by Selena Scott
What other girl?
Who used to come around for Jackson? She’d never, ever heard of him having a girlfriend. She hadn’t imagined that he’d been celibate, but had he been dating this whole time and she didn’t know?
She paused, halfway across the parking lot. Was he dating right now?
The idea that he might have his fingers in more than one pie made Kaya fairly certain that if she were to stick a firework in her mouth right now, she’d be able to set the dang thing on fire. Her hands in fists, her teeth clenched with unnameable emotions, she walked on stiff legs back to work.
***
After Kaya left his office, Jackson allowed himself four minutes to gather his composure. He used every single second of it.
She came over to see me. She kissed me because she couldn’t help herself.
This thought played on a repeating loop until Jackson found himself turning to the mini fridge by his desk and pulling out a bottle of water so he could gulp down half of it in one go. He wiped his mouth with a hand that shook. He’d never thought he’d ever be in this position. One where he was kissing Kaya on a regular basis and thought himself deserving of it.
“God.”
He dropped into his desk chair and finished the water bottle. Realizing that his wolf, even completely uncontrolled, hadn’t hurt Kaya had completely changed the trajectory of his life. The idea that she might not be in danger from him was so mind boggling that he probably should have put a few weeks or months into careful thought and consideration of the situation. But he’d loved her too long to move slowly anymore. He was launching himself into this new world, no shell to protect himself, but he couldn’t stop.
Jackson pushed to his feet, straightened his tie and his lab coat, and strode out of his office and into exam room B.
Officer Ben Woodrow sat in one of the chairs with, of all things, a goose on his lap. He set the goose carefully onto the ground and rose up to shake hands with Jackson.
They’d met a little over a year ago when Ben had been the first officer to respond to the scene when Race Brighton had set illegal traps on the Durant family land and held a gun on Natalie. He’d almost, almost caught Raphael in his wolf form, protecting Natalie, but he’d burst onto the scene just a few moments after Raphael’s shift. Instead he’d encountered a butt-naked Raphael hovering over Natalie, who’d gotten her leg caught in one of the traps.
To Jackson’s surprise at that moment, Officer Woodrow had barely blinked at Raphael’s nudity and instead had barked for them to get him some clothes to cover up. Seth had sprinted back to the house and come back with clothes just moments later, beating the other officers to the scene.
Jackson had thought back on that action many, many times. He’d come to the conclusion over the year that Officer Woodrow was most likely a shifter sympathizer. Finding a naked man in the woods and not even asking why he was naked seemed to be an indication that he might already understand why a man might find himself naked in the woods.
Jackson had wondered whether or not Ben was a shifter himself, but a few months ago, he’d seen a TV interview with the officer that had taken place with the full moon clearly in the background. So, he definitely wasn’t a shifter.
Jackson had been surprised when, a few weeks after first meeting the police officer in the woods, he’d met him again in the confines of his office. He’d come in with a three-legged cat. Since then, he’d seen the officer quite often.
Turned out that Officer Ben Woodrow had quite the bleeding heart. He lived on about a hundred acres outside of town and he and his wife kept over thirty animals there. Some of them barn animals, some of them pets, and some of them wild animals they were rehabilitating. Usually, when Jackson heard something like this, it made his heart sink. People generally just didn’t have the skills or energy or knowledge to care for that many animals. The conditions of those kinds of layman facilities were usually abysmal, the animals in worse situations than if they’d been on their own. But not only did Ben and his wife Shelly have the correct licensure to have that many animals, their facilities were also state of the art. Jackson had been out there a few times to pay house calls to some of the animals and had been duly impressed.
Ben and Shelly obviously took extremely good care of the animals. Jackson really liked them both.
“Hey there, Ben. What do we have going on today?”
“Jackson! Good to see you. I brought my, uh, my goose.”
Jackson laughed. “I can see that.”
He bent down to study the goose who was standing quietly, slightly behind Ben’s legs, peering out at Jackson.
“What seems to be the issue?” Jackson asked, noting that the goose didn’t seem to be behaving in any way he’d seen a goose behave before. He was quite still, almost suspicious.
“He lost an eye a few days ago.”
As if on cue, the goose turned his head and Jackson saw a gaping, bloody hole where an eye should have been. Something tugged at a corner of Jackson’s brain, but he couldn’t place it.
Jackson frowned. “Poor guy. You found him that way?”
Something passed over Ben’s facial expression, something dark and angry. But it was quickly smoothed away. “He came to us that way, yeah.”
“He’s a new acquisition?”
Ben nodded. “Yeah. Hoping to rehab him and send him back out into the world.”
That was another reason that Jackson approved of Ben and Shelly’s operation. Their goal was to rehab animals enough to send them back into the wild. They didn’t turn every animal into a pet.
“All right, well, I’ll take a look and see what we can do.”
Jackson approached the animal in a practiced way, from behind, sure hands over the wings, a firm grip. It was how one should pick up a goose, but oddly enough, Ben winced, looking a little sheepish.
“Something the matter?” Jackson asked Ben.
“No, not at all. Um, just so you know, he’s a very well-trained goose. Almost domesticated.” He gave Jackson a strangely meaningful look. “If you just set him on the exam table, I’m sure he’d stay there just fine. He doesn’t need to be handled.”
This was kind of a strange way to try to control the way your vet interacted with your animal, but honestly, it wasn’t the first time that Ben had acted this way either. Not with every animal he’d brought in over the year. But for a few of them here and there he seemed to have specific ideas on how the animal should be treated.
Jackson set the goose on the exam table and sure enough, the animal stayed perfectly still. Not even making a noise.
Domesticated. Jackson turned the word over and over in his mind. He’d never heard of a domesticated goose before in his life and he’d definitely never ever seen one this well behaved. He snapped gloves on over his hands and began to examine the animal, checking for any other injuries. He drew blood and then started his examination on the eye. He saw that the wound was meticulously clean, most likely Ben’s doing. But he cleaned it again anyway. The goose lifted and dropped his feet in obvious pain, but didn’t even make a noise. He just held still under Jackson’s ministrations.
Jackson frowned. That was so weird. “The socket looks all right. I think this wound will heal on its own as long as it doesn’t get infected and as long as he doesn’t worry it at all. I’ll give you the supplies you need to re-bandage it. And some care instructions. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do to improve his sight, but we can try to make him comfortable while he’s healing.”
Jackson cleaned and bandaged the eye, put the goose back on the ground, and then turned to toss his gloves in the trash and wash his hands. While he had his back to Ben, he gathered his thoughts. Something wasn’t right here. Had Ben drugged the animal in order to get him to act that way? He thought back on some of the other animals that Ben had brought through his office. The ones for whom Ben had had strange rules on how to handle had also exhibited strange behavior. A supposedly wild hare who’d been damn near a lapdog, not skittish in the
least, rubbing against Jackson’s hands and trying to get him to hold her. A Labrador who’d walked onto the scale so quickly and easily it was as if he’d understood English.
But the only animals who truly understood English…
Something clicked into place in Jackson’s brain. He suddenly remembered, with a dizzying clarity, the thing that had been tickling his mind when he’d first seen the goose. The radio report he’d heard in his car before Christmas, right before he’d picked up Kaya.
There’d been a vigilante attack against a small group of shifters. Was it three or four? Either way, they’d all gotten away. But one of them had lost an eye. He turned slowly and avoided Ben’s eyes. He looked only at the goose. The wound, in his opinion, was certainly a few days old.
He thought back to other animals he’d seen that Ben had brought. They’d had broken limbs and signs of having been trapped. He’d even removed buckshot from a few of them. There’d been signs of blunt force trauma and deep, slashing wounds. Now, the members of their community knew that Ben and his wife were running an animal rehab center of sorts, so Jackson just assumed that when anyone in Boulder found or observed a hurt animal, Ben Woodrow was who they called. But… what if that wasn’t the case at all?
What if Jackson hadn’t been treating animals? What if Jackson was unknowingly treating shifters?
If the shifter who’d had his eye injured by the vigilantes had gone in his human form to an urgent care, he would have definitely risked identification and arrest. But going in his animal form to a veterinarian…
“That’s an unusual wound for a goose,” Jackson said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the counter. He needed information from Ben while not risking giving too much information to Ben.
Ben cleared his throat and the goose went back to standing behind his legs. “Yeah.”
“Any idea how he got it?”
Ben’s face was a friendly blank, perfectly innocent, exactly how someone would want to look if he were hiding information. “I’m assuming an altercation with another animal.”
Jackson tipped his head to one side. “I don’t think so. If it were an altercation with an animal, there’d be other marks, most likely. Injured wing or foot. Claw or teeth marks. And for that matter, there’d be claw or tooth marks around the eye socket. But from what I can tell, whatever took out the goose’s eye did it quite cleanly. Maybe even with a blade.”
Ben nodded. He looked uncomfortable and Jackson was certain it was because he was hiding information. Because these were blatant pieces of information that any cop worth his salt would certainly have already noticed. He was pretending not to have noticed, which was a dead giveaway of just how much he was hiding.
“Oh. Right. I hadn’t thought about that,” Ben said woodenly. “You think it was a human who attacked him?”
Jackson shrugged. “But the goose is friendly. He showed no skittishness during the examination.”
“Right. Quite a puzzler.”
Ben looked distinctly uncomfortable now, looking more at the goose than he did at Jackson.
Jackson’s heart pounded in his chest as he said the next part. “Ben, you’re a hell of a cop and an absolutely terribly liar.”
Ben stiffened, his shoulders thrown back and high color on his cheeks. He was obviously trying to take back control of the situation, but scrambling to figure out how. “I—you—there’s an explanation—”
He cut himself off and sagged downward. “I couldn’t expect you to never catch on, I suppose.”
Jackson’s stomach flipped. He was outright admitting it?
“I guess,” Ben went on, “that I was hoping that when you figured it out you’d have sympathy. For obvious reasons.”
Jackson’s gut went cold as ice. “Obvious reasons being what exactly?”
What exactly was Ben implying here? Shifter accusations could not be thrown around lightly. Especially not from a badge-carrying cop. This was the ultimate form of blackmail. If Ben knew for sure that Jackson or his brothers were shifters, then there was nothing he couldn’t extort out of Jackson. Jackson would do literally anything to keep his brothers from being round up and registered.
Ben looked up, his eyes cautious. “Your brother,” he said slowly. “Raphael.”
So, Ben had figured it out that night last year, why Raph had been naked in the woods. He’d known that Raphael had just shifted back from his animal form. And now he was referring to it as an obvious reason why Jackson would have sympathy for the fact that Ben had been bringing Jackson shifters to treat for a year.
Jackson pulled himself up to his full height, his heart banging in his chest. “I have no idea what we’re talking about here. But I don’t take kindly to being threatened.”
“Jackson.”
The goose started making distressed noises and backing away. Ben jumped to his feet as Jackson strode to the door. “Jackson, wait.”
“I think it’s time for you to find yourself another vet.”
Ben jumped between Jackson and the door and slammed it closed. “Jackson, please wait. All that came out wrong. I wasn’t trying to threaten you. I’d never threaten you or your family, all right? Ever. I want to help.”
“By insinuating that you know private information about my brother that could, in the wrong hands, get him imprisoned for life? Fuck you. Don’t make me throw you out of here.”
Jackson tried to get the door open again, but Ben threw his entire weight against it.
“Jackson, listen to me. Please!”
Jackson shoved him to the side but Ben grappled forward, grabbing Jackson by the collar of his white coat.
“Jackson!” He tersely dropped his voice to a whisper. “Shelly is one, too. Shelly is, too. Okay? I’d never fucking turn Raphael in. Everything I do is to make things safer for shifters. For Shelly. I have no quarrel with you or your family. And neither does my wife.”
Jackson went dead still. Ben Woodrow had just admitted that his wife was a shifter. Never, in Jackson’s almost forty years of living on this earth had anyone ever admitted openly to him that they or someone they loved was a shifter. It was akin to a sentence of life in prison for that person. And not just for Shelly, who would be rounded up and registered and interned at a shifter camp. But there would be jail time for Ben as well. It was illegal to know about a shifter and not report it. Ben had just taken a tremendously huge risk. He’d put himself out there entirely and completely.
Jackson backed up from the door and sagged backward against the counter. “Jesus Christ.”
“Can anyone hear us in here?” Ben asked tersely, his back still against the door.
Jackson shook his head. He dragged a hand down his face and took a long breath. “You’re telling me that you and your wife are running a rehab facility for shifters?”
“It’s for regular animals, too. But yes. We’re known in the area for being a safe haven for any shifter who needs a helping hand for a while.”
“And the animals I’ve seen over the past year…”
“Some have been true animals and some have been shifters.”
“Why me?”
“After I saw Raphael naked in the woods, I knew exactly what he was. I knew he’d just shifted back. I knew you’d have a vested interest, maybe even an expertise, in shifter care if you ever found out who I was bringing through your doors. Like what happened four minutes ago.” Ben let out a long breath. “I was trying to keep you ignorant of it. I wasn’t trying to bring you in to the scheme and implicate you.”
Every veterinarian knew that knowingly treating a shifter in their animal form without reporting was a minimum of a ten-year prison sentence.
“But I also knew,” Ben said in a torn tone of voice, “that if you ever figured it out, you were much less likely to turn us in. Because of your brother.”
Jackson’s mind spun. “What were you doing before me?”
“Bringing them to vets all over the state. No one more than once. Using fake names and
info so we couldn’t be tracked.”
Jackson’s eyes settled on the goose who was hiding in plain sight in one corner of the room. “Can you understand me?” he asked gruffly.
The goose nodded his head.
“I take it you can shift at will?”
The goose nodded again.
“Fine.” Jackson turned his attention back to Ben. “I’m going to come by your farm tonight. I want to reexamine the patient in his other form. The medical care I’ve given for a year… it’s been for animals, Ben. Not for…”
He couldn’t bring himself to say shifter.
He brought a hand up to his face. “I want to reexamine every single patient you’ve brought me. I set bones in their animal forms. Given stitches. Small surgeries. Who knows how that would affect their human forms?”
He felt sick knowing that things he’d done to shifters in their animal forms may have permanently impacted their human forms. The truth was, he just didn’t know how to medically treat shifters. It was a highly specialized training. A mixture of a medical degree and a veterinary degree and it required one to work within the shifter camps. Not something Jackson had ever wanted.
But that information was highly guarded. The government didn’t want people to be able to google how to care medically for shifters because it would be just another way to keep shifters a secret from the government.
“You did the best you could,” Ben said. “And so did we. We had to make a decision here, Jackson, every time. Is it better to have buckshot removed in your animal form? Or to go to ER and be reported as a shifter? The choices are really shitty, but you’re the best choice. Every time.”
“I’ll be by after work. Around six.”
Ben nodded, a rising hope in his eyes that was momentarily dimmed. “Jackson, we’re a way station more than anything. Most of the shift—patients that you’ve seen are long gone. Healed and moved on.”
“I understand. Anyone who is still there, I want to examine again. No false pretenses this time.”
CHAPTER TEN
