Jennifer Ashley: Hard Mated

The rituals were supposed to ensure the cub’s acceptance into the community, but Spike sometimes wished the rituals and ceremonies would go to hell. They were supposed to strengthen the Shifters, but Spike long ago had decided that Shifters were just bad at minding their own business.

Sean left them alone, wise man, when he could have insisted on dragging Spike and Jordan over to see Liam right away. Spike would have to thank Sean with a beer later.

Jordan wouldn’t put on the clothes. Ella got him into the small pair of drawstring jeans by telling him he couldn’t eat unless he put something on. Alarmed, Jordan grabbed those and hoisted them over his bare legs.

Ella turned the sandwiches out on a plate, each sandwich piled high with beef, turkey, chicken, tuna, or a combination. Spike didn’t know what cubs ate—did they need milk? Or was that only when they were first born? Jordan announced he was hungry and proceeded to down four sandwiches before he sat back on the kitchen floor and burped.

He’d fall asleep now, Spike thought. Worn out from the night, his mother’s death, being brought to Shiftertown, and now with his belly full of food, he’d curl up and sleep it off.

No such luck. Spike and Ella ended up chasing him all over the house, from cellar to attic and back again. Jordan threw off the pants and shifted back and forth from wildcat to boy depending on what he wanted to get into or where he wanted to get into. And he was damned fast.

When he ended up way in the back of the pantry, a wildcat cub now, wedged between shelves and refusing to come out, Ella got out a broom and tried to pry him out. Jordan leapt away, dodging her, and scampered around the kitchen, loving the game, Ella chasing him with her newfound tool.

“Grandma!” Spike shouted. “Don’t you dare hit my kid with a broom!”

“It never did you any harm,” Ella yelled back.

Jordan laughed, evaded them, and ran on.

Spike finally tackled him in the living room. Father and son were both wildcats now, and Spike pinned the squirming boy under his body. Ella had given up and gone upstairs, the night aging.

Jordan started to quiet, soothed by Spike’s warm body, his adrenaline finally running down. Spike’s eyes drifted closed, the slowing staccato of Jordan’s heartbeat somehow comforting.

He woke up to sun pouring in the windows. Spike had shifted to human sometime in the night, and so had Jordan. Spike had slid the pants back on the sleeping little boy, and now Spike found his arms wrapped protectively around his son.

With his eyes closed, his mouth slack, one fist on the carpet, Jordan was innocence itself. And helpless.

Spike started to move his body and stifled a groan. He ached all over. The fight coupled with the shock of finding out he had a cub made his muscles stiff and his head pound. He needed water, to hydrate, or else he needed a beer. A lot of beer.

But he couldn’t get drunk while he had to take care of this little guy. Drowning himself in hops was for when his cub was safe and didn’t need Spike standing guard. Which would be never. Cubs had to be protected at all times.

All times. Damn it, how could he? How any Shifter do it?

They had mates, that’s how. They had help. Liam had his mate Kim—a human woman, sure, but she’d proved capable. The two of them watched over their new cub with unceasing vigilance. And yet, Liam still had time to run Shiftertown, Kim to conduct her business of being a lawyer to Shifters. How the hell did they do that?

How had Spike’s grandma done it? Ella had raised him alone—and in the wild—after his parents and grandfather had been slaughtered by Shifter hunters down in Mexico. Spike had been a cub, ten years old. Ella had been so huddled in grief, she’d wanted to die herself, but she’d said over and over, If I die, who’s going to take care of you? and she’d soldiered on.

His grandmother’s expression last night as she’d quit and gone to bed told him that she expected him to soldier on too.

He brushed back a strand of Jordan’s hair. Cub of my pride. Now that I’ve met you, how can I let you go?

Spike very gently pressed a kiss to the top of the little boy’s head.

Jordan’s eyes popped open. He stared up at Spike in sleepy confusion, then his eyes cleared.

“I’m hungry,” Jordan said. “Can I have breakfast?”

Goddess, what was he supposed to feed a cub for breakfast? Based on the number of sandwiches Jordan had consumed last night—a lot.

Jordan wriggled out of Spike’s grasp and spread his arms. “I’m dressed. I get to eat.”

Spike pressed his hand to his forehead. His temples were throbbing, not helped when the land line phone rang. Loudly.

Myka spent a sleepless night, grief at watching Jillian’s last breath and worry about Jordan keeping her restless.

Jillian had been adamant about giving Jordan to Spike—who the hell named their kid Spike? Jillian had feared what would happen if humans got wind that she was raising a Shifter child, and Myka understood her fear. A system that was so fucked up it would make a little girl live with her abusive stepfather wasn’t going to be kind to a Shifter child.

Even though Myka had never been a big Shifter fan, she was aware that they were treated like second-class citizens, and she thought that unfair. There was no guarantee that Sharon would be allowed to keep Jordan if it was discovered that he was half Shifter, or that Jordan wouldn’t be shipped off to some Shiftertown far away. Jillian had assured her that Shifters would have a way of keeping it quiet.

But handing him over to that inked Shifter wasn’t what Myka had wanted either.

She tossed and turned, imagining all kinds of dire scenarios—Spike locking the kid into a closet, maybe beating on him to relieve his feelings, or trying to figure out how to get rid of him as soon as he could. Sure, Spike had looked intensely proud when he’d realized that Jordan was his son, but that might wear off as soon as Jordan became his usual wild self. Jillian hadn’t known what to do with a kid with that much energy either.

Myka spent the night with Sharon, not wanting to leave her alone, but while Sharon slept the sleep of the emotionally exhausted, Myka lay awake or got up and paced.

In the morning, Sharon’s two sisters arrived with their husbands and kids. Myka, though she more or less had been living with Sharon and Jillian these last few months, decided to leave them alone. This was a time for family.

She stopped at her small house to shower and change, then she went to the stables.

Myka knew her friends and Sharon would think her crazy for wanting to work today, but at the stables she could seek peace in turmoil. Working with the horses—Myka trained Quarter Horses to be cutters, ropers, and barrel racers for their owners—usually erased all troubles from her mind.

She’d been coming to these stables since age eleven, when a friend’s mother had brought her here after school. The friend’s riding instructor had let Myka get up on a horse and take a lesson too. Myka had never looked back.

Myka nodded tightly to the two other trainers who’d come for early sessions but didn’t stop to talk. She took out Carlos, the cutting horse she was currently shaping into a champion for his owner.

She warmed up Carlos with nothing more strenuous than a pleasant jog around the ring before she started the real work. Cutting horses had to respond to the slightest shift in weight or touch of the reins, in order to cut a calf from the herd or to chase it back in.

Myka started the lessons of response and reward, but she realized after only a few minutes that neither her heart nor mind was in the training. She could only think of Jordan sleeping on Spike’s lap, Spike’s fierce eyes and his large hand on Jordan’s back.