The jaguar approached again.
More slowly this time.
Ricardo forced himself to stay still.
The animal came close enough that he could see a second wound now, partly hidden in the fur along its front leg: a raw band circling above the paw, as though something metal had once cut deep into it.
A snare.
His throat tightened.
He knew that mark.
He had seen deer with it. Ocelots. Once, a young tapir that limped for weeks after the veterinary team removed a wire trap from its leg.
He looked at the jaguar, at the old scar on its muzzle, the half-healed ring around the foreleg, and something inside him shifted.
The hunters had not only tied him to that tree.
They had brought into that same patch of jungle the same iron, the same rope, the same human cruelty that had probably touched this animal too.
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