Nalini Singh - Night Shift

Instead, he spent the time working via a comm link to the office . . . and worrying, conscious of how new Kirby was to her animal form, her reaction times slow. The forest was their home, but it had its dangers, and she didn’t yet know them all.

Now, late afternoon on the third day, she tugged him down with her hands gripping his hair and nipped at his lower lip. “Go to dinner with your brothers.” It was a passionate order, her brow dark. “Otherwise you’ll pace a hole in the floor, and I won’t be able to concentrate for thinking about you.”

Seeing the truth of the latter in the pale gold of eyes gone lynx and hating that he was causing her anxiety, he forced himself to do as she asked. Somehow, he even managed to fool Sage and Grey into thinking he was on an even keel as the three of them unanimously decided to invite themselves to dinner at Mercy and Riley’s, the couple having returned from Arizona the previous night.

“We’ll take upside-down pineapple cake as a bribe,” Grey said with mischievous feline cunning. “Mercy can’t resist it.”

Bastien wasn’t the least surprised to discover his sister already knew he was seeing someone—though Sage had apparently kept quiet till then. The normality of his siblings’ ensuing ribbing helped the time pass, soothed the ragged edges inside him. He especially got a kick out of telling Mercy to do her worst; his lynx, he thought with snarling confidence, could handle it.

Back at the aerie just after nine thirty, he didn’t panic when he found it empty, despite the fact the plan had been for the two women to return by nine. Following Kirby’s scent—as vivid to him as if it was his own—he found her a short distance away, having a grand old time playing a game with three non-changeling lynx.

Bounding up to him the instant he appeared, she looked at him in wild welcome. And since Bastien had no resistance where Kirby was concerned, he stripped and shifted . . . to find himself pounced on, his mate in a playful mood that translated into her human form when they shifted back twenty minutes later.

Purring in his arms in bed, her skin flushed, Kirby kissed him with luscious slowness. “Why are we torturing ourselves again?”

“I have no fucking idea.” His chest heaved up and down, his leopard’s fur brushing against the inside of his skin.

Kirby ran her fingers over his kiss-wet lips. “I want you.”

At that instant, he couldn’t think of any rational reason not to take her, brand her. So when the comm panel chimed, he ignored it—until he realized it was his alpha’s code. Groaning, he left the erotic warmth of Kirby’s arms to answer the call, audio only.

What Lucas had to say changed the tenor of the entire night. “We’ve had word from a lynx pack in Calgary that’s been searching for a small family unit that disappeared twenty-three years ago.”

Kirby began to tremble, hope a tremulous whisper inside her.

Striding over to cradle her in his lap, Bastien asked the question she couldn’t form. “What did they say?”

“One of their members decided on a largely solitary existence when he turned eighteen,” Lucas replied. “He stayed in erratic touch with the pack—sometimes nothing more than a scribbled postcard after a year.”

His lynx nature, Kirby understood, must’ve been very strong.

“A year and a half after they’d last heard from him,” Lucas continued, “he contacted them to say he’d fallen for and mated with a human woman, had a baby girl, and intended to head home with his mate and cub in a month. No one ever arrived, and neither did the photos he’d promised of his new family.”

Blood cold, Kirby found her voice. “Why was I . . .” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t ask why the pack hadn’t come for her.

“They couldn’t find you.”

“What?” Bastien growled. “They lost a child ?”

“The last message just said the family was on the road, roaming their way home.” Lucas’s voice held taut frustration. “It meant the pack had no idea where to look when Kirby and her parents didn’t arrive. They dispatched trackers, sent out requests to countless local and international agencies, asking for news on a family composed of an adult male lynx, a human female, and a female lynx cub.”

“But I never shifted.” Kirby ran a shaking hand through her hair, her thoughts in splinters. “W-what happens now?”

“You look very much like the elder who contacted me,” Lucas told her, “so there’s not much doubt in my mind about the familial relationship. Still, I’d suggest a DNA test to confirm it, and quickly. Your grandma doesn’t strike me as a patient lady. She’s ready to claim her cub and your grandpa is willing to fight us all for you.”

Kirby’s lower lip quivered as Lucas signed off, her throat thick. “I have a grandma and a grandpa.”

Bastien wrapped her in the solid safety of his arms. “Yeah, and they sound just as tough as their grandchild.”

Kirby began to cry in earnest. She had a family, and they hadn’t thrown her away. They wanted her, had searched for her all these years. It altered the foundations of her existence.

THE DNA test was done by Dorian’s scientist mate, and a mere twenty-four hours following Lucas’s call, Kirby walked into the living room of DarkRiver’s healer. To come face-to-face with an older woman who had eyes of pale lynx-gold set in a face that echoed Kirby’s as strongly as Bastien’s echoed his brothers. She took one look at Kirby and enclosed her in an embrace so fierce, Kirby could barely breathe.

But it was all right, Kirby holding on just as hard. Then she was being hugged by a man of medium height with snow-white hair who had tears in his eyes and called her “my cub’s cub,” a hundred, a thousand words spoken over one another as they tried to catch up on a lifetime.

“My son,” her grandmother said an hour later, the three of them walking alone in the woods behind the healer’s home, “he was a strong, wild one, and he loved you.” Her hands touched Kirby’s cheeks. “Don’t ever doubt that.”

Throat scraped raw from the emotional storm that had passed, Kirby nodded, asked, “My mother’s name, can you tell me?”

“No, kitten, I’m so sorry,” her grandmother said, squeezing her hand. “The silly boy, he was so possessive—called her his mate in the message he sent.” Old sorrow in her gaze, before the pale gold filled with determination. “But now that we have your name, we should be able to use it in concert with our son’s to trace your mother.”

It might take time, Kirby realized on a crashing wave of hope, but it was very, very doable. Kirby’s birth must’ve been registered somewhere. Those records would exist. Even if not, there had to be travel records, or a rental agreement, a co-signed loan . . . Taking a shaky breath she hugged both her grandparents in turn. “Thank you for searching for me.”

“We will always be there for you.” Her grandfather held her close with one arm around her shoulders, while his mate stroked Kirby’s hair back with gentle hands and said, “We have something for you.”

It was a gift beyond price.

“A recording of my father’s last message home,” she said to Bastien that night. “Will you watch with me?” She couldn’t imagine sharing this painful, beautiful instant with anyone but her green-eyed leopard, strong and protective and her rock.

“I’d be honored.” Slotting in the data-crystal, he wrapped his arms around her from behind and they watched the comm screen fill with the image of a handsome blond man with unusual green and yellow-flecked hazel eyes that lit up when he spoke of his mate and child.

“I can’t wait for you to meet my beautiful mate.” His pride poured out of the screen. “She’s small and human, but fierce as any lynx. And our cub? A gorgeous, wild thing.” Love filled his expression. “You’d laugh to see me, Mom. I’m gaga over my girls, can’t bear to be parted from them. We’ve explored the world together, but our baby will be shifting soon, and we want her to be able to play as a lynx with her cousins, grow up surrounded by pack like I did.”