Cats Got Your Tongue (Shifter Squad Six)

by Anya Nowlan

Spade walked out of the room, a meeting room with a long table and fancy-looking chairs. His footsteps resounded in the empty hallway outside, his heels making clicking noises until he was far enough not to be heard anymore. And more importantly, not to hear what they were saying, either.

  “You want to tell us what’s really going on here, Kelis?” Grim asked, not able to quite keep the irritation out of his voice.

  Kelis looked like she was on the verge of tears, and Grim’s stomach lurched when he saw her lower lip tremble slightly. It was like whatever had happened since they’d last met had made her both stronger and more fragile at the same time, keeping her in its grips with a force that Grim couldn’t comprehend. One thing was clear, though: Spade had something to do with it.

  “I swear, I’m going to rip that fucker’s face off,” Grant snarled suddenly behind Grim, and it took a few fast movements to get ahold of Grant’s shoulder before he had a chance to speed out of the room in search of the intel officer.

  “Fucking hell man, relax!” Grim hissed, finding it distinctly funny that it was him telling Grant to calm down while it was always the other way around.

  Grant’s expression was twisted in anger as he glanced back at Grim and then to Kelis, who was still standing in the middle of the room like a deer caught in headlights. Grim had to assume that if she had anywhere to run to, she would have.

  “What the fuck did he do to you, Kelis? Tell me right now. I’m not kidding, I’ll rip that smug smile right off his face if I have to and I bet there isn’t a single agent in The Firm who’d fucking fault me for it.”

  Grant yanked his arm out of Grim’s grip. Honestly, if Kelis spoke a word on the topic, Grim was convinced he’d be right by Grant’s side, tracking Spade down and exacting some long-overdue justice. The fact that he felt so strongly about her only dawned on him when he looked at her again. She was almost exactly the same as he remembered her, but not quite.

  He’d always had a soft spot for women, obviously, but it hadn’t driven him to fits of rage quite like seeing Kelis wounded would. The realization was chilling, and the harshness of his cougar’s reaction also made him pause. A soldier was supposed to be in control of his emotions, a SEAL all the more so. But she could mess with his brain without even saying a word.

  “He didn’t do anything; it’s fine!” she said, her words coming out a little bit raspy and raw, but she seemed to gather herself. “We were only talking.”

  “What could you be talking about to that fucking slime?” Grim asked.

  “I work here now,” she said, stunning the room into silence. “I have for… a while now.”

  “What?! You’ve been working here and we didn’t know?” Grant asked, indignantly.

  Rationally, Grim knew that they had no right to demand anything of her. But another much more vocal side of him was siding quickly with Grant’s assessment of the situation. Could it be that both he and Grant had treasured the night they’d spent together, but to Kelis, it had meant nothing?

  That thought pissed him off almost as much as Spade had.

  “Yeah,” she said softly, averting her gaze from them. “Funny how life works out sometimes.”

  “I’m not fucking laughing,” Grim said, the hints of a growl in his words.

  Kelis pursed her lips slightly and she looked so very vulnerable again, something he hadn’t seen at all when they’d been together the first time. But it somehow made her even more appealing. Probably because it weighed on his urge to protect her, despite everything.

  “Who have you been working as?” Grant asked, getting ahold of his emotions faster than Grim could after his initial outburst.

  “Special assignment. I… I don’t think you have the clearance to know,” she said, looking up and holding her head a little bit higher, a little bit prouder.

  There was a semblance of the woman Grim remembered and lusted for. That tilt of the chin, that blaze in her eyes… fuck, she was as sexy as he remembered and it was killing him that they were standing around, getting into some sort of a fucking argument because of Spade of all people.

  “All right, whatever. You’re here, that’s what matters. If you say Spade hasn’t done anything, I won’t believe you, but I’ll trust you. He’s done something to everyone, you might just not realize it yet,” Grim said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Tell you what. We’re heading out for a drink and some dinner. Do you wanna join us? I promise we won’t talk shop. Right, Grant?” Grim asked pointedly, turning to look at the older Aldroch.

  “Right,” Grant said after a tense pause, sighing and relaxing his body. “Sorry, Kelis. It’s been a long time and whenever I see that fucker, I see red.”

  “He’s an asshole,” she said with a slight smile, the corners of her mouth cutely curving upward.

  “You’ll get no objections from the gallery on that,” Grim said. “Come on. Let’s pretend this isn’t super weird.”

  Another thing easier said than done.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Kelis

  Kelis was squirming in her seat, waiting for Grim to get back with their beers. Grant was to her right, picking listlessly at a complimentary bowl of peanuts, a grave silence hanging between them. Her stomach twisted and there were so many things she wanted to tell him, but the words kept escaping her.

  How the hell did you get here, Kelis… Spade promised there would be no chance you could see them!

  “So, back from a mission?” she asked softly, finally picking a topic that seemed safe enough.

  Ironic, seeing as they were at a public bar and the least volatile subject of conversation was about who Grant, Grim, and their squad had been blowing up lately.

  “Yup. Argentina, I think. But they all start sounding the same. You know how it is,” Grant said with a chuckle, looking up.

  Their gazes met and her breath stuttered in her lungs for a moment, desperately wanting to scream out words that she knew she wasn’t supposed to say.

  After all, how do you tell a man that she’d had his and his brother’s babies and she hadn’t even bothered to tell them about it?

  Just then, Grim returned, balancing three beer bottles by their necks in one hand and a plate of onion rings in the other.

  “This what you call dinner?” Grant asked, cocking a brow though he was already reaching for one of the onion rings before the plate had even hit the table.

  “Hold your damn horses, Grant. The burgers are coming,” Grim said with a snort, passing around the beers.

  Kelis dubiously looked at hers for a moment, but then took a swig of it with a mental shrug. She’d stopped breastfeeding since the little bastards decided to get teeth far too early, and there really wasn’t anything stopping her from indulging in a little bit of self-destructive drinking anymore. Besides, considering the company she found herself in, she needed a quick morale booster.

  “Cheers,” Grant said, clinking his bottle against Kelis’s, with Grim joining in.

  “To less bullshit,” Grim said, grinning.

  “I can get on board with that,” Kelis said with a half-sigh, taking another token sip.

  It tasted good, for beer anyway. She was more of a bourbon kind of girl, though she wouldn’t have dared tell her father that. Nothing could stand between an Irishman and his ale, except for perhaps his whiskey.

  “So on the topic of that, do you want to come clean to us about what was really going on there? Or are we going to make small talk until Grant here loses his cool again?” Grim asked, his voice getting serious now.

  Kelis bit her lower lip, smirking. She knew the fun couldn’t last for too long. But she’d known that before she’d agreed to come out with the guys, so that was no surprise. The question was, how much was she going to tell them? Or how much could she tell them, more importantly.

  Kelis snatched an onion ring as well, dipping it in some honey mustard sauce and taking a bite. She chewed, glancing from one brother to another, both trying to remain perfectly blasé about the situation, but she cou
ld see how badly they wanted to know what had been going on with her. It wasn’t a surprise. She’d been dying to hear about them as well.

  She’d picked up the phone or gone on the internet a hundred times, looking for traces of them. The Firm kept all of their agents pretty tightly under wraps, but their names hadn’t changed, so Kelis had found their family. But she’d never gotten in contact. She knew that if she did, there’d be hell to pay with Spade.

  She wondered if they’d done the same for her? Though of course there was no way she could be found anymore. Her parents and her whole clan of extended family were like if they had been wiped from the face of the earth, relocated and given new names, even if she was allowed to stay in San Francisco. Spade didn’t do anything half-assed that he didn’t want to, and Kelis had to admit he’d done a very thorough job with her family.

  Luckily enough, she hadn’t been cut off from them. She’d been over to their new home in Maryland several times and her parents had gotten time with their grandsons, even if the question of their fathers or the kids’ somewhat… different qualities came up every now and then.

  “I wouldn’t want Grant to lose his cool again. I get the feeling it’s not a very common occurrence,” Kelis said, popping the rest of the onion ring in her mouth.

  “You can say that again. Haven’t seen him that pissed since he got that bullet in his arm back in Costa Rica,” Grim said, garnering another dirty look from his twin.

  “Okay. Long story short, I’ve been with The Firm since the airplane incident.”

  “You’ve got to give us more. Doing what?”

  “This and that,” she said, preparing to duck the onion ring platter if it came flying at her head for her vague replies. “I can’t say. I wasn’t dicking around when I said it’s a special ops sort of thing and I’m not allowed to divulge details.”

  “What the hell did Spade offer you to get you to drop the Corps?” Grant asked, genuinely interested.

  “Well, you know how Spade is. If he wants something, he gets it,” she said, tempering herself against the defeated groan that wanted to tumble over her lips.

  It was all true, too. Spade had a very particular way of bending people to his will. As little as she liked dwelling on the man, he had essentially been the sole controller of her life for nearly a year now, and it had been some of the most trying times she’d ever known.

  But as much as Spade rubbed her the wrong way, she also had to admit that there had been good times. Though she was wrangled into getting out of the US Marine Corps—a shiny honorary discharge waiting for her when she got back to San Francisco, taking both the life she’d known and many of the friends she’d had away from her—she’d had her two gorgeous baby boys as well.

  Dylan and Dante. Spitting images of their fathers, with spirit to match, as much as one could tell from toddlers, seeing as both a shifter pregnancy as well as a shifter child’s development were much faster than a regular kid’s. Especially with Kelis’s boys, though…

  She shook her head lightly, clearing the cobwebs and putting her boys out of her mind for a moment. It was hard, seeing as it was the only thing she’d grown accustomed to talking about over the last few months, both for work as well as for pleasure. But she couldn’t slip. Not with the Aldroch twins around.

  “So are you happy?” Grant asked, and the question hit her like a ton of bricks right in the chest.

  She looked up, startled, her gaze bouncing between the two men. They both looked honestly, genuinely curious. Like her answer meant the world to them. For a moment, she allowed herself to think that maybe it did.

  “I’m… I’m okay,” she said, smiling, though she wasn’t sure if it reached her eyes. “It hasn’t been an easy year, but I’ve made it through. I’m fine with where I am. I mean, I feel bad about my team going to Afghanistan without me and I keep thinking I could have helped were I there, but… bygones, you know?”

  She took a long swig, willing her tears away. How was it that these two men made her go through such a rollercoaster of emotions every damn time she met them, regardless of whether some odd chemicals were burning a hole in her veins or not? It was some kind of witchcraft, really.

  “So you’re not happy,” Grim concluded, scowling.

  “I didn’t say that. How do you define happiness anyway? It’s such a ludicrous goal. No one can ever be ‘happy.’ Not really,” Kelis said, scrunching her nose.

  “That’s bullshit,” Grim argued. “And you know it.”

  “Do I? Do I really? Name someone you know who’s truly happy then,” she scoffed, slouching back in the chair as their burgers arrived, big and sloppy and the kind you can’t eat with your hands.

  “Sure. Connor. Dutch,” Grim said, raising his eyebrows, a slim smirk on his lips.

  “Tex. Thatch. Their wives. Their kids,” Grant continued, shoving a fork into the meat patty like it’d done something to him personally.

  “How do you figure that? How do you know they’re happy?” she asked, honestly curious now.

  She’d met all of them, and though they all seemed to have their shit together, even in the most cataclysmic shit-show of a mission she couldn’t believe they could be that overjoyed with everything. Life simply didn’t work that way. No one got everything that they wanted. No way.

  “We knew them before they were happy,” Grim said, taking a bite out of his burger, though eating seemed not to really be on the forefront of anyone’s mind.

  “And we know them now. You can tell the difference between a man who is just getting by and who has something to live for, who wants to live for it. They’re happy. We can tell,” Grant finished, draining his beer.

  Neither of the Aldrochs seemed particularly happy, though. Kelis wasn’t the right person to judge, admittedly, but they seemed pretty miserable. Herself? She couldn’t say she was unhappy, per se. Her boys were the lights of her life, but the fact that she was forced to share that light with The Firm… well, that made things a bit more difficult.

  “And what about you two?” Kelis asked, wondering if she really wanted to hear the answer.

  She’d spent so much time imagining how these men felt, what they thought, what was going on in their lives. It was excruciating, knowing that they even worked in the same company as she did, yet she felt like she was a million miles away from them. Being together with them now was bittersweet in a way. Sitting so close to men who she knew could change her life and yet not being allowed to do anything about it.

  Grim and Grant looked at one another for a long moment, some unspoken truth hanging between them, undecipherable to her. At least for now.

  “We’re okay,” Grant said, speaking for both of them.

  Kelis couldn’t help but chuckle. They were playing the game she had set up and she couldn’t fault them for it.

  “So what? You’re saying that if you had a house full of kids and a doting wife then you’d suddenly find yourself happy?”

  It felt a little bit ridiculous, but she was positively hanging off every word either of them spoke after that question.

  “I don’t know,” Grant said. “Maybe.”

  “Hell yes,” Grim answered, absolute certainty ringing in his voice. “We’re supposed to have a family. A clan, a pack, a whatever, something to belong to. Cougars are sort of lonely shifters, but I know as well as Grant does that we’re not like that. We’re Alpha twins. That changes a whole fucking lot. Yes, I would be pretty damn happy with a family and it’s chewing me up that I don’t have one yet,” Grim said, looking right at Kelis.

  His expression was somber, but his eyes blazed. He was definitely telling the truth, and when she glanced at Grant, she saw the same fire reflected in him. Her words gurgled in her throat, some sort of a whimper coming out as endless guilt and worry bubbled up all at once.

  I can’t do this anymore! I have to tell them, she thought, desperation ringing in the back of her head. What can Spade do? He can’t keep them from their kids forever.

  Or could
he?

  She put that out of her mind, grabbing for her beer and emptying it in one long gulp. Slamming it on the table, she stood up, full of determination and knowing exactly what she was doing for the first time that day. Maybe for the first time in a long time.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” she said, putting as much authority into her voice as years of bossing around grunts had given her.

  “What? Where? We’re not even done eating yet,” Grim asked, though she was pleased to notice that both of them were getting up already, grabbing for their jackets.

  “I need to show you two something. But you got to… never mind. You’ll see when we get there,” she sighed, choosing to let the situation speak for itself.

  Grant plucked two onion rings out of the basket and Grim grabbed his half-eaten burger, devouring it with two bites. It looked like the only reason they’d been using a knife and a fork to begin with was to make her feel like she wasn’t in the company of two big men with the appetites of a pack of wolves. She chuckled at that, heading through the crowded bar toward the front door.

  Everything will be okay, she chanted in her head, trying to make herself believe it through sheer force of will.

  It had to be. In fact, it had to be better than okay. She needed it and she knew now that they did too.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Grant

  Grant walked in step with Kelis, who was practically running. Her cheeks flushed with excitement and whenever Grant’s eyes met Grim’s, the same question was echoed in his. What the hell was going on here?

  They’d tried to ask her, but she’d told them to wait, that it wasn’t far. That they’d see. So that was fine, Grant figured. He knew the moment she said her goodbyes for the evening both he and Grim would go and fall into the closest tequila bottle. Walking through San Francisco in the late evening with her, smelling her scent—sweeter than it used to be, in his opinion—and getting to revel in her presence was good enough for him.

  They took a trolley and after a few stops, stepped off. She led them to a tall brick house, pausing at the stairs leading up to the apartment building for a moment.