Jennifer Ashley: Hard Mated

He’d never seen Jillian again. Spike liked to date his ladies for more than a night, much more than a night, but the phone number Jillian had given him had been disconnected, and she’d not come to the bar again—that one or any other Shifter bar.

Some humans were like that. They wanted a taste of the beast, but they didn’t want anything long-term with a Shifter.

“How’s she doing?” Spike asked. He grabbed a towel he’d left on a box outside the ring and rubbed his wet face. The towel came away filthy and bloody. A shower and some bandages. Shifters healed quickly, but Spike was going to be in for a sore night.

“She’s dying,” Myka said.

Spike jerked back to her, towel dangling from his grasp. “What?”

“I said, Jillian’s dying. She wants to see you, but you have to come with me now.”

Hospitals sucked. Myka hated them. Their pale rooms were filled with soft electronic sounds that told you that the person in the hospital bed, the person you loved, was dying. Plus, the overriding scent of antiseptic never could quite mask the mixture of bodily odors and illness.

Broke Myka’s heart to see Jillian in that bed, her body that once had enticed every male in Hill Country wasted, her red hair thin and dry against the white sheets. Her blue eyes were washed out under the fluorescent lights, her skin tinged with gray.

Jillian smiled at Myka over the foot of the bed as Myka led in Spike, which couldn’t be his real name. Spike, tall and Shifter, in jeans and T-shirt, his black hair buzzed into almost nonexistence, tatts of wildcats marking him up and down his arms, gazed down at Jillian in shock and grief.

Grief? Jillian was nothing to Spike, was she? He’d had to dredge her out of his memory when Myka had said her name. Jillian hadn’t mentioned Spike at all until their shocker of a conversation this morning. She’d sent Myka to Shiftertown to find him, and hadn’t that been fun?

Shifters. There was a reason they were Collared and made to live in Shiftertowns. Myka couldn’t understand the women who longed to sleep with them. Too much excitement for this girl, thank you. Training horses gave her all the time she needed with animals, had taught her enough about animals that she didn’t much want to be around ones that could turn human.

Shiftertown had been almost deserted, Spike not at home in the modest bungalow to which Jillian had sent her. Casual conversation with some humans in a little bar outside the perimeter of Shiftertown led Myka to the abandoned hay barn out east of town, and there she’d found the Shifters in all their wild glory at their so-called fight club.

The way Spike had beat the shit out of that bear Shifter was evidence enough of why humans wanted to contain them. They weren’t even supposed to be able to fight like that—the Collars were designed to stop them. If Myka had been a good citizen, she’d report the illicit three-ringed fight club and all the Shifters there betting on their favorites.

But she hadn’t been a good citizen since the day the system had given ten-year-old Myka into the custody of Randall, the stepfather from hell. Randall had been very good at charming judges, social workers, and anyone else who came along. Couldn’t bear to be separated from Myka, he’d said, after Myka’s mother had died, in a hospital room just like Jillian’s. Randall had gotten himself appointed Myka’s legal guardian, and nine long years of hell had ensued, until the day of Randall’s death.

Jillian produced a thin smile as she looked over the foot of the bed at Spike. “You came. Thank you.”

“Yeah.”

That was the first word he’d spoke since he’d followed Myka out of the barn into the cool of the night so she could drive him here. Not What happened? Why is she asking for me? Just stone silence in the cab of her pickup.

Silent, sure, but his presence was weighty. This was a Shifter, for crying out loud, big, tough, able to break tiny young women like Jillian in half with one hand. Yet he stood there looking down at Jillian in the bed as though someone had sledgehammered him between the eyes and he hadn’t remembered to fall down yet.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” Jillian said, her voice a faint whisper. A far cry from the girl who’d balanced on top of a rail fence at the rodeo a year ago, screaming for her favorite bull rider. She’d slept with him too. Men usually took one look at Jillian and became her devoted slaves.

“I have a gift for you,” Jillian said.

She held out her hand, and Spike reached down and took it. He didn’t hold her hand awkwardly—he closed it between his two big ones, as though trying to comfort her.

“What?” he asked, his voice a quiet rumble. Even a Shifter could feel the dampening presence of the hospital room.

“Myka will show you. Myka and my mom. I don’t know what else to do, all right?”

Jillian pressed down on his hand, the movement so weak that Myka saw it only because a tendon moved on Jillian’s wrist.

Spike nodded. What was in his eyes, Myka couldn’t see, because his gaze was fixed on Jillian.

“Myka, go get my mom, okay? I asked her to wait down the hall.”

Myka didn’t want to leave Jillian alone with the Shifter. Jillian let her stare go steely, which she was good at, even while dying. “Myka? Okay?”

Spike turned his head and looked at Myka, and for the first time, Myka got the whole connection of his Shifter gaze. Spike’s eyes were dark brown, his pupils black, windows into nothing.

No, not nothing. An intense something. Myka saw wildness inside him, the beast that had charged a bear four times his size and sunk his teeth into the big animal’s neck. Spike’s throat was singed where his Collar had shocked him, but the shocks hadn’t slowed him down a millisecond. This was an animal who looked for his prey’s weakness and went for it.

Myka did not want to leave him alone in here with Jillian.

But Jillian had hours to live, not days, the cancer taking away the last of what she had been.

Myka made herself turn around and leave, walking rapidly down the corridor to the little room where Jillian’s mom Sharon waited, surrounded by vending machines, a television that blared a news channel, and other tense people who’d come to see their families.

Sharon got rapidly to her feet and followed Myka out. “Damn, I need a cigarette. Jillian kicked me out when you called from the parking lot, but I couldn’t go outside with . . .” She wriggled her arm, jostling what she was pulling.

“I don’t like this,” Myka said.

“I know. But it’s what Jillian wants, and I think she’s right.”

Myka had to shut up, because they’d entered Jillian’s room again. Spike swung around, inhaling sharply.

His eyes changed to Shifter—brown tinged with gold, the pupils slits—as his gaze riveted on the small boy Sharon gripped by the hand.

At four years old, Jordan had lost his baby chubbiness and was turning into a sturdy, strong-boned lad. He had dark hair brushed with red and dark brown eyes framed with black lashes. Until Myka had seen Spike looking at her with the same eyes, she’d doubted Jillian’s claim.

Jillian drew a breath to speak, but Sharon shook her head, seeing it was too much for her. She walked Jordan forward.

“This is your son,” Sharon said, her voice heavy from too many years of smoking. “So says Jillian.”

“He is, Mom,” Jillian’s whisper came.

Jordan stared up at Spike, who filled the room not only with his presence, but with the bulk of him. Though smaller than the bear-man he’d fought, Spike was still big—six and a half feet tall, arms as big as a wrestler’s and covered in tatts that disappeared inside his T-shirt, shaved head on a muscular neck encased by an inch-thick Collar. Jordan’s soft mouth hung open, his small teeth white in the moisture behind his lip.