Nalini Singh - Night Shift

“I know which ones,” he said once he and his mom had reached the thankful emptiness of the kitchen. Opening the cabinet, he easily grabbed the spare set his mother would’ve had to use her step stool to access.

“Thank you, baby boy.”

Bastien didn’t protest her address. He’d long ago accepted the fact that no matter his age or maturity or position in the pack hierarchy, he’d always be her cub. Now, she cupped his face with gentle hands, her eyes searching his, the brown of her irises ringed by a rich yellow-green as her leopard rose to the surface of her mind. “I made a mistake today, didn’t I?”

Swamped by a wave of love for the woman who’d kissed countless scraped knees for him when he’d been a child, he closed his hands over her wrists. “Ignore me. I’m just in a bad mood.”

“No.” She straightened the collar of the white shirt he wore over black pants, having intended to go into the office to catch up on work after helping move the furniture. “Something’s wrong, and I’ve made it worse. I know I shouldn’t interfere”—a rueful cast to her expression—“but I love you all so much I can’t help myself.”

“I know.” Never had he questioned his parents’ love for him and his siblings, that love the foundation on which his life was built. It was why he hadn’t walked out when Lia ordered him and Sage to stay; hurting her would make neither the animal nor the human part of him feel good.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, not yet.” He drew her into a tight hug, his leopard rubbing against his skin, akin to how he’d rubbed against Lia’s side as a cub when they’d both been in their leopard forms. “I have to handle this myself.”

Squeezing him with fierce affection, Lia drew back and brushed his hair off his forehead, Bastien leaning down instinctively to make it easier for her. “Go on,” she whispered with a conspiratorial smile, “you can escape out the back.”

“Oh good,” Vera Robbins said from the kitchen doorway, having appeared just as Lia spoke. “You can give me a ride, young Bastien.”

Bastien barely refrained from groaning. The elder was a vigorous and energetic hundred and twenty-five, a woman noted for her warmth and wisdom. She also delighted in reveling in Bastien’s past as a “ladies’ man.” Bastien didn’t deny he’d indulged in skin privileges enthusiastically in his early twenties, but so did most leopard changelings at that age, their sexuality an integral aspect of their nature.

Vera would be shocked to hear he hadn’t taken a lover in eight months, and now the only lover he wanted was an illusion he couldn’t track. “Happy to,” he said, because while he wasn’t sure he could handle Vera’s teasing in his current frame of mind, refusing her was simply not on the cards. She was pack—more, she was a former soldier who’d put her life on the line to protect that pack more than once.

Vera had earned the right to demand whatever the hell she damn well pleased.

Kissing his mom good-bye on the cheek, he escorted Vera to the sleek black car that was his own and got her settled in before he went around to take the driver’s seat.

“What a nice car.” Vera stroked the soft black leather-synth of her seat. “Though not what I’d expect from a healthy young dominant in his prime.” A raised eyebrow. “I was looking forward to a ride on that jetcycle of yours.”

Grinning despite himself, he put the gleaming beauty of his car on hoverdrive and guided it silently out of the forested area around his parents’ home deep in DarkRiver’s Yosemite territory. “I’ll bring it by next week, take you for a spin.”

“Hmph.” She tapped her cane on the floor. “You could’ve at least made sure this car was red.”

“I have enough red in my life,” he said, referring to the dark shade of his hair.

That made the older changeling throw back her head and laugh, the sound big and open. “I suppose you’re too big to fit in those zippy sports cars.”

Bastien had sat in one once; he’d lasted exactly two seconds before the claustrophobia had him wanting to rip the damn thing to shreds with his claws.

“All shoulders and muscle,” Vera said before he could respond. “Strong thighs, too.”

“Are you hitting on me, Vera?”

“You can only dream, young Bastien.” Another burst of laughter, before she poked him in the arm. “Why aren’t you mated or with a long-term lover? We both know you have no trouble attracting women.”

The question grated against his insides. “Does no one respect my private life?”

“You’re in a pack. Of course not,” was the rapid response, one he couldn’t argue with. “Now answer me. I’m a hundred and twenty-five—I don’t have time to dillydally.”

“No one can pass Mercy’s tests,” he said, wanting Vera off the painful and currently maddening subject of mating.

“That sister of yours has a good head on her shoulders.”

Noticing Vera tug her shawl around her shoulders, he quietly turned up the heat.

“So,” the elder said a moment later, “she’s overprotective, is she?”

Bastien thought of the infamous “kitten defurring tools” with which Mercy had scared off the last woman he’d been seeing—after first convincing his date Bastien ate live kittens for breakfast. She’d even put a “kitten cage” in one of his cupboards, the better to horrify his date. Bastien had already known he and the woman in question weren’t the right fit, so the fact she’d believed Mercy’s ridiculous story had simply been the last nail in the coffin. “If it’s the right girl,” he said, “it won’t matter.”

Vera’s smile caused her face to seam with the lines of a life generously and fully lived. “Yes,” was all she said, before settling back into her seat.

A half hour later—having been forced to insult his panther of a car by keeping it to a crawling speed that didn’t make Vera threaten to whack him with her cane—Bastien parked in front of a single-floor dwelling not far from the home of the pack healer. Walking around to open Vera’s door, he didn’t make the mistake of offering her a helping hand. The elder would bloody him for the insult.

His nape prickled a second later, a wild, intoxicating scent with a softer undertone making his nostrils flare and his pulse slam against his skin: her scent, all of it , the soft and the sharply primal, not two women but one.

Too stunned—too happy —to wonder how or why his mate’s scent had split in two on the streets, Bastien’s leopard sat up, muscles quivering and head cocked in absolute attention. All this time, he’d been searching the city, but she was here .

Hand clenching on the edge of the car door, he turned to look back down the drive.

A slamming punch to the heart, a kick to the gut, a sense of absolute rightness.

It was as if he’d been seeing the world through a misty fog until this moment of piercing clarity. And what he saw was a small, curvy woman with masses of honey-colored hair and big hazel eyes set against skin of a darker honey.

A cat, he thought at once; he’d been right, she was a cat. Then the feline scent whispered away as inexplicably as it’d done on the streets, and all he could taste was the lush, sweet scent of a human female he wanted to lick up from head to toe. Cat or human, one thing was clear: She was his.

“Kirby, honey. What good timing.”

Kirby. Her name is Kirby.

Shutting the door and curling his fingers into his palms to conceal the claws that had sliced out as his leopard reacted to her, he waited for Kirby to reach them instead of pouncing like he wanted to do with every single cell in his body.

Patience , he counseled the more primitive half of his nature, and forced his claws to retract. The leopard growled within him but assented to the human’s will—because scaring her away was not on the agenda. No, he’d coax, charm, and pet her into his life, into his arms.