by J. K Harper
“He's probably got pack business to attend to today, little ones,” she said, smiling at her impetuous son. They only allowed her to call them “little ones” when it was just the three of them. It was an endearment they all liked, for now anyway. “But we'll find out if maybe he's got some time for you.”
Before she found him, though, she'd grilled Lily on Jace. Although her friend wasn't forthcoming about any personal details she might know, she assured Caitlin that he wasn't remotely someone she had to worry about in terms of how he would treat her pups. Then she said that just after their Guardian meeting that morning would be a good time to catch him.
Caitlin had hung back when the twins somewhat shyly approached him. Her children weren't usually shy, far from it, which was why she let them go up to him themselves and ask if they could see his leg. And what he was doing that day. And if they could watch him practice with the other Guardians again. That, and the fact that she was still buzzing and confused from their most unexpected discovery about one another, had made her hang back. He'd looked at her for permission, which she'd granted with a single nod. She'd really hoped he couldn't see her pulse beating in her throat. Or sense her wolf, aroused and again irritated with her human for not going to him, pushing at her mind for control.
The pups' fascination with him wasn't helping her case against him at all. Or his, apparently. She wasn't quite sure what his case was. I have a new life here that I just started, he'd said during their one and only real conversation so far.
The implication being that it was a life that had no room for a mate and pups.
On the face of it, that sounded fine to her. She'd had no intention of advertising for a father to the twins, and he seemed to be building some grand new venture for himself that likewise had no room for baggage.
In reality? She couldn't get the drop-dead sexy man out of her mind. And he was good with the pups. Very good, for someone who'd said he wasn't ready for a family, mate or no. She'd inconspicuously watched the twins watch him train with the other Guardians that first day. Afterward, he'd playfully shown them some very basic moves, which had all three of them laughing, the pups' faces shining with the excitement of it. During a moment when the kids wrestled one another in mock training, Caitlin caught Jace's unguarded expression as he watched them. Something wistful, pleased, and oddly vigilant rolled over his face.
It deeply charmed her wolf, watching out of Caitlin's eyes. Mate. Pups, she murmured, sounding satisfied. Caitlin had ignored both her wolf's thoughts and her own trembling at it. But she continued to let the twins spend time with Jace every day, as long as he was fine with it. If her sweet little rascals were happy and occupied, all the better.
The door behind her scraped open as Lily came back outside bearing two small plates of croissants slathered with blackberry jam. She sat in the chair beside Caitlin, setting the plates on the little wooden table on the deck as she happily brought a flaky croissant to her mouth for a generous bite. “It always amazes me that a nerd like yourself can also make delicious food,” Lily said with an appreciative moan. “The two things don't usually seem to go hand-in-hand.”
Caitlin laughed. “I can't cook. I only like to bake, just a little.”
“Do you have to work on the system again today?” Lily asked around a mouthful.
Caitlin shook her head as she picked up her own croissant. “I finished up last night. Today is about relaxing.”
Like many wolves, Caitlin worked within the shifter world. Since her own puphood, she'd been intrigued by computers and programming. Total nerd. She served as the IT security tech for her own pack, and also contracted on projects with nearby packs. The Black Mesa Pack's own system had needed some on-site security upgrades, which made for the perfect excuse to come visit her brother again. It provided a fun working vacation for her and the twins.
“And how do you plan on relaxing today?” Lily asked, her tone suddenly shrewd. She gave Caitlin a look. “Maybe by finding a certain wolf?”
“Ah.” Caitlin stalled as her brain went haywire again as thoughts of Jace filled it once more. Her wolf lifted her head in her mind, suddenly more alert. “I don't think that's a good idea.”
“And why not, Caitie?” Lily had taken to using Kieran's nickname for her. It was something Caitlin only allowed those very close to her to use. “There's a spark between the two of you. Even though you still refuse to acknowledge it.” Her voice teased.
Caitlin drank her coffee and looked out at the view.
“A-ha.” Lily pounced. “Knew it. Caitie, he is so good with the pups. They're pretty much in love with him. That should freak out any guy, but he seems to really like spending time with them. And you let him be alone with them after only supervising their time together once. It seems to me," and Lily's candid blue eyes pierced into hers, "you're avoiding being around him, but you trust him implicitly with your children. So. What am I missing here?" She sat back in her chair but kept Caitlin pinned with her astute gaze.
Caitlin took a large drink of her coffee. She needed a moment to gather herself.
Truth, her wolf urged. Simple yet direct as always. Caitlin sighed. Yes, she was direct with everyone. But she had kept her knowledge of what was going on between her and Jace—or rather, what wasn't going on between them—to herself ever since that first thunderclap realization that he was her mate. She didn't know if it was something he wanted everyone else in the pack to know, seeing as how he had so recently returned here. Actually, speaking of that....
"Lily,” she said, looking straight at her friend as she decided to come clean. “No one will tell me about his history. Not even Kieran. You've danced around it, too.” She mimicked her pups' best imploring look, which made Lily snort out a puff of laughter. “So Jace was raised in this pack, but then he left, yes? But he only recently came back to be a Guardian. He definitely wasn't here the last time we visited." She definitely would have noticed him before.
Lily tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, tilting her head to the side at Caitlin as she offered up an innocent look. "And why precisely are you suddenly so curious, hmm?"
Caitlin sighed again. She really liked Lily, and had been overjoyed when Kieran had found the redheaded Guardian who was his mate. She and Lily had become as close as sisters, and she very much valued her friendship with the other woman.
Fine. It seemed she had to share a confidence in order to get one back.
"You can't tell anyone, Lily," she said in a solemn voice, lowering her coffee mug as she leaned slightly toward Lily.
Lily put her plate back down on the table and leaned forward as well, the picture of sudden interest.
"Tell anyone what?" she asked.
Caitlin felt the sizzle through her skin just at the thought of Jace again. Taking a deep breath, she said it.
"He's my mate. Jace is my mate."
She said the words so softly she wasn't sure Lily would be able to hear her, although of course Lily's keen shifter hearing would be able to pick it up even if Caitlin had basically breathed the words.
Lily's eyes went enormous as a huge smile broke out across her face. "What? He is? I knew something was happening there! Yes!" She did a victorious fist pump in the air. "I knew Kieran was more upset than he should have been, he must've sensed it too. He's being such a big brother with you, it's so annoying, isn't it?” Cheerfully, she rolled her eyes, almost giddy in her apparent excitement for Caitlin. “I mean, mine are all younger, but they always had that silly pseudo-big brother thing going on with me anyway. Really, and I can wipe the floor with all their asses if I want to."
She ended on a little sniff. Caitlin couldn't help but laugh.
Turning suddenly more serious, Lily went on in a slightly lower voice, even though no one was around. The pups were already off with Jace this morning, and Kieran was running errands in town. The next nearest house on the property was several hundred yards away. “Okay then. Now, some of this story is his, so you'll have to see what more he wants to sh
are with you.” She shrugged. “But what I can tell you is that, yes, Jace was raised here. He was born to the Abajo Pack, but his parents were killed in a rogue attack when he was nine years old.” A small twist of her lips expressed her sadness at that history.
“Oh!” Caitlin said, involuntarily. Her heart squeezed. “He wasn’t much older than the twins. How terrible for him,” she whispered. Tail drooping, her wolf whined in the back of her mind.
“Yeah.” Lily sipped her coffee and looked at the woods, shaking her head a bit. “He's actually related to us. To the Bardous. It's a little distant, but he's family. His pack took a hard hit in that attack,” and here her voice went uncharacteristically bitter cold at a memory even older than she was, “and the few remaining wolves didn't feel equipped to raise any of the orphaned pups in the way they deserved to be raised. The pack actually disbanded. They didn’t think they could get their paws back under them. My parents always told us it was an ugly mess.” She shook her head again. “Terrible old story. At any rate, they sent the pups to what blood kin they could. Jace ended up here.”
She paused again for another sip of coffee. Caitlin, her wolf listening as intently as she, sensed something else. “And?” she prompted, her own coffee just about forgotten. Her stomach still tightened unpleasantly at the thought of Jace losing his parents so young. If anything ever happened to her.... She banished the bleak thought of her pups without any parents at all as her wolf's low, agitated whine echoed through her head.
Lily took a long breath in, slowly blowing it out before she answered. “Well, he had a hard time. I'm sure everyone here did their best, my parents included, but what he went through was pretty bad. No child should have to witness something like that.”
This time, Caitlin's gasp tore out of her. “He saw it? He saw his parents killed?” She heard her voice deepen as her wolf growled through it.
With a slight nod, Lily said, “Yes. He had nightmares for about a year afterward.”
“Oh.” Tears blurred Caitlin's vision. Things made so much more sense now. Jace's reticence about wanting his own family seesawing with his protective instincts toward her pups. His appearance of being closed, even a little stand-offish to others.
It was all a self-protective act. Just an act. Caitlin understood that perfectly. She'd never been through something quite so horrific, but the pain and self-doubt that resulted from having the pups' father run out on her as well as them was something she kept well hidden from most. She understood what it was like to keep one's deepest anguish hidden from others in a mere effort to get through the day.
Swiping at her eyes, she cleared her throat before asking more. “He said something about a new chance at life. I was pretty sure he meant being here. Being a Guardian. Why did he leave in the first place? What happened?”
Now Lily shook her head. “That's the part of the story that's his to tell. And to be honest, I don't know a lot about how he spent his time away. Alpha knows, of course.” She tipped her mouth into a slight smile and shook her head. “Sometimes I think my father knows everything. Anyway, he trusted Jace enough to let him come back. And I'll be the first to say that Jace's training while he was gone was amazing. He's been teaching us moves none of us have ever even heard of, let alone have seen before. I know he just wants to make things right, this time.”
Caitlin pressed her on the issue, but Lily firmly shook her head. “Nope. That's all you get from me!” Eyes sparkling again, she added, “I really think it's time you stop being such a chicken and face him. You're both grown-ups. And now that I know what's going on,” and she suggestively waggled her brows, making Caitlin both blush and laugh, “I think you'd better figure out something. I bet your wolf is driving you nuts with wanting to get near him. Am I right?”
Caitlin's wolf leapt so suddenly and strongly into Caitlin's eyes, peering out in an almost desperately affirmative response, that Lily laughed hard. “Oh, your face. I know that feeling.” More gently, she added, “Caitie. All I can tell you is that meeting my mate and loving him has changed my life in so many astounding ways, I can hardly begin to count them all.”
Her face shone with such joy and love that Caitlin's eyes misted over again. Her wolf took the opportunity to send image after image of her pressing into Jace's side, running beside him through the forest, tumbling with him into bed as their humans.
“I know you don't know really him, Caitie.” Lily smiled at another memory. “I didn't know Kieran when I met him, either. But I quickly realized he was my mate. And that moment of meeting him and accepting him as mine made all the difference.”
Caitlin smiled, but she just nodded, taking another sip of her coffee to hide her real feelings.
What would make all the difference was if she actually needed someone else, even her true mate, to help her raise her pups. Another man's children.
And if Jace actually wanted to do that.
The answer to both those essential things, she was fairly certain despite all her wolf's anguished protesting, was no.
6
Jace took another step forward before freezing again. Beside him, two little bodies instantly froze as well. He glanced sidelong at the pups shadowing his every move before returning his attention to the deer nibbling at the edges of the woods before them. Another silent step forward. Pause. One more. Pause. Each movement he took was mimicked in what he had to admit was good form by the miniature hunters beside him. Every time he froze, they did as well. He was pretty sure they even stopped breathing, so completely focused were they on imitating him.
Pretty good at this stuff, his human murmured quietly in the back of his mind. He sounded puzzled.
Watching through Jace's eyes, his human added his years of specialized training to every movement he took in his four-legged form. The combination of being a wolf shifter, a Guardian, and a well-trained martial arts master made him absolutely deadly.
It also made him incredibly protective of the pups hunting with him in the forest. His pups. His human murmured at that again in some agitation, but Jace batted it away. These were his pups. It did not matter that another wolf had sired them. Caitlin was his mate and these were her pups. Therefore, they were his. His to protect, his to raise, and his to train. Right now, they were being far better students than he expected. In his experience, most pups this age were fairly silly, rambunctious, and prone to making mistakes that would scare off the prey.
Such as…
Briana's face started to scrunch up.
Oh, no. She was about to sneeze. Jace looked at the deer, then back down at Briana. At the sight of her desperately wrinkled nose, he briefly considered burying her face into his side so the sudden noise would be muffled by his coat.
Too late.
"A-choo!"
What was possibly the cutest sneeze in the history of shifters exploded out of Briana's little body, catapulting her backward by a few inches. The deer snapped up its graceful head, gave them all a startled, huge-eyed look, then whirled and sprang away through the forest. Its white butt and tail waved goodbye as the creature ran for its life.
"Briana! You scared it away!" Liam glared at his sister.
"I didn't mean to. I couldn't hold it in! Jace, I'm sorry." She turned worshipful, luminous green eyes up at him.
She'd totally be batting her eyelashes if she was her little girl right now, his human observed in a dry voice. But he chuckled. Jace agreed. He couldn't possibly be upset with the little thing when she looked at him like that.
Jace had been pretty certain they wouldn't have taken down the deer anyway. He'd hunted with pups before off and on, not to mention hunting with adult wolves when he himself was a pup. He didn't remember very much catching of prey during any of those hunts. Instead, he recalled the young wolves tumbling and playing, unconcerned with the subtle details of the actual hunt. Wolves hunted all the time in their natural form, of course. But since shifters had such long lifespans, they didn't usually teach pups how to hunt properly until they were sev
eral years older than Liam and Briana.
During the past week, the pups had sought out Jace every single day. At first he was startled. He didn't quite know what to make of it. They had a sweet, natural way about them, even around his still stunted human side—his human snorted at that—and he quickly found out how much fun it was to play with the little imps. They took him on tours of the pack property, since, as they told him very seriously, they had been coming here for a long time now and knew it well, while he was a recent arrival. They demanded games of hide and go seek, mock hunt, and wanted to learn all about the special moves they'd seen him do the first day they met him, when they saw him “attacking” their Uncle Kieran.
He still teased them about that every now and then. His human had deliberately not shifted back to wolf form for about a day after Liam had bit his calf. He found he enjoyed occasionally playing up the fact that he had a tiny little scar. The first several times he did it, Liam looked positively stricken. Then Briana, who was a quick little thing, gravely had reminded Jace, "We told you, you have to shift so it won't scar."
Liam had rolled his eyes and immediately tried to one-up her. He said to Jace, "Briana likes school. She likes to learn things. She thinks she's very smart."
That had started a little scuffle. Jace discovered the twins had no problems attacking one another with the same sort of ferocity they employed to support one another as well. Although naturally he broke it up each time, redirecting their seemingly endless energy to better pursuits, he found that he was rather proud of them when they did that. They had a lot of strength. They would be fine wolves when they grew up.
Which was something he intended to watch over, no matter what his human thought. Right, his human muttered. We'll see about that.
The only thing that rankled Jace during the past week about the situation, he mused as he broke up the mini battle and made the pups sit to attention for a few moments to consider their actions, was that Caitlin rarely joined them after the first time of keeping a close eye on her pups around Jace. Clearly, she knew she could trust him. Even if it weren't for the mate thing, he was a pack wolf. Pack wolves would protect pups with their very lives. Jace was no exception. Caitlin quickly saw that not only was he probably just as protective of them as she was, they adored him. She let them hang out with him without needing to be under her supervision as well. In fact, she seemed to not want to be around him at all.
