by Mandy Rosko
Now, a full head of sandy hair graced the child's head. The fact that he could hold his head upright at all was proof of the time that had passed.
When mother and son turned the corner and left his sight, Jonathan felt a swell of warm pride expanding inside himself.
Jonathan's mother had wanted the kid. She had also experimented heavily on the mother, taking away the part of her that had made her a bigger-than-average beaver.
A monster of a beaver. Something the size of a bear. A fully grown bear that could eat a man's face right off just for kicks.
But Beverly could no longer take that monstrous shape. Jonathan's mother had seen to that.
Now, in her shifted form, she was as harmless as any other beaver making its dam in the river.
It was part of the reason why Jonathan had let the child go.
Even though he wasn't technically breaking either of his two rules when it came to kids, it bothered him on a level he couldn't explain to have a baby in his care while the mother and father were out there thinking it was dead. He couldn't sleep at night. And there were a lot of things he could sleep through.
And it wasn't just because of the constant crying either, which had been annoying. The nightly feedings had been brutal for his sleep schedule.
He just couldn't do it. He couldn't keep the kid under those conditions.
His mother had been pissed off. She'd smacked him around hard enough that he still felt her claws on his face, but she got half of what she wanted, and that was enough. She got the thing that made Beverly's beaver huge. As far as Jonathan was concerned, Mother didn't need the baby.
Which meant he'd made the right choice.
Slithering back through the air ducts, Jonathan really hoped that no one would turn up the air conditioning any more than it already was.
He just had to find a good spot. He could hear their voices.
Getting closer now.
Talking about...him?
Shit.
"Who else did you tell?" asked Albert Huntley.
Jonathan had him as an instructor for a little while before Albert took time off after the kidnapping of his wife and child. Jonathan had liked him. Maybe that was another reason why he had been unable to keep the baby.
A male voice replied. "Just you for now. I'm planning on writing up a report about it, though."
Jonathan rolled his eyes. That was one thing that he didn't miss about being a cadet back at FUCNA.
All the goddamn paperwork.
"What did you say it looked like?"
The other man explained it. He described exactly what Jonathan looked like in his snake form. That wasn't good. It was one thing for them to be talking about him. It was another thing for him to have gotten that good of a look at him when his body should have been mostly concealed in the grass.
In the dark, too.
Jonathan flicked his tongue out again, struggling to remember what the other man's name was. His mother would be pissed off at him if she knew he was struggling. He was supposed to be studying these things, but he could hardly find the time when he was expected to keep an eye on the academy and remember everyone's names. It was impossible. Maybe if this guy had been around more…
Jonathan was just going to have to rely on Albert saying the guy's name out loud.
"Write your report and let me know what they say. I don't wanna take any risks."
"I figured you wouldn't want to." There was a brief silence between the two men. "Are you going to tell Beverly?"
Jonathan slithered to the side of the air duct to get a better look.
Albert was rubbing at his jaw, his arms half crossed.
"Yes. Not that she needs to stress right now, but I'm going to tell her. We've got our no-bullshit rule to adhere to."
"Yeah, you do what you have to do. I wouldn't want to be in the doghouse either."
Albert slapped the man on the shoulder. "Thanks for letting me know, Warren."
That was it!
Jonathan knew it had started with a W. Now, he just had to think about the rest of the profile. Wolf shifter. Ability to sniff out damn near anything. It was a danger for Jonathan to even be there. He didn't like the shifters with a strong sense of smell.
"Tell your wife, and make sure your windows and doors are secure. Make sure nothing can sneak around inside your house. I don't wanna find out that something is living in here."
"No, me neither. Maybe I'll get a cat. Cats eat snakes, right?"
Jonathan shivered.
Warren made a face. "I don't know. I thought you were a bird? An owl? Don't they eat snakes?"
"I just might if I'm angry enough when I see him. The little prick."
Great.
That was his reward for being a nice guy and giving the kid back when his mother had expressly told him not to.
Getting eaten alive by a goddamn owl.
Getting eaten alive by anything.
A shifter's worst nightmare.
Jonathan decided to leave them to their talk.
There was likely more useful information he could learn from them, but it could come later. There was something else he wanted right now.
He sank back into the depths of the house, slinking his way around and up the walls. He was careful not to touch anything with wires attached. He'd learned his lesson about that a long time ago. About the time when he first started to shift. Be very careful what you slithered over. Sometimes it hurt.
He found the woman again. Beverly.
There was a tiny hole in the ceiling of the kitchen where the lights were. He could just peek his head through and look down at them as she hummed pleasantly to herself, putting together a small snack for the baby, who was sitting up in a highchair, cooing as he waited.
It seemed he was on to Cheerios now.
How time flew.
Jonathan had only met her a couple of times before she had been taken. He mostly knew her from her spot on the table where she had been experimented on. Where the large beaver inside of her had been removed and replaced with something more normal, so to speak.
She wasn't important anymore. His mother got what she needed from the beaver woman. She just didn't get the chance to experiment on the baby.
But that was no longer an issue. Jonathan was there to learn more about what was going on with her most recent favorite.
The raccoon with the horn.
He should be back at the academy, trying to find her, to watch her, and to take note of anything out of the ordinary with her. To observe her outside of the facility for anything that was out of character. Whatever that meant. But he wasn't ready to leave the house just yet.
Jonathan had to look at the baby.
He couldn't even explain to himself why. Maybe to make sure that his sacrifice had been worth it. That he wasn't a complete bastard or a monster.
After all, what sort of monster would return a missing baby to the arms of its mother?
No monster would do that. No bad guy would do that.
These thoughts swirled around in his mind while he watched mother and son down below.
Beverly brushed her hand over his head, still speaking baby-speak and gibberish to him as she set down a little plastic plate with his Cheerios on it. She turned away to do something in the fridge when something interesting happened.
The baby looked up. The boy saw him.
Jonathan coiled up.
No. That was impossible.
But it wasn't.
The child looked at him. The kid even smiled, hands curling into fists and waving around in excitement. The boy should be afraid, not excited. There should be no joy in seeing a snake nearby.
When the beaver woman came back, Jonathan booked it, getting out of sight before he could be noticed. He slithered back through the crawl space of the house, avoiding wires and nails as he made it back outside, through the grass, and into the surrounding shrubs.
He cursed himself over the whole thing. He hadn't even gotten that much in
formation, other than the fact that the wolf had seen him and was suspicious.
But there was something that...warmed him. It was the only way he could describe the feeling.
He didn't dwell on it. No point, and it was time to get back to his own mother and figure out how they were going to get the raccoon girl.
Mother was very interested in that horn of hers.
7
Trisha had no idea what was wrong with her.
Stealing was wrong. Wrong! Bad girl! She knew better. She did.
But the vision of the doctor's glittery watch just wouldn't leave her mind.
The shiny silver with the diamonds surrounding the face and inlaid next to the numbers.
She didn't want to steal it to keep forever. She just wanted to feel the thrill of having it in her hand. Heck, she might not even take it out of the office. She just knew it was sitting there, waiting for her to fondle it.
She'd gotten a good glimpse of it when he took her pulse earlier that day, and her eyes had remained glued to it when he took it off to wash his hands. She still had it in her sight when he walked into his office and set it on his desk, just to forget it there when his phone rang.
The beauty was out of her sight when he left his office without it and locked the door behind him.
But it wasn't out of her mind.
The doc had told her she was done and that he had to head out of town for an important meeting. That was enough info to let her know that the watch would be sitting there, on his desk, lonely and needing someone like her to rescue it.
These people were helping her, and now here she was, sneaking out of her room past curfew and breaking into the good doc's office to take something that didn't belong to her. She was either a thief in her previous life or this had something to do with her new scavenger tendencies.
She hoped it was the latter, not that it really made things any better.
She was getting better at this. It didn't take her quite as long, and she didn't need to break as many hairpins. When the punishment for picking locks was a stern warning and a finger-wagging, it meant she took more time to practice without worry of getting slapped around for it.
With a click, the door was unlocked. Only mild scratching on the lock, too.
One day, she would get it to the point where there was none, but for now, Trisha was proud of herself as she opened the door quickly, trying to outmaneuver that squeaking noise that always came whenever she tried to be slow and quiet about it.
She shut the door behind herself, only slowing it down at the last moment so the clicking of the door handle wouldn't be so obnoxious.
She sighed, the thrill of sneaking around giving her a high she was coming to like.
She screamed her head off at the sight of the huge shadow standing behind the desk, her back slamming into the door she'd just opened before the small lamp clicked on, revealing Warren's annoyed face.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Clutching her heart, Trisha gasped for breath. "Me? What are you doing?"
"Stopping you from getting into trouble."
"By standing alone in the dark?”
He seemed a little taller in that moment, a little more imposing. "You're just angry that I stopped you from taking something that doesn't belong to you."
There was that, but she wasn't going to admit it to him.
Still, embarrassed anger bubbled up inside her. She avoided his gaze. "You scared me."
Warren stepped out from the other side of the desk. "Only because I knew you were going to do this, though part of me was hoping you wouldn't."
She frowned at him, still caught up in her childish irritation over being caught. "What are you talking about? No one knew I was coming here."
She'd waited until Cindy was sleeping before leaving their room, and she had been extra quiet about it, considering the trouble Cindy had getting to sleep when she wasn't in her tank.
Suddenly, the big bad wolf-man was standing in front of her, arms crossed, looking down at her as if she had done something bad. Which made her even more defensive. "Hey, I mean, you can't punish me when there's been no crime committed, right?"
"You broke into this office."
"Yeah, I'm a raccoon, remember? I need to be out and about at night."
"You're just using that as an excuse."
"Ah-ha, but it's not just a flimsy excuse." She pointed her finger up at him. "I've been learning a lot about what it means to be a shifter. Bunny shifters who like bouncing around and eating carrot cake and bears who don't shut up about honey and salmon. This is my inner nature, and you're squashing it."
"I'm not squashing anything."
"Seems like it. Not very tolerant of you. How did you know I was going to be here, anyway?" That was something she couldn't let go of. "If I find out you can read minds or something, then I'm going to have to rethink hanging out with you."
The corner of his lips quirked. He was trying to hide it, but it was there, and that felt like a win to her.
"Come on, you think I'm mischievous and cute, don't you?"
"I think if we can't get you to control that nature of yours, then you're going to get into a lot more trouble when the time comes for you to enter the real world."
"Uh-huh, so how did you know?" She wasn't embarrassed anymore. Trisha found herself enjoying the moment as she flirted with the big, stoic lug.
"Because I asked the doc to leave his watch behind."
"You..."
Trisha's mind was blown. Entirely blown, wide open. "You asked him to take off his watch, to set it aside where I could see it, and then walk away?"
He smiled, fully this time, angling his head to the side just a little as he watched her figure it out.
And she felt as though she'd lost a game of chess she hadn't known she was playing.
"You devious bastard."
"Didn't think the wolf would outsmart you, did you?"
Trisha gasped, shaking her head.
But then an even better idea came to her.
"Right. So a game of cat and mouse it is."
"That's not what this is."
She'd attached herself to the idea and was refusing to let it go. She pointed up at him with one hand while the other held on to the doorknob for dear life. "No, no. I can see what this is. You and me, a battle of wits."
"That's absolutely not what this is. I just want you to get some control over your impulses before you break into some human's house without realizing it. They won't think it's cute at all. Nor will the cops they'll call."
"But how can I control something that's ingrained in me?"
Warren raised a brow at her. "You really think that all the bunny shifters do is talk about carrots?"
"The bouncy blonde I saw the other day never shut up about carrot cake."
"That's different."
They looked at each other, stuck in a sort of impasse.
Not just that. Something...locked her in place. She couldn't look away from his eyes or stop noticing the hard edge of his jaw.
Christ, he was too good-looking.
Trisha cleared her throat, reminded of the fact that she was pretty sure he wanted her as much as she did him. "Anyway, are you going to walk me back to my room now like a good hall monitor?" It came out sounding a lot meaner than she meant it to, but when the words were out, she couldn't just take them back.
"If I take you back to your room, will you stay there?"
Trisha froze. A strange need to tell the truth fought with her need to stay free for a little while longer. "Yyyyeeeesssss?" That was bad. That was very bad. She wanted to tell him the truth, that she was probably going to take off and find something else to do in the night, but of course, she couldn't. So what came out of her mouth was a drawn-out, painfully obvious lie instead.
Great.
Warren shook his head at her, though his mouth was doing that thing again where she could tell he was fighting to keep from smiling. "You're ridiculous, you know that?
"
Might as well play along with it. "Nooooooo?"
Warren shook his head again. "Fine. If you need exercise so badly then, I suppose it's better if I'm there with you instead of letting you roam around the school, and the grounds, alone at night."
She perked up at the idea of him letting her break the rules and being there while she did it. "We're going outside?"
"If you want to get out some of that animal instinct, it's better if you have an experienced shifter going along with you."
Trisha didn't know how to feel about that. She put it out of her head quickly. Whatever. It didn't matter. The point was that she was finally going to get some approved outside time during the night.
Before sneaking out of her room, she'd put on an oversized T-shirt with a pair of comfortable leggings and her shoes, but as she walked out with Warren into the crisp night air, it was easy to wish that she'd put on something a little smaller, and tighter, something that would show off that she had boobs instead of hiding them.
Oh well. Next time…because Trisha was going to make sure this was a regular thing.
"So, what do you want to do?" she asked, looking up at her protector.
Which was awesome. She loved thinking of him as her big bad wolf protector. It was like in a romance novel. A handsome wolf watching her back while she got up to no good.
Perfect.
He gestured toward the pathways, field, and the woods farther out. "Whatever you want to do that gets this need you have out of your system."
That wasn't good enough. Trisha was excited, and she needed him to be excited too.
"But I'm a new shifter. You're used to this. You have to show me what to do. How do I go about being a good little raccoon-icorn?"
His lips quirked again. "A what?"
She flicked her horn. "This thing. Come on, what do you do for fun? Everyone talks about their inner animals like they're their own separate entities that can take control at any moment."
"It's not entirely like that."
"But you know what I'm getting at. What do you do to keep the wolf inside your head nice and satisfied?" She might have pressed herself a little close to him when she asked that, pressing her index finger to the middle of his forehead while she breathed in his scent.
