From Jennifer Ashley, With Love

by Jennifer Ashley

  Spike, still his wildcat, grabbed Jordan when he jumped down again, getting a paw on him as Jordan scrambled for his footing on the vinyl floor.

  No! Spike’s growl held weight. Jordan stopped squirming and looked up at Spike with fear in his eyes.

  Spike eased the pressure without losing the firmness. Jordan subsided, his little body quivering.

  “Spike,” Ella said, arms folded as she stood in the center of the kitchen. “I ask you again: What the hell?”

  Under Spike’s paw, Jordan shifted slowly back into the form a four-year-old boy, his tattered clothes a pool of fabric on the floor.

  Spike shifted to human, his big body folded in on itself, his hand still on Jordan. “This is Jordan. He’s my son.”

  “Your what?”

  “Son. Cub. My kid.”

  Ella didn’t argue. No debating whether Jordan was really Spike’s son. She’d seen the markings too. “Who is the mother? What clan? You didn’t make a mate-claim—I’d know that.”

  “She was a human. A groupie—or at least she might have been. She’s gone.”

  Ella understood what he meant, because her eyes took on a look of sorrow. “I’m sorry, Spike.”

  “I didn’t know her. Only for the night.”

  Jordan looked from Spike to Ella, his shoulder engulfed by Spike’s big hand. “I don’t like it here,” he said. “Where’s my mom?”

  “In the Summerland,” Spike said, as gently as he could.

  “Where’s that? I want to go too.”

  Spike turned his grip into a caress. “Not yet. Someday.” Not for a long, long time if Spike had anything to say about it.

  “I don’t want to stay here.”

  Jordan’s brows drew together in belligerent male-Shifter fashion. The kid wasn’t about to cry. He was ready to growl and storm, relieving his bewilderment by lashing out at those nearest him.

  “You have to,” Spike said. “I’m your dad. That’s your great-grandma.”

  “I don’t have a great-grandma.” He looked up at Ella, whose dark hair and unlined face was natural in a Shifter of two-hundred years with a hundred-year-old grandson. “What’s a great-grandma?”

  “Your dad’s grandma,” Ella explained.

  The scowl deepened as Jordan wrestled with this new concept.

  Ella’s eyes held a spark of hope, which Spike had seen in other Shifters when offspring entered the pride. Their family would carry on. They’d survive another day.

  “Can you fix him something to eat?” Spike asked her.

  Ella surveyed the mess of the kitchen and made an impatient noise. “Take him out of here. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Spike rose and scooped up Jordan. He held the lad in the crook of his arm, Jordan still glaring at him. “He needs clothes,” Spike said.

  “I see that. I’ll call around, see what I can find.”

  Spike walked out of the kitchen without thanking her. Ella would know he appreciated what she did, always had. They’d moved beyond human words and phrases, body language having taken over long ago.

  Spike carried Jordan upstairs to his own room and planted him on the bed. “Stay there.”

  Jordan didn’t. By the time Spike had pulled on clean sweat pants and a shirt, Jordan had opened all the drawers of the dresser and was pawing through Spike’s T-shirts. “Wanna wear one.”

  “They’re too big for you. We’ll get you some your size.”

  “Why do you have that all over your body?” Jordan pointed to the jaguars that chased each other up Spike’s arms and over his chest to evolve into the giant spread of dragon across his back.

  “They’re tattoos.” Spike held out one arm so Jordan could examine the body art. “Ink traced into the skin.”

  “My mom has a tattoo,” Jordan announced. “Right above her butt.”

  Spike remembered that, the pretty trace of ink on Jillian’s body. He suddenly wondered whether Myka had any tattoos, somewhere under the low-slung jeans and lacey tank top.

  His encounter with Jillian five years ago had been brief and fiery, but Spike hadn’t fallen in love. Neither had Jillian fallen in love with him. Passing time had made it pretty clear that she’d meant it to be a one-night stand, nothing more. Spike doubted she’d meant to get pregnant with Jordan, but he would be ever grateful to her for calling him in tonight instead of letting him remain ignorant.

  Sean was at the back door when Spike went downstairs with Jordan. Ella had cleaned up the kitchen and was making sandwiches, and she answered the door. Jordan took one look at Sean and wrapped his little arms tightly around Spike’s leg.

  “Your clothes,” Sean said to Spike as Ella took the pile of jeans, shirt, and boots. “And something for the cub to wear, from my neighbor. Her cub’s about the same age.”

  “Thanks, Sean.”

  The hilt of the Sword of the Guardian stuck up behind Sean’s back, a bleak silhouette in the moonlight. “You’re going to have to name him,” Sean said. “And I had to tell Liam.”

  Name him meant that Spike had to reveal his cub in a naming ceremony, which would announce to the Shifters and the world that he had a cub. A male cub, a son. The ceremony meant that the cub was taking his place in the Shifter hierarchy, where he’d be acknowledged as belonging not only to Spike and his pride, but to his clan and Shiftertown as a whole.

  The rituals were supposed to ensure the cub’s acceptance into the community, but Spike sometimes wished the rituals and ceremonies would go to hell. They were supposed to strengthen the Shifters, but Spike long ago had decided that Shifters were just bad at minding their own business.

  Sean left them alone, wise man, when he could have insisted on dragging Spike and Jordan over to see Liam right away. Spike would have to thank Sean with a beer later.

  Jordan wouldn’t put on the clothes. Ella got him into the small pair of drawstring jeans by telling him he couldn’t eat unless he put something on. Alarmed, Jordan grabbed the jeans and hoisted them over his bare bottom.

  Ella turned the sandwiches out on a plate, each sandwich piled high with beef, turkey, chicken, tuna, or a combination. Spike didn’t know what cubs ate—did they need milk? Or was that only when they were first born? Jordan announced he was hungry and proceeded to down four sandwiches before he sat back on the kitchen floor and burped.

  He’d fall asleep now, Spike thought. Worn out from the night, his mother’s death, being brought to Shiftertown, and now with his belly full of food, he’d curl up and sleep it off.

  No such luck. Spike and Ella ended up chasing him all over the house, from cellar to attic and back again. Jordan threw off the pants and shifted back and forth from wildcat to boy depending on what he wanted to get into or where he wanted to get into. And he was damned fast.

  When he ended up way in the back of the pantry, a wildcat cub now, wedged between shelves and refusing to come out, Ella got out a broom and tried to pry him out. Jordan leapt away, dodging her, and scampered around the kitchen, loving the game, Ella chasing him with her newfound tool.

  “Grandma!” Spike shouted. “Don’t you dare hit my kid with a broom!”

  “It never did you any harm,” Ella yelled back.

  Jordan laughed, evaded them, and ran on.

  Spike finally tackled him in the living room. Father and son were both wildcats now, and Spike pinned the squirming boy under his body. Ella had given up and gone upstairs, the night aging.

  Jordan started to quiet, soothed by Spike’s warm body, his adrenaline finally running down. Spike’s eyes drifted closed, the slowing staccato of Jordan’s heartbeat somehow comforting.

  He woke up to sun pouring in the windows. Spike had shifted to human sometime in the night, and so had Jordan. Spike had slid the pants back on the sleeping little boy, and now Spike found his arms wrapped protectively around his son.

  With his eyes closed, his mouth slack, one fist on the carpet, Jordan was innocence itself. And helpless.

  Spike started to move his body and stifled a groa
n. He ached all over. The fight coupled with the shock of finding out he had a cub made his muscles stiff and his head pound. He needed water, to hydrate, or else he needed a beer. A lot of beer.

  But he couldn’t get drunk while he had to take care of this little guy. Drowning himself in hops was for when his cub was safe and didn’t need Spike standing guard. Which would be never. Cubs had to be protected at all times.

  All times. Damn it, how could he? How did any Shifter do it?

  They had mates, that’s how. They had help. Liam had his mate Kim—a human woman, sure, but she’d proved capable. The two of them watched over their new cub with unceasing vigilance. And yet, Liam still had time to run Shiftertown, Kim to conduct her business of being a lawyer to Shifters. How the hell did they do that?

  How had Spike’s grandma done it? Ella had raised him alone—and in the wild—after his parents and grandfather had been slaughtered by Shifter hunters down in Mexico. Spike had been a cub, ten years old. Ella had been so huddled in grief, she’d wanted to die herself, but she’d said over and over, If I die, who’s going to take care of you? and she’d soldiered on.

  His grandmother’s expression last night as she’d quit and gone to bed told him that she expected him to soldier on too.

  He brushed back a strand of Jordan’s hair. Cub of my pride. Now that I’ve met you, how can I let you go?

  Spike very gently pressed a kiss to the top of the little boy’s head.

  Jordan’s eyes popped open. He stared up at Spike in sleepy confusion, then his eyes cleared.

  “I’m hungry,” Jordan said. “Can I have breakfast?”

  Goddess, what was he supposed to feed a cub for breakfast? Based on the number of sandwiches Jordan had consumed last night—a lot.

  Jordan wriggled out of Spike’s grasp and spread his arms. “I’m dressed. I get to eat.”

  Spike pressed his hand to his forehead. His temples were throbbing, not helped when the land line phone rang. Loudly.

  Chapter Five

  Myka spent a sleepless night, grief at watching Jillian’s last breath and worry about Jordan keeping her restless.

  Jillian had been adamant about giving Jordan to Spike—who the hell named their kid Spike? Jillian had feared what would happen if humans got wind that she was raising a Shifter child, and Myka understood her fear. A system that was so fucked up it would make a little girl live with her abusive stepfather wasn’t going to be kind to a Shifter child.

  Even though Myka had never been a big Shifter fan, she was aware that they were treated like second-class citizens, and she thought that unfair. There was no guarantee that Sharon would be allowed to keep Jordan if someone discovered that he was half Shifter, or that Jordan wouldn’t be shipped off to some Shiftertown far away. Jillian had assured her that Shifters would have a way of keeping it quiet.

  But handing him over to that inked Shifter wasn’t what Myka had wanted either.

  She tossed and turned, imagining all kinds of dire scenarios—Spike locking the kid into a closet, maybe beating on him to relieve his feelings, or trying to figure out how to get rid of him as soon as he could. Sure, Spike had looked intensely proud when he’d realized that Jordan was his son, but that might wear off as soon as Jordan became his usual wild self. Jillian hadn’t known what to do with a kid with that much energy either.

  Myka spent the night with Sharon, not wanting to leave her alone, but while Sharon slept the sleep of the emotionally exhausted, Myka lay awake or got up and paced.

  In the morning, Sharon’s two sisters arrived with their husbands and kids. Myka, though she more or less had been living with Sharon and Jillian these last few months, decided to leave them alone. This was a time for family.

  She stopped at her small house to shower and change, then she went to the stables.

  Myka knew her friends and Sharon would think her crazy for wanting to work today, but at the stables she could seek peace in turmoil. Working with the horses—Myka trained Quarter Horses to be cutters, ropers, and barrel racers for their owners—usually erased all troubles from her mind.

  She’d been coming to these stables since age eleven, when a friend’s mother had brought her here after school. The friend’s riding instructor had let Myka get up on a horse and take a lesson too. Myka had never looked back.

  Myka nodded tightly to the two other trainers who’d come for early sessions but didn’t stop to talk. She took out Carlos, the cutting horse she was currently shaping into a champion for his owner.

  She warmed up Carlos with nothing more strenuous than a pleasant jog around the ring before she started the real work. Cutting horses had to respond to the slightest shift in weight or touch of the reins, in order to cut a calf from the herd or to chase it back in.

  Myka started the lessons of response and reward, but she realized after only a few minutes that neither her heart nor mind was in the training. She could only think of Jordan sleeping on Spike’s lap, Spike’s fierce eyes, and his large hand on Jordan’s back.

  Damn it.

  She’d made a promise to Jillian to let Spike take Jordan and not interfere. Jillian had believed with all her heart that living with Spike was best for Jordan. Myka should let it alone—decision made, deed done, none of her business.

  But she couldn’t wash her hands of Jordan like that.

  Myka gave Carlos another jog around the ring, patting him and telling him what a good boy he was, then took him back to the barn. If she tried to train while her mind was elsewhere, she risked ruining the horse. His owner would be less than pleased, and other owners might decide to look for a more reliable trainer.

  Might be a moot point anyway, because the owner of the entire stables and training center wanted to sell the place to developers. Good-bye job, good-bye stables that had given Myka the girl a haven, and Myka the adult a way to make a living.

  Life sucked all over.

  Myka put Carlos away, fussing over him, then she went to her pickup, scraped the dust and manure from her cowboy boots, got in and started the truck, and drove to Shiftertown.

  * * *

  Spike hauled himself off the floor and slid on his sweat pants to answer the phone, while Jordan announced once more, at the top of his lungs, that he wanted breakfast.

  The call was from Liam. “Spike, lad, I need you to help me with Gavan. Go down to San Antonio and talk to him. Casual like. Find out what he’s up to, if he’s going to be a threat, or just likes bellyaching. He never was happy about what happened to Fergus, and I don’t need that haunting me. I know about your cub situation—which we’ll talk about when you get back.”

  Spike’s hand tightened on the phone. He was a tracker—he’d pledged all kinds of loyalty to the Shiftertown leader in return for acceptance. Didn’t matter who the leader was or what he asked Spike to do, Spike did it. Without question.

  But this was different. Liam was asking Spike to leave Jordan alone for hours, with only his grandmother to protect him, and go to San Antonio and meet with a guy he’d never really trusted. No way could Spike take Jordan with him to the meeting—Gavan had always had a cruel streak, and Spike wasn’t letting him anywhere near his cub.

  “Liam,” he began.

  “I wouldn’t ask you, but something’s going on, you know Gavan better than anyone, and I need to nip this in the bud. The lad will be all right in Shiftertown, I promise. He’s safe here. I’ll have Kim or Andrea drop by and look in on him later.”

  “I can’t.” The words surprised Spike even as they came out of his mouth. No one said no to Liam Morrissey.

  “Spike. Lad.”

  Liam was an alpha. Even over the phone, the dominance came across that made Shifters, especially Felines, want to go down on one knee and promise him fealty. He was lead Feline, lead Shifter. The mightiest of the mighty.

  “I can’t,” Spike repeated.

  Liam’s voice took on a patient tone, though the dominance thing didn’t go away. “I know better than anyone that we need to look after the c
ubs. You talking to Gavan could help us all, lad, and every cub in Shiftertown. If Gavan’s up to something, it threatens your new one as much as anyone else.”

  Spike closed his eyes and fought the instinctive need to obey, to say yes.

  Let Dylan or Sean sort out Gavan. Why the hell did Liam need Spike to do it, today?

  Just then Jordan ran through the kitchen, screaming, a toilet brush in his hand. Ella came charging after him with the broom again.

  “I’ll call you back,” Spike said to Liam, and hung up the phone on Liam’s startled exclamation.

  Spike limped back to the living room, lifted the jeans Sean had delivered to him last night, and plucked Myka’s phone number out of the pocket. As soon as he turned to reach for the phone, a pickup pulled up and stopped in front of the house. Myka herself hopped out, the October sunshine making her dark hair glow like black fire.

  * * *

  Myka studied the house as she went up the walk. Shiftertown was nowhere near as slum-like as she’d assumed, and neither was Spike’s house. He lived in a two-story bungalow, its second floor about half the size of the first, an upstairs gable poking up to make the house cozy.

  A wide, old-fashioned porch wrapped around the front, chairs and a porch swing adding comfort. This was not a house for display, like the fine suburban homes Myka passed on her way across town. This house was meant to be lived in.

  Myka had about ten seconds to observe all this before the front screen door slammed open and a whirlwind that was Jordan flew at her.

  “Aunt Myka!”

  Jordan flung his arms around her legs. Myka leaned down to him, worried, but Jordan sported a big grin as he raised his arms to her, begging to be picked up.

  Myka lifted him. Jordan gave her a sticky kiss and started babbling excitedly about the house, his new great-grandmother, his new clothes, and asking when he could go home.