"In a second, honey."
"Daddy!" she repeated, insistently.
"One second," he told Jeffery. "What, sweetie?"
"Hungry."
"Alright, I'll get you dinner in just a second, okay?"
"Hungry now!"
She pleaded at him with her eyes, and Jordan struggled with his various instincts. On the one hand, getting her food would leave him vulnerable to attack. On the other, the kid needed to eat, and he didn't really think that this guy was the sneak-up-from-behind type. He cast a warning glance at Jeffery, who raised his hands.
"Go ahead," he said. "I won't bother you. Feed her."
Jordan picked up his daughter and walked around the thin, unassuming man. He got a better look at the guy's glasses as he passed, and realized that he'd glued and taped them together in the middle. Guilt niggled at Jordan's gut. He'd put that man's nose through hell, twice; though the realization that he'd taken a full-grown werewolf down gave him a boost of confidence. He pulled a grocery bag out of the car (provisions he'd picked up in the last town) and made her a sandwich. He cut the crusts off and cut them into rectangles (triangles were too pointy, she said) and settled her at the battered picnic table. Once she had her sandwich, bag of chips, and a bag of juice, he turned his attention back to the stowaway. Jeffery had been standing quietly as Jordan had prepared her food.
There was a second picnic table beside the first, and Jordan gestured for Jeffery to sit. They sat across from each other, Jeffery sitting on the table with his boots on the bench, and Jordan sitting on the bench with his elbows on the table. Darla hummed happily and swung her legs as she worked her way through her meal.
"First," Jordan said, "why are you after my daughter?"
"It's my job," Jeffery said, with a little shrug. "She's Alex's daughter. She's a shifter. Shifter children are desperately vulnerable outside the colony. I was tasked with bringing her home."
"Her home is with me," Jordan said, adamantly. "And that doesn't explain why you shifted and attacked her."
Jeffery looked confused, then realization spread across his face.
"Oh! Oh, shoot. It did look that way, didn't it? No, I shifted to show her that I could. I thought if she saw that I was like her, she would settle down, and maybe you would too. That was assuming that you were a shifter though, which... I guess was another mistake on my part."
Jordan gave him a hard look, and decided that he wasn't lying. Or, if he was, he had perfected the art.
"What's this colony you mentioned?" he asked.
"Alex never told you?" Jeffery seemed surprised.
"We'll get to why you're so familiar with Alex in a minute. For now, just assume that he didn't tell me anything about anything."
Jeffery pushed a hand through his soft, brown hair in a gesture that Jordan found instantly endearing. He kept his defenses in place, but the awkward man was winning him over moment by moment. He wondered if his own isolation over the past three years had anything to do with his sudden desire.
"The colony is where shifters live until they've matured," he said. "It's like a commune, I guess. Everybody pulls their weight, the children are raised by the group. Single parenthood isn't really a problem there. Every Omega pitches in to care for the children, regardless of blood. Your girl," he said, nodding at Darla, "would be treated with a little more care and respect, naturally, but not enough to give her a big head."
"Why would she be treated any differently than any other shifter kid?" Jordan asked.
Jeffery blinked at him.
"He really didn't tell you anything, did he?"
Jordan shook his head, suddenly self-conscious about how little he knew.
"Alex is... was... royalty. Next in line for Alpha Prime. Darla's the princess."
It was Jordan's turn to blink. A princess? A literal, actual princess? She would absolutely love that. He rubbed his hands together for a while, thinking.
"So if you're a benevolent savior of shifters, why do you think shifters are warning people like me to stay away from you?"
Jeffery opened his mouth, then hesitated. He shook his head.
"I wish I knew," he said.
Jordan wasn't convinced. He thought the man at least suspected the reason, but had possibly discredited it in his own mind.
"Not even a suspicion?" he asked, deliberately sounding unimpressed.
Jeffery chewed his lip.
"Sometimes, rarely, a retrieval will get ugly. Shifters have worked very hard over the centuries to control our animal nature. Some humans are more inclined to explore that primal power, use it to get revenge or something. Whatever humans usually use power for. Which is why there is a protocol to turning humans, a series of trials, an education cycle, and nurses on hand for the turn itself. It isn't like it used to be, with shifters biting people whenever they felt like it. Anyone who wants to bring fresh blood into the community must go through the proper channels or risk disciplinary measures."
"I guess those disciplinary measures get pretty hairy... so to speak... themselves?"
Jeffery nodded. "They can," he said. "In the past, we've had problems with anarchists. People who feel like their power is being wasted in a society. Sometimes those people make decent sub-alphas; sometimes..." He trailed off, looking at nothing. Jordan could imagine where the thought had been going, and was glad that he hadn't finished it in front of Darla.
"You knew Alex," Jordan said, changing the subject.
Jeffery nodded, staring down at the bench between his feet.
"Intimately," he confessed. "A year before he died."
"Ah," Jordan said, a bit shocked at the implications. He hadn't felt like a rebound, but in retrospect it made sense. Alex had been all about fun and sex and adventure. Even when he'd been pregnant, he was looking for a rush. Jordan should have known that he was running from something. "So you would have been... what, after Alex became Alpha?"
"His Omega," Jeffery said, quietly. "I would have carried his children."
"Carried?"
Jeffery nodded, then looked at him sharply.
"You're human," he said, as if he'd just realized it. "That means... oh, God." Jeffery cradled his face in his hands, pushing his broken glasses up on his head.
"What?" Jordan asked, concerned.
"Alex carried Darla," Jeffery murmured from behind his hands. "He was your Omega."
"I... guess? Look, Moranis..."
"Call me Jeffery."
"Jeffery. I don't know you all that well, but I feel like you deserve to know something. Alex and I... yeah, we had a ceremony and he pretty much got pregnant immediately. But I didn't know him, not really. He didn't tell me about the colony, or his royal heritage, hell he didn't even tell me that other shifters existed. He shimmered on the surface for me. I won't lie, I miss him every day; but mostly because I know that he would know better how to raise Darla than I do. Alex was never really mine."
Jeffery looked up, his eyes watery but peaceful.
"He would have come back," he said, quietly.
"He certainly wouldn't have stayed with me," Jordan said, ruefully.
Jeffery nodded, swallowing hard. He stood and paced for a moment before coming back and settling a friendly hand on Jordan's shoulder. It made Jordan's heart tumble slightly. Whether from the touch or the man's wild, earthy scent, or some combination of both, he didn't know. He did, however, know that he felt a twinge of regret when Jeffery pulled his hand away.
"Thank you," Jeffery said. "That means the world to me."
"Don't mention it," Jordan said, feeling slightly like the third wheel in a ghostly triangle.
Jeffery began pacing again, and his eyes wandered to the truck.
"Did you catch his name?" he asked. "The guy who sold you the camper?"
"Yeah," Jordan said. "Monty... Monty something. I'll grab the paperwork. Walk with me."
Jordan let Jeffery lead the way to the truck. He told himself it was to keep his body between the man and Darla. In actuality thou
gh, it gave Jordan a great view. I must be desperate, Jordan told himself wryly. It wasn't that Jeffery wasn't attractive, because he very much was. But this was not the time or the place to be lusting after sexy shifters. Jordan ripped his attention back to the task at hand and pulled the paperwork out of his glove box, flipping through it in the rapidly dimming light. Monty's handwriting was messy, but it was clear enough to make out if he squinted and tilted his head a little.
"Montague," he read aloud. "Montague Domingo."
He watched the blood rush from Jeffery's face and his eyes widen. Jordan had never in his life seen such pure terror.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jeffery slumped against Jordan's truck, his head whirling. He swallowed against the bile rising in his throat, and almost lost the battle. Montague Domingo. The name rang in his head like a siren. He cast a disbelieving look at this human man and wondered how on God's green earth he'd managed to meet the notorious werewolf and lived to tell about it. His warm green eyes and thick, luxurious black hair wouldn't have convinced Montague not to kill him and the girl in a single swoop. Montague fancied females; many of them, the smaller and curvier the better, as rumor had it. The tackle that had taken Jeffery down would have glanced off of Montague, and he would have laughed as he tore out the man's throat. The memory of that tackle sent a different sort of dizziness to Jeffery's head, confusing him further. It simply wasn't possible for Jordan to have gotten that close to Domingo with the prince's heir and walked away intact. There had to be something missing from his story.
"How did it happen?" Jeffery stuttered.
"What do you mean? How did I buy the camper?" Jordan asked.
He doesn't know, Jeffery realized. He has no idea how close he came to being dog food.
"Yes," Jeffery said, straightening and gazing hard into Jordan's bloodshot green eyes. "How exactly did you come to buy the camper? Tell me every detail."
Jordan paused for a moment, inhaling deeply. He ran a hand over his scruffy face and shot Jeffery a measuring glance. After a moment, he started talking. He told Jeffery how the camper had been parked in the D.I.Y. parking lot with a sale sign and a phone number. He ran down everything that was said and done, carefully sketching the scene for Jeffery.
"Wait, wait," Jeffery said. "She started howling?"
"Yeah, she does that," Jordan said, with a shrug. "That's a werewolf thing, isn't it?"
"No! I mean, shit, yes, but... not in the middle of the damn city."
"Watch your mouth," Jordan said, sharply.
Jeffery bit his tongue. He didn't think it mattered, with the shit that Darla was likely to see in her lifetime, cussing was hardly the top of the priority list. But Jordan was the parent, and a strikingly natural alpha, so Jeffery would try to police his tongue with a bit more attention.
"What I mean is, this is exactly why we keep the pups in the colony until they mature. Even if they do leave the reserve, they're brought up to keep their howling to themselves. Camping trips, hiking trips, you know, wilderness stuff, that's fine. So if anyone happened to hear it, they would assume it was a natural, you know, wolf. Or coyote, depending. Either way, howling in the middle of the da... dang city is absolutely forbidden. Also, what is she eating exactly?"
"Peanut butter and jelly, potato chips, and juice. Why? Are legumes forbidden?"
"Not forbidden exactly, just not... completely... they aren't that good for her."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. Growing pups need fresh meat and root vegetables. Too much starch and plant fat makes them savage. Hyper, I mean, and vicious. Angry. Bloodthirsty. They start craving sugar, tearing things up, attacking people who irritate them."
Jordan opened his mouth as a look of realization crossed his face.
"Oh."
"Does she eat those sandwiches... often?"
"Um. Pretty much. They're her favorite, she'd eat them three times a day if she could."
"How often does she eat fresh kills?"
Jordan shot him an incredulous look. It made Jeffery's blood run hot. He thought at first it was embarrassment, but the twist at the base of his belly told him otherwise. The man was absolutely stunning, and Jeffery was quickly losing the battle against his own attraction.
"Do I look like a hunter to you? She's never had a fresh kill in her life."
"I see," Jeffery muttered.
Protocol told him what needed to be done. Jordan was in no way equipped to take proper care of a werewolf child. He would ruin her before she matured, then she would just be another savage, feral stray for him to put down. He couldn't bear that. Not with Alex's daughter. He'd have to take her and let the colony raise her. That was the proper thing to do, wasn't it? That was following orders to the T. But he looked up at Jordan's face, exhausted, devoted, invested, and decided to wait. It wouldn't really matter if she came home in three days or three weeks, and a lot could happen in three weeks. He wouldn't tell Bates that he'd made contact, not yet. Bates would give him a direct order, and the one thing that Jeffery simply couldn't bring himself to do was ignore a direct order. He wrestled with himself for a while, his own moral code battling with the Outreach code and the shifter laws. It was an uncomfortable place he seemed to be finding himself in more and more frequently in recent years.
"Daddy!" Darla called from her place at the table. "Be 'scused? I full!"
"Yes, you may be excused," he answered, as if it were routine.
Jeffery was surprised by the interaction. First, she was eating all the wrong things. She shouldn't be full. Second, because she was eating all the wrong things, she should have been far too stimulated to be polite. He watched her zoom across the dirt to the playground and scurry all over it like a squirrel on crack, buzzing over the apparatus as if touching all the surfaces would sooth her itching nerves. Jordan walked over to her abandoned plate and scooped it up, along with the empty chip bag and juice pouch and tossed them all in the trash can. He didn't seem to give the actions a second thought, just as he hadn't been surprised when Darla asked for permission to run wild. Jeffery made his decision in that moment.
"So," Jordan said, returning to stand beside Jeffery. "Tell me about this Montague person."
Jeffery shuddered.
"Calling him a person is generous. And mostly inaccurate. Frankly I'm surprised you survived the encounter."
"He seemed nice enough," Jordan said, with a shrug.
"Nice?" Jeffery laughed, bitterly. "Dollars to donuts he's behind what happened to April, and others."
"What makes you say so?" Jordan asked, frowning.
Jeffery considered the other man for a moment. He wouldn't usually give out information like this, and certainly not to a human. But Jordan needed to know if he had any chance of keeping Darla safe. The second Montague discovered who he'd let slip through his fingers, he'd be after them. The image of Jordan being torn asunder by Montague's terrible claws flashed in his mind, making his decision for him.
"Montague has been trying to dethrone our alpha for the last forty years," Jeffery said. "He's a murderous bastard. His kills are legend."
"Forty years?" Jordan asked, furrowing his brow. "What, he started killing when he was twelve?"
Jeffery blinked at Jordan for a long moment, not understanding right away.
"Oh! Oh. You think he's fifty something?"
"Looked it," Jordan said, almost defensively.
Jeffery cocked his head.
"How old do I look to you?" he asked.
"I don't know, about my age I guess. Thirty-three; thirty-five?"
Jeffery grinned, glancing down at his own body. To a human he would look young, he supposed.
"I'm one hundred and two," he said, stifling a chuckle. "Werewolves age... differently."
"Uh-huh," Jordan said, not convinced. "You really expect me to believe that? You're forgetting that I am currently watching a werewolf grow up."
"Yes, and she'll grow at about this rate until she's, oh I don't know, ten or twelve. Then her develo
pment will slow way down. She'll hit puberty at about twenty; maybe twenty-five. Her body will be fully developed by the time she's forty, but her brain will take another fifteen, twenty years. Werewolves don't really start living as adults until they're in their seventies."
"You're shitting me."
"Watch your mouth," Jeffery said, with a grin. "And no, I'm not. Your little girl is going to be your little girl for a very long time."
Jordan watched his daughter play with an unreadable look on his face.
"How do you guys do it?" he asked, finally. "How do you keep it a secret? People would start to notice a bunch of twenty-year-olds who look like they're ten, or immortal seventy-year-olds."
"That's why we keep our children in the colony," Jeffery told him. "And create identities for them when and if they want to leave as adults. Also, have you seen Keanu Reeves lately?"
"He's a werewolf?"
"He's an actor. Paul Mounet was a werewolf. Plagued France for a while, jaunted over here in 1942, spent some time exploring America, then joined the colony in the 60's. He'd always been an actor, and with movies increasing in both quality and popularity, he decided he'd try to reintegrate into the human world. So we whipped him up an identity, and there you go. Frankly, we didn't think he'd get far. We saw him act a few times... a lot of times, really, the man couldn't help himself... so we didn't see the harm. We generally try to stay out of the public eye. He had something, though... the humans took to him immediately. He gets work done occasionally, trying to look older, but eventually he's going to have to disappear until people forget his face."
Jordan blinked at him for a while, as if trying to decide whether or not he was joking. He wasn't. Reeves was another one of Jeffery's epic failures, from a professional perspective. Personally though, he enjoyed watching one of his own reach pinnacles of success in the human world. It didn't happen often.
"Are there any other...?" Jordan asked, leaving the question unfinished.
"Famous werewolves? Not that I know of. Though..." Jeffery ended his thought with a sigh. "I'm beginning to realize how little I actually know."
"Meaning...?"
Raising Wolves Page 8
