Off and on Again

by Tia Fielding

  Off and On Again

  Finnshifters book 4

  by

  Tia Fielding

  Copyright Information

  Finnshifters 4: Off and On Again ©Tia Fielding, 2019

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Editing by No Stone Unturned Editing.

  Cover Art © 2019 by LC Chase.

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  For permissions contact: tiafielding@gmail.com

  Author’s Note

  This book was a long time coming, I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.

  This December marked the 8 years since I signed the contract for the first Finnshifters book with my then publisher.

  I’ve since parted ways with that publisher and re-published all of my titles, including this series.

  I know this series has fans out there, and now that the books are on Kindle Unlimited, even new ones!

  I dedicate this story, Off and On Again, to everyone who has enjoyed this journey, long as it has been.

  I’m thankful for all of you!

  Cal

  Cal paced in front of a tiny airport somewhere in eastern Finland. He felt twitchy and nervous and as if all choices had been taken from him, which, in a way they had.

  His son Kit sat on the bench nearby, scanning the surroundings like he always did these days. Cal hated that Kit felt like he needed to be the one keeping an eye on things.

  “I think that’s them,” Kit murmured when a slightly battered SUV turned into the almost empty parking lot.

  Cal grunted and rolled his neck agitatedly. At least he’d managed to stop pacing.

  The car drove across the lot and to the front of the airport.

  “Hey, I’m so sorry we’re late!” A man around Cal’s age jumped out of the driver’s seat. He wasn’t a full shifter, Cal could tell immediately. “I’m Mikael Jarvela, I own the farm. This is my other half, Maxim.”

  The huge man next to him nodded, his serious gaze never straying far from Cal while he ignored Kit.

  Cal knew everyone could hear how his teeth ground together as he tried to control himself.

  “Hi. It’s okay. Hit some traffic?” Kit asked. “I’m Kit Calder, this is my dad Cal.”

  “Cal Calder?” Mikael raised a brow at him.

  Kit smiled. “No, Ewan Calder, but nobody calls him Ewan.”

  Cal grunted, but the sweat on his forehead and the way he couldn’t stop his eyes flicking from Mikael to Maxim and back to their surroundings would tell Kit that Cal couldn’t speak for himself right then.

  “Let’s get your luggage and get driving. Do you need anything, Cal?” Mikael asked as they all grabbed parts of the mountain of suitcases and backpacks and put them into the car.

  Cal shook his head.

  Kit frowned. “Water and maybe a protein bar,” he said, making Cal glare.

  For someone else, being looked at like that by a man packed with compact muscles that screamed lethality might’ve been unnerving, even though Cal was only five-eight. For Kit, small as he was being a few inches shorter and bordering on a skinny build, Cal had never been threatening and he’d always told him so. No, to him, despite all the problems, Cal was a savior and a protector. Now that Kit was practically an adult, he seemed to feel it was his turn to make sure Cal would be okay.

  “I have jerky in car,” Maxim grunted, his Russian accent obvious even in that short sentence.

  “That’ll do,” Kit said cheerily, probably hoping to keep the mutual grump from spreading more.

  “And there’s water, too. Let’s hop in. Do you guys have any preferences on where you want to sit?” Mikael asked as he walked around the car before getting into the driver’s seat.

  “Not really. We can sit in the back,” Kit replied for both of them. Kit and Cal settled into the back seat and Maxim squeezed himself next to his mate in the front.

  “The drive is about an hour and a half, so if you get tired, just nap.” Mikael glanced at them over his shoulder and smiled. He had a kind face, but there was this kind of charisma or aura that radiated from him that seemed to calm Kit down in a way Cal knew not many people could.

  “Sure,” Kit told Mikael, then took the snacks from Maxim when he handed them over. “Thanks.”

  He opened the water and held it at Cal until he took it. Then he waited for him to drink and replaced the bottle with a bag of jerky. “Eat.” Kit put the seat belt on and cuddled against Cal’s side for comfort and to give Cal something to ground himself with.

  Just as Kit started to drift off to the gentle rumble of the diesel engine, Cal realized that they’d been on Finnish soil for about an hour, and Cal hadn’t spoken a word, yet.

  It certainly didn’t look promising.

  Cal twitched hard enough that Kit, even in his sleep, patted his thigh before burrowing in closer. Fuck.

  He felt like such a loser. He’d known there wouldn’t be a generous supply of morphine where they were going—kind of the point, he supposed—so he’d been weaning himself off it. Luckily, his cat was nowhere to be seen or felt, but his human side was twitchy as hell because of low-key withdrawal. And it wouldn’t get easier anytime soon.

  At least they’d hit the part of the journey where the road was dark and there weren’t streetlights. Passing those continuously had almost triggered his flashbacks, but he’d managed to keep them at bay by listening to the quiet murmur of the tiger and his mate in the front.

  The tiger… well, Maxim was obviously a person he needed to not piss off. Having someone as big as the Russian close didn’t intimidate Cal. What it did, was make him feel peace. Because he knew that if he had to be put down, the end would be fast.

  Cal tried to relax, but it was something almost impossible to achieve these days. Maybe a few years ago. Before the whole deal with the morphine started. Nobody knew exactly what had happened to lead him into the state he was in. Well, the serval who was the smaller cat shifters’ mouthpiece in the Council knew, but only because the Council had insisted he told someone. They wouldn’t have agreed to help him otherwise.

  This, coming to Finland, was a last-ditch effort to get him clean, get him to shift—Cal didn’t want to think about that—and to retain his sanity. He knew what his reputation was in the Council and everywhere he’d gone before.

  He didn’t want to be that man anymore. He wanted to be someone who would always be there for Kit, for the son he’d chosen and who had chosen him.

  Mikael cleared his throat. “So, we’ve managed to make the Metsala farm habitable. It’s very basic and needs more work, but during a summer like this, it’s good enough for the time being. There’s some of the necessary furniture and such, so if you want peace, we can take you there. If you want a hot bath, a TV, and a working internet, then I’d suggest coming to the main house with us.”

  Mikael turned to Cal and Kit, who was slowly waking up. “Do you have a preference?”

  Cal thought for a moment. Before he could answer, Maxim murmured, “There’s better food at ours. Don’t have to cook there.”

  That, and the lure of a bath and internet for Kit, made Cal open his mouth and grind out “Your place.”

  “Our place it is.” Mikael smiled and turned on his blinker to turn right onto an even narrower dirt road.

  When Cal glanced at the dashboard cloc
k, he blinked in confusion. Then he realized this must’ve been what the whole “nightless nights” thing of Finnish summer was about. It was still light outside. Not daylight bright, but still, he could see into the woods by the roadside.

  He felt pretty sure that if he’d shifted and gone into the forest, he could’ve seen just as well he did in daytime. Not that he would be shifting anytime soon. He hoped.

  “Dad, you okay?” Kit asked, squeezing his hand—when had he made a fist?—carefully.

  “Yeah,” he managed to say, flashing Kit a small smile.

  Kit obviously wanted to say something else, but held the words for the time being, and looked out of the window into the summer night.

  They got to the farmyard, and Kit vibrated with excitement. This was what he’d been waiting for, Cal knew. Somewhere safe, somewhere he could be in his tiny fox form and not be bothered by bigger shifters.

  He’d wanted somewhere clean and quiet, and Cal had understood. He’d tried giving that to Kit once before, a few years ago, in Italy. It hadn’t worked out, in fact, it had backfired hard enough that now he was here, trying to hang onto his sanity.

  Shaking his head, Cal got out of the car and took in the Jarvela farm.

  Mikael had parked in the middle of the yard, and Cal could see two houses on either side, with a lake behind the smaller one. There was even what Cal thought must’ve been a sauna on the shore.

  He could smell and hear horses and sheep somewhere nearby. Yeah, Kit would love it here.

  “Dad? We’re going inside,” Kit said, gesturing with his shoulder, as his hands were full.

  Somehow, Cal had wandered off a bit, and he returned to the car to notice that the bags had been placed neatly on the bigger house’s porch now.

  He felt like a patient suddenly. Except his wasn’t a physical injury, it was mental. Instead of not letting a person with a healing broken arm carry his own stuff, the others were now gauging his moods instead.

  He tried to smile, knowing it looked like a tight grimace, as he followed Kit to the house.

  “We have couple of free rooms upstairs, we’ll show them to you in a bit. But I’d like for you both to meet everyone who stays in this house, so there won’t be any surprises. The wolf pack will stay in the old house across the yard until tomorrow,” Mikael spoke calmly in a way only a human who had been around shifters for a long time would.

  Cal nodded and Kit seemed both excited and cautious. Cal knew the caution came from him, not Kit. It was because his son wasn’t sure how Cal would react to being around shifters larger than them both.

  “Sure,” Cal grunted.

  Mikael showed them into the living room and Kit sat in the corner of a loveseat, leaving the nearest side to the door for Cal.

  “Okay, so you know Maxim and me, he’s a Siberian tiger and I’m half-one, my mom was a tiger. I never met her, she passed away after giving birth to me,” Mikael explained. “Maxim, can you get the others?”

  Maxim grunted, and soon enough, two men and a boy around Kit’s age stood in the doorway. By scent alone, Cal could tell one of them was a fox—the boy, probably, based on his rangy build—and one a jaguar. The third one was another big cat, but Cal didn’t know the scent. Had to be rare as hell, because there weren’t many shifter species he hadn’t met.

  “I’m Anton, I’m the fox. I’m nineteen,” the young man said, smiling slightly. He looked curiously at Kit. Cal was glad about Kit having people his own age here.

  “I’m Kit, I’m a Fennec fox,” Kit said, waving at Anton.

  “That’s awesome. We have two young wolves too, they’re sixteen and eighteen.”

  “Oh, that’s great, I’m eighteen too.”

  The man with a military posture nudged Anton aside.

  “I’m Noah, I’m a jaguar. Originally from the States, as is my mate here.”

  The taller man was the mystery shifter, then. He wrapped an arm around Noah’s waist. “I’m Dallas. I’m a tiglon.”

  Well, that definitely explained the confusion. Hybrid shifters were extremely rare, just like hybrid animals were in the wild.

  Mikael smiled. “Normally, we have two others in the house, Lark and Shani, they’re a lynx and a cheetah respectively, but they’re abroad, visiting Shani’s family. They will be back for Christmas though.”

  “How many wolves are in the pack?” Kit asked, excited to be around his fellow canids.

  “There are the alphas, Sean and Rider, their two teenagers and then the three little ones,” Mikael said. “So there’s a lot of people here.”

  “Yes. We will take you to the Metsala farm tomorrow. For peace and quiet,” Maxim said gruffly.

  “Is it close?” Kit wanted to know, because he’d most likely want to hang out with the young people.

  “There’s a marked path through the woods. We’ll show it to you tomorrow,” Anton piped up.

  “All right, well, we made a lot of sandwiches for you guys, so that’s what’s for late dinner.” Noah grinned. “We’re going to go watch TV in our room. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  “I can show you guys your rooms,” Anton volunteered enthusiastically.

  Mikael nodded. “You do that, and we’ll make some tea to go with the sandwiches.” Before they could move, Mikael added, “If you two want to eat upstairs, that’s fine. Anton will bring your dinner up, Cal.”

  “Yeah, I can get my own or eat in the kitchen, but Dad probably wants to eat in his room,” Kit spoke for both of them, because he was no doubt sensing his energy reserves dwindling slowly but surely.

  When Mikael looked at him, Cal nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “All right.” Mikael left the room with Maxim in tow.

  Kit jumped up and went ahead with Anton to the porch to grab some of their stuff.

  “Dad? I’ll leave most of the luggage out here. We don’t need much, right?” Kit called back.

  Cal made his body move off the couch and into the open doorway. “Yeah, give me my backpack and leave the rest, please.”

  “Here you go, sir,” Anton said politely, handing over Cal’s battered old backpack.

  “Call me Cal,” he forced out the words, hoping they sounded neutral or even positive enough.

  At least they weren’t horrible, because Anton smiled at him and nodded. “Okay, this way.” The fox slunk past Cal like his animal side might’ve and headed to the stairs.

  The house was nice and modern, despite being a log house. Cal found the mild scent of wood comforting.

  They followed Anton to the long hallway and were shown two rooms on opposite sides.

  “That’s my door, and next to it is the bathroom that’s shared by one of your rooms. That one used to be Noah’s, but he moved into Dallas’s room downstairs. There’s another bathroom down the hall there and since the girls aren’t home, you’re free to use it if you want to or this one’s taken,” Anton explained, gesturing at the correct doors.

  “Thanks. Dad, preference?”

  “Which way do the windows face?” Cal asked, without even entering any of the rooms.

  “That side is to the yard, the other side is to the backyard and the veggie garden. Some of the pastures too.”

  “I’ll take the back side then,” Cal said, hoping it would prevent him from keeping an eye on everything that was happening outside all night. He would already be listening, so having to get up once he settled down would be a bitch.

  “Okay, I’ll take the yard side,” Kit said, and Cal nodded to show that he was okay.

  He could do this. He could act normal for these people until he was left alone in the house on the other side of some woods.

  Kit crossed the hall to him and gave him a warm hug. “Love you, Dad.”

  “Love you too,” Cal whispered, because that was the one thing he knew with absolute certainty.

  “Let me know if you need me. If not, see you in the morning, okay?” Kit smiled at him.

  “Yeah. You as well, okay?” Cal waited until Kit nodded, because Kit
still had nightmares from his childhood. Things that he couldn’t remember happening and always showed up as vague blurry things instead of clear images, but were horrible to relive nonetheless.

  “I’ll bring you the dinner in a bit. If you’re in the bathroom, I’ll leave the tray outside,” Anton promised, and Cal forced out another smile and a nod. He was genuinely grateful, but also getting more and more twitchy by the minute.

  Cal waited for the boys to go into the room Kit chose before opening the door to his. The room was nice, homey and on the small side, like a little den. It was clear shifters lived in this house. Most people went for large, airy rooms, but many shifters preferred smaller spaces that felt safer.

  Sighing, Cal took off his boots—he had a vague recollection that the pack members had all been either barefoot or in socks with a large amount of shoes neatly by the front door, both inside and on the porch—and wiggled his toes. He needed a shower, and now that he’d stopped moving, he realized he needed to take a leak, too.

  He grabbed his toiletry kit and a towel that had been left for him on the bed and went to find the second bathroom.

  He’d trained his body over the last decades. It was a perfectly honed weapon, capable of taking a lot of punishment in human form. He’d been stabbed twice and he hadn’t shifted even when he’d been close to bleeding out. That had always been one of his strengths.

  Most shifters, when hurt, changed involuntarily into their animal forms for protection. For Cal it was different; he was small enough that his cat side knew he was stronger in his human body. It didn’t mean that he shouldn’t shift, though. He still needed it as much as every other shifter, but he just… couldn’t, right then.

  While being an enforcer for the shifter council, he’d gone all over the world, solving their problems. He’d done horrible things, things he didn’t want to think about, all in the name of keeping his own kind a secret.

  But they had saved him, the Council. When he’d been a teenager and his parents had kicked him out for being gay, they’d scooped him up and trained him to be their perfect soldier.