legal papers or ID, Jack had no choice but to work under the table to get by.
Partway through his normal morning rush, Jack glanced up from his grill briefly, catching sight of a gorgeous woman sitting at the breakfast bar. Ever the ladies' man, Jack hoped she stuck around to when he could sneak out for his morning smoke break. Just as he had this thought, the pretty girl with long dark hair glanced up and met his eyes. Seizing his chance, Jack winked and gave her a slow smile, showing her his full set of beautiful white, straight, teeth.
The girl smiled back shyly (or was that a glimmer of triumph in her eyes?), looking back down at the book in her hands. Somehow he knew she would be around when he took his quick break, and Jack smiled to himself as he got back to work.

Credits

Profile by: Ringo | Pet overlay by: User not found: higgs | Story + Character by: Hoard