A Mate For Jackson

by Selena Scott

  “That’s where Shelly comes in.” Jackson stretched his legs out in front of him. “She’s a shifter, too. A lynx. And she has a strange sort of gift. She can sort of calm any shifter down. I never told her that I’m a shifter, but I’m sure she can sense it at this point. Her manner works even when I’m in my human form. I think, being around her, it wouldn’t be hard to stay in your animal form. Though I’m told that things can get pretty raucous on a full moon, even with her around.”

  “This is so crazy,” Seth said into the hands he’d dragged over his face. “For so many years we’ve sat on this secret, feeling so alone in the world, only to find out that we’re the lucky ones. That there are so many shifters everywhere around us and we’ve done nothing to help any of them.”

  “Seth,” Elizabeth acknowledged. “Don’t go feeling retroactively guilty. Your health and safety were the top priority around here. And I’m not a shifter! How the hell were we supposed to know anything about shifter culture? There wasn’t anyone to learn it from. There’s not exactly how-to-raise-your-shifter-sons support groups out there.”

  Jackson leaned forward and rested a hand on his mother’s socked foot for a moment. “It’s not a complaint about how we were raised, Ma. None of us would ever be ridiculous enough to complain about that. No. Seth’s complaint is about how the system treats shifters. It’s got us all so trapped in so many ways that we don’t even know that there’s relatively easy ways to help our own kind just ten miles down the road.”

  “So, they need help, then?” Raphael asked, his eyes burning with something Jackson had never seen before. “Ben and Shelly, they would let us help, too?”

  Jackson felt his chest squeeze down. He dropped his head for a second as pride and fear warred within him. He was less than a decade older than his twin brothers, but in many ways, being the oldest man of the house, he felt as if he’d raised them. Hearing Raph instantly decide that he’d want to fight for the health and safety of other shifters made a roaring pride catch fire in Jackson’s chest. They were good men, his brothers. But it was also freaking terrifying. Because if his brothers were helping, then they were throwing themselves into the line of fire, just like he had.

  When he lifted his eyes, Kaya was staring him down and her telepathic message was sent very clearly. Don’t be Old Jackson.

  Don’t tell people what they can or can’t do just because you love them and the world is scary.

  Don’t make decisions for the people you love.

  Instead, be brave enough to trust them to make their own decisions.

  Stop falling on swords, dummy.

  He almost laughed at the Kaya in his head who was so clear and so smart. She narrowed her eyes at him, demanding that he be better. That he be the man who deserved to hold her in his arms every night. The man who’d just started building a life with her. New Jackson.

  He took a deep breath.

  “Yes. They always need help. It’s just the two of them running everything and Ben obviously has a day job. That means that Shelly is often left running all the repairs in the guesthouses and the animal containment areas. She’s in charge of getting everyone fed and watered. She’s also in charge of security on their land, which is a hell of a task because it’s a lot of land. Every time I’ve been there, she’s been scrambling from one thing to the next.”

  “Would they trust us?” Seth asked. “If we went with you and you vouched for us, would Ben and Shelly trust us? Because repairs, security measures, those are things that Raph and I could do in a heartbeat.”

  “They’d be over the fucking moon,” Jackson said in a hoarse voice, forcing himself to tell the truth even though Old Jackson was trying to beat down the door of the basement, demanding that New Jackson get back down there and lock his own ass up. “They also need people constantly on the lookout for shifters who are in the area who need help. Obviously they can’t advertise. Even though plenty of shifters find their way there, it keeps Shelly up at night how many of them probably pass right by.”

  The group was quiet for a second, no bright ideas emerging around that particular quandary until…

  “I could probably help with that,” Bauer said in a gruff voice. “I’ve been known to track a shifter or two in my day.” He took a deep breath. “It wouldn’t kill me to patrol the area for lost shifters every few days.”

  That more than anything was what made Jackson’s throat squeeze down with emotions. If any of them had questioned Bauer’s devotion to their family, to Elizabeth, he’d just shot those doubts to the heavens. This was a man who’d run for the hills last year at even the suggestion of standing their ground. And now he was volunteering to work secretly for a shifter safehouse. If that wasn’t a declaration of love for their family, Jackson didn’t know what was.

  “All right,” Jackson said gruffly. “I’ll call Shelly tomorrow and tell her that she’s got some more volunteers. Maybe we could go over in the evening—”

  “Jackson!” Sarah said, her eyes widening. “Tomorrow is the full moon.”

  They all stared at him, dumbstruck. He’d never, ever forgotten a full moon before. Typically, he spent the entire month dreading them, so for him to have just casually forgotten about it spoke volumes.

  “Whatever the heck is loosening you up these days, I hope it gets even looser,” Raph said, his eyebrows high on his face. “Cuz this looks good on you, bro.”

  Jackson didn’t bother trying to stop the grin that was growing on his face.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Kaya whirled around in the grocery store for the third time. And for the third time, there was no one behind her. If she’d believed in invisibility cloaks, she would have already called the cops, claiming she was getting followed by an invisible man. But she didn’t believe in that kind of thing. It didn’t matter either way. She knew that someone was following her.

  She’d spent her entire adult life with men’s eyes on her. She knew what it felt like. The exact weight and press of a gaze on her back. Usually, though, these men were dumb or lazy or just easily caught in the act. It bothered her that there was someone following her that she couldn’t catch. It made her feel… hunted.

  She was probably just on edge because she’d had to kiss Jackson goodbye so that he and his brothers could head up to their cabin to shift for the full moon. It was the first night since they’d gotten together that they hadn’t spent in the same city and she had to admit that the goodbye was a little harder than she would have liked it to be. In just a short amount of time, Jackson had inserted himself as a sort of airbag between her and the world. He’d never had to deploy to truly protect her from anything, but she knew he was there always.

  It was an unexpected comfort. The only person who’d ever done that for her throughout her entire life was Natalie. But Natalie was living with Raphael now, and Kaya knew that marriage and children probably weren’t far behind. That’s the way it should be. She couldn’t expect Natalie to keep raising her for her entire life. But it wasn’t until Jackson had come along like some sort of balm that Kaya had even realized she’d had a wound in need of healing.

  She’d been fine this past year. Independent and fulfilled for the most part. But having Jackson in her life, she was suddenly comfortable in a way that she really hadn’t been since she and Natalie lived together. Kaya suddenly felt like it mattered where she was and what she was doing. There was someone who would notice if her car broke down and she was three hours late home from work. More than notice, he would come pick her up, make her dinner, give her a ride home from the auto shop.

  Kaya knew that Natalie would do all those things, of course. And for that matter, so would Raphael or Seth or Sarah or Elizabeth, or even Bauer, though she knew him least of all. But there was something different about having to ask them. She’d have to call and ask for help, feel like a burden. With Jackson, Kaya knew that it was deeply important to him to help her out. He preferred to be the person in her life who got to be inconvenienced by her needs. He probably
didn’t even view it as an inconvenience.

  He’d been as lonely as she had, she realized. And the fact that they were velcro-ing their lives together was as fulfilling and overwhelming and rewarding for him as it was for her. She just hadn’t realized that everything would stick quite so soon. They’d only been fooling around for a month. And she’d only started to take the whole thing seriously a week or two ago. It seemed much too early to miss him when he was gone for a day.

  They’d kissed goodbye on his front porch that morning after a very long, luxurious wake-up in his bed. He’d taken her on her knees while her knuckles went white against the headboard. It was a submissive position that Kaya would never have thought she’d like in the least. But there was just something about having his hot, cleaving cock inside of her that made her want to let him do whatever he wanted. It helped that he felt exactly the same way about her. They often made love twice in a row, letting one of them run the show the first time and the other run the show the second time. Kaya couldn’t decide which kind she liked better.

  She bit her lip and internally scolded herself for being bummed that she wouldn’t see him for a day. “He will literally be back for dinner tomorrow night,” she reminded herself and then whirled around to check behind her when spiders crawled up her back.

  Nothing.

  She checked out at the grocery store and ran a few more errands, checking her rearview mirror the whole way. She saw an old, beat-up pickup truck three times and was almost positive it was the same one. But it didn’t seem to be directly following her, so she tried not to let herself get too worked up.

  She’d taken the day off because she was headed out to Ben and Shelly’s later that afternoon. She was going to bring a boatload of food and offer a helping hand during the full moon. She was deeply grateful for the distraction. She had no idea how Sarah, Nat, and Elizabeth all sweated out the full moons on their own. Didn’t they go crazy with the waiting?

  Actually, she should probably call them and invite them out to volunteer with her. They’d probably be stoked to help. And, actually, it was probably about time that she told her sister she was boning Jackson Durant.

  Kaya groaned as she unpacked her groceries. More accurately, it was time she told her sister that she was falling in love with Jackson Durant.

  “Ugh.” She was trying not to be mad at herself, but she felt like such a cliché, swept away by an older man and the freaking hot sex he was dishing up on the regular. Why couldn’t she just be good old horny for him? Why did she have to be in love with him?

  She showered up and used the food gathering app to stop by three different restaurants and grocery stores, picking up food that was going to go to waste. Then, her car loaded down with food, she started out toward Shelly and Ben’s.

  About halfway there, she pulled over and started a group text to Natalie, Sarah, and Elizabeth. She told them how she was spending her time that afternoon and invited them to join her, explaining that it would be fine with Ben and Shelly if they came over and introduced themselves and helped everyone out on the full moon.

  Her phone was buzzing in her pocket with their responses when she pulled back onto the back road out toward Ben and Shelly’s. She threw on her brakes as something red caught her eye on a turn-off about four miles from the farm.

  It was the same old pickup truck that she’d seen around town. It was pulled carefully into a stand of trees, lights off. It wasn’t dark yet, but the afternoon was advancing. Kaya couldn’t help but feel her skin tighten all over her body. Something was wrong here. She kept her car running and reversed twenty feet back, eyeing the car. She rolled her window down halfway.

  “Hello!” she called. “Anyone there? Do you need some help?”

  She waited and heard nothing. She took out her phone and snapped a quick pic of the license plate. The car was dark. This time, when she rolled past, she made sure to look and see if there was anyone in the car. Nothing. She eyed the dark woods that seemed to creep closer to both her and the car. She felt another shiver roll over her and she hit the gas.

  She was pulling up to the farm just a few minutes later, friendly Ben Woodrow jogging down from the farmhouse to help her haul all the food inside. With his cop’s intuition, he pulled up short the second he saw her face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe nothing. But… I have a really bad feeling about something.”

  “What happened?”

  She didn’t know Ben well, but the two times she’d come to his farm to help she’d gotten a really good vibe off the dude. He was friendly and patient and kind and obviously loved his wife to distraction. And Jackson liked him. She took a deep breath.

  “I think I was being followed in town today. Can’t explain it. Just a feeling. And I kept seeing this same red truck. And then when I was driving here I saw it parked, lights off, in a copse of trees about five miles back on the road.”

  Ben’s face hardened into a look of concentration. She could practically watch as he morphed from concerned friend into an officer of the law. “Had you ever seen it before? The car?”

  She shook her head. “But I took a picture of the license plate.”

  His eyes flared in approval. “Good work. Can I see it? If you want, I can have my buddy run it down at the station. We can see who the car is registered to.”

  “That would be great.”

  She handed over the phone and she saw from the look on his face that he recognized the vehicle, a sort of resigned fear taking over his expression for the blink of an eye before it smoothed back into a professional veneer. “Let’s get the food unloaded and I’ll get right on it.”

  “Hey, Kaya!” Shelly called from the front porch, her baseball cap in place and her thick glasses obscuring the top half of her face. “Wow, you brought a lot of food this time.”

  “I figure we can freeze some of it? Although, that might require an industrial-sized freezer.”

  Shelly laughed. “You’d be surprised how much all our guests can eat. I think we’ll manage to get through it in a day or two. We’ve got more than usual staying with us right now anyways.”

  “Since Friday?” Kaya asked in surprise.

  “Full moon,” Shelly shrugged. “Always brings new guests.”

  “Here you go,” Ben said, handing back her phone. “I texted the pictures to myself. And you got a bunch of texts.”

  Kaya clicked into them and had to laugh. “I hope it’s all right but I invited my family, who aren’t occupied with the full moon, to come lend a hand. If you’d rather they didn’t—”

  “Are you kidding?” Shelly said, jumping a full six inches off the ground. “On a full moon night? We can ALWAYS use the help. This’ll be great. When can they get here?”

  Kaya laughed again and looked down at her phone. “They’re all on their way.”

  They got the food unloaded from the car, some of it set out and some of it put away for later. It was then that the ‘guests’ started filing in for an early supper before the full moon. They weren’t allowed to shift in the open so many of them hopped, crawled, or loped into the kitchen in their animal forms while some of them shifted in the coat room, walking in while they tugged clothes on. Kaya recognized about half of them as people she’d met before. She greeted them by name and tried to introduce herself to the rest. Though it was strange to look a squirrel in the eye and say ‘nice to meet you’. She figured it was the polite thing to do.

  About twenty minutes later, Ben came into the farmhouse kitchen and motioned for Kaya to follow him back outside. She did and in the distance she saw Elizabeth and Sarah’s cars on the long road leading up to the farmhouse.

  “There’s no easy way to say this. My friend ran the plates. The car is registered to Race.”

  Kaya blanched, her stomach twisting into a knot. “No.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “He’s been following me?”

  “There’s a good chance he’s figured out that you and Jac
kson are together and he’s following you as a way of not breaking his restraining order.”

  “But why is he on the mountain right now? Is it coincidence? Why is he parked over there?”

  Ben looked extremely grim. “It’s most likely because he’s been following you for a while and figured that you’d be here on a full moon. Possibly even because he’s figured out what kind of operation we’re running here.”

  Kaya automatically clamped her arms around herself and let her eyes track the woods that seemed to encroach on their space. Though the sun hadn’t set yet, there were hundreds of shadows for a man like him to hide. He could be within earshot right now and she wouldn’t know.

  “Oh my God.” She looked up at Ben. “How do we keep everyone safe?”

  “I—I’m not sure yet. I’m not sure if we can. We can’t lock all those shifters together in one room. On a full moon, they’ll fight. Injure one another. We have some very young and inexperienced shifters here. But if we let them out on the land, there’s a good chance there’s a shifter hunter out there just waiting.”

  “Let’s keep everyone inside. There’s a lot of rooms. We can separate them as best as we can. Not put any predators with any prey. That kind of thing.”

  “Kaya, they might still get out. We have two black bears, a mountain lion, a husky, there’s a hawk, a—”

  “We have to call the Durants.” The realization washed over her all at once. Her instinct was to protect them, to keep them in the dark and as far away from this Race lunatic as was possible. But then she thought of Jackson. Of the hours and hours of work he’d put in to trying to convince himself that protecting everyone wasn’t his job. He was starting to trust Kaya to take care of herself. And part of taking care of herself meant knowing when she was outgunned and asking for help. Right now, with a house full of inexperienced shifters and a hunter on the loose, she needed help.