Jaycee swallowed, bracing herself for a bad turn in his story that was sure to come. “So what happened?”
“My mother became a whore,” he sneered the word. “Her lover was the only other person who knew our secret. He kept quiet while they were together. She wanted to leave me and my father and run away with him, but he didn’t want a commitment from her, just a couple fucks. He soon grew tired of the sex and her pleading, and told my father what she was, essentially revealing what I was too. My dad broke her neck immediately and then turned to me as if to slay me next.”
Gasping, Jaycee clapped her hands over her mouth. “Omigod. What did you do?”
He shook his head. “I ran. I was so scared, and only eight years old. My mother had just been murdered by my father. I had no idea where to go. But that didn’t matter. I had to escape. I knew they could follow my scent, so I shifted into my stag. I guess they didn’t think to sniff out a fawn, because they never found me.
“Years later, I came across a young shifter from my father’s pack, someone who’d been born after I was already gone. I asked about my father, and the wolf told me he was dead. He and my mother’s lover killed each other right after her murder and my escape. The story had become legend in the pack. And the little stag-boy who’d gotten away was only a myth. Even the wolf telling me the story didn’t think I existed.” Knock turned to Jaycee with a penetrating stare. “But I do exist.” Taking her hand, he set it over his chest, where she felt a steady, rhythmic thump. “Remember that when you open your eyes, my love. The man whose heart you hold is still here inside this chest, whether he’s a wolf, deer or human. And he needs your acceptance.”
Chapter Nine
Jaycee’s dreams merged with reality as the sun rose and shifted beams of light through her window blinds, nudging her awake. Her dream lover’s heartfelt words echoed through her head as she stirred.
You’re mine now.
I’ve searched for a place to belong. And finally, here in your arms, I feel as if I’ve come home.
The man whose heart you hold is still here inside this chest, whether he’s a wolf, deer or human. And he needs your acceptance.
She came to in a face full of fur. Sputtering to spit the hairball out of her mouth, she jerked back on the mattress, zipping open her eyes. The massive lump of black, gray, and white fur didn’t take the shape of a wolf at first. It was simply there, invading her space, until finally, she distinguished legs, a body and head tucked down next to its front knees, its eyes closed and body slowly rising and falling with each breath it drew.
Oh my God, there was a wolf on her bed. Sleeping.
Jaycee screamed.
The wolf jerked awake, springing onto all fours with a vicious growl that had Jaycee lurching backward and falling off the mattress. Taking the sheets with her, she plopped onto the floor with a pained oomph.
“Jaycee?” Knox’s harried voice asked before his face—the very face from her dreams—appeared above her as he leaned over the side of the bed. “Are you okay?”
A hand—his hand—reached for her, but she yelped and scurried backward away from it. “Oh my God. Don’t touch me!”
She pushed to her feet, wrapping the sheets protectively around her. Gaping at him, she demanded, “What—who—where did you come from? What the fuck is going on?”
Stark naked, he stared at her with pleading eyes. “I’m not a dream,” he rasped. “I was never a dream. I’m real, Jaycee. Feel me.”
He lifted his arm toward her, but she scrambled back. His brows puckering with disappointment, he dropped his hand.
“But you—there was a…a…”
“A wolf in bed with you? Yeah.” He sighed and scrubbed at his face. “Shifters revert to their natural state when in distress…or sleeping. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She shook her head. Scare. He hadn’t scared her. He’d petrified her. “No, no, no,” she said aloud. “Shapeshifters don’t exist. They’re in movies, and books, and dreams obviously, but—”
“I’m real,” he growled, looking suddenly irritated. “Damn it, look.” Before her very eyes, he flashed into a wolf. The man she’d dreamed about was no more, and a deadly, feral-looking beast with—dear Lord—Knox’s brown eyes stared at her.
She screamed again and whirled away, dashing for the door. She was out the front exit a moment later, sprinting barefoot across her yard. She didn’t look back to see if he followed, too afraid to even peek. But she imagined hot wolf breath on her nape and a deadly growl reverberating through her bones.
Eight blocks separated her from the Griffins’ house. She swore she made them in thirty seconds. The sun had yet to lift fully above the horizon as she pounded on the front door, screaming for Riley and Shaw. Finally, she managed a fearful look behind but gratefully didn’t see a wolf in sight. Or a deer. Or Knox, for that matter.
As soon as the lock unbolted and the door began to slide open, Jaycee tumbled inside her employers’ home, babbling and crying as she fell into Shaw’s surprised arms and clutched him for dear life.
“He’s a wolf…but a man. Oh my God, I thought it was a dream.” Clutching her head, she finally managed to pull away from Shaw and stare at him and Riley, who both looked rattled as if they’d been woken by an insane woman, which they had. “I’m delusional,” she gasped. “I need help. Oh my God. What’s going on?”
Eyes filling with sympathy, Riley reached for her. “Oh, Jaycee—”
But her husband caught her arm and sent her a telling look. “Maybe I should handle this one.”
Riley looked reluctant, but she nodded and gave Jaycee an encouraging smile before saying, “I’ll find you some clothes.”
As she turned away and started for the stairs, Jaycee caught sight of the triplets, piled on the steps, looking at her through the slats of the banister with huge, worried eyes.
“Come with me,” Shaw murmured, gently slipping his arm over her shoulder and leading her to the back of their house and into his office. He sat her on the love seat, tucked her blankets back around her to hide the essentials, and then pulled his desk chair around to plant himself in front of her. “Now,” he said with a patient smile. “If I understood you correctly, you said you woke up in bed with a shapeshifter. Right?”
Jaycee’s mouth dropped open. Why was he acting so blasé about this? Shouldn’t he be contacting a psych ward right about now? “Why aren’t you calling me crazy?”
He shrugged. “Because I know you’re not. Shapeshifters do exist.”
Jaycee shook her head because, well, she had to deny such an insane claim. Right? “I don’t understand.”
An amused smile lighting his face, Shaw explained. “I didn’t believe in them either, until four wolves broke into my house when I was fifteen and killed my entire family.”
Pressing her hand to her chest, Jaycee croaked, “Excuse me?”
“I told the police they were just wild dogs that had found a way inside and attacked us. I couldn’t tell them I’d seen one of the wolves as a human, that he actually spoke to me. I didn’t want anyone to think I was crazy. But a group of hunters read about my family’s murder in the paper and contacted me. They weren’t regular hunters, but shifter hunters. I joined them when I was sixteen. About ten years ago, Donald joined the organization, and that’s how I met him.”
“Holy mother of God,” Jaycee uttered, cupping her face in her hands. “I don’t think I can digest this fast enough.” Her eyes lifted to his. “So, you…you kill people—things—like Knox?” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Okay, waking to a wolf in her bed had scared the ever-loving shit out of her, but if that shapeshifter was anything like the man she’d come to know in her dreams, then she most certainly didn’t want him murdered.
“I used to,” Shaw murmured, sounding regretful. “Then about, oh, seven years ago, I took on a stint, setting up shifter traps deep in the woods. I liked the solitude, living by myself, but I never caught a shifter until one time…”
His face softened, and his eyes lit with the memory. “I caught a female jaguar.” The breath that left his lungs was full of longing. “When I first saw her, she was in human form, and…she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”
Eyebrows pinching together, Jaycee scowled. She didn’t like Shaw thinking of any woman besides Riley as beautiful. It felt…unfaithful.
“You couldn’t kill her, could you?”
He shook his head. “No.” With a shrug, he added, “So I married her instead.”
Jaycee opened her mouth, but no words came out. “Wait. What?”
“I hope you understand. We couldn’t tell you when you first came to us, Jaycee. We didn’t know you well enough to trust you, and by the time you became like a member of the family to us, Donald was in your life. He’s still very much involved with the hunters. We couldn’t risk our secret getting out, plus we didn’t want you to have to keep any secrets from him.”
“Wait,” she said again, lifting her hand to stop him. “Are you saying—”
“Riley, Dane, Rhea, and Brynn? Yeah. They’re all part shapeshifter.”
“Oh my God.” She surged to her feet, pulled her sheet tighter around her and began to pace. “Oh my God.”
“The children wouldn’t make it in the shifter world. With Riley’s father being fully human and me being human, their shifter side is diluted enough that they’d be considered weak compared to other shifters. It was safer to raise them in the human world. All they have to do to fit in here is hide what they are.”
A spark of pity filled her. She remembered Knox from the night before, telling her he didn’t fit in anywhere either. “But you’re human?”
His grin was rueful. “One hundred percent.”
“Yet your wife and children are…” She plopped back onto the love seat. “I just need to catch my breath.”
Shaw bit his lip. “Jaycee, you’re the best nanny Riley and I could ever find. The triplets love you like a second mother. But if you don’t think you can handle knowing what they are—”
Surging to her feet, she glared at her boss. “Are you firing me?”
“No!” He popped up from his chair as well, eyes wide. “God, no. But I know what a shock this is for you. And I don’t want you scared of the children or—”
“Scared?” she repeated, insulted. “I helped raise those babies from infancy. If they were my own flesh and blood, I couldn’t love them any more than I do now. It doesn’t matter to me if they turn hairy when they fall asleep.” She frowned as she spoke that part. She’d put the triplets down for naps numerous times over the years; why hadn’t they—
“Actually, being only a fourth shifter, they’re natural state is human, so they remain human when they’re asleep or in pain.”
“Oh. So, um…they’re jaguars? That’s kind of cool. I’ve never seen a jaguar except in pictures before.”
“You can see me. You can see me,” a trio of young voices announced, as they shoved open the door, revealing a quartet of eavesdroppers, and spilled into the room, clamoring toward her so they could show off their jaguar sides. When the three children she loved most on earth morphed into fuzzy little baby jaguars, she gasped.
“Dear Lord, you can change fast.”
“We can shift as fast or slow as we like,” Riley said from the doorway. When Jaycee met the other woman’s gaze, Riley smiled with a relief that made Jaycee realize she’d reacted to all this with the perfect response. Acceptance.
As sharp little claws dug through her bed sheets into her knees, she turned to Dane, Rhea and Brynn, who were jostling each other for her attention. Jaycee petted them, cooing and telling them what soft fur they had and what pretty stripes they grew. But all the while her thoughts returned to Knox. He’d wanted—no, he’d needed—her immediate acceptance too. Yet she’d run screaming from him.
Chapter Ten
From the woods, Knox watched Jaycee. Around her, the three cubs played in their jaguar form, all three striving to impress her, making her clap and applaud their climbing and jumping and flipping tricks.
It reminded him of his own youth, always eager to experiment and show off his newest ability to his mother. She had become a different woman after Mathis had taken her. Losing his place in her heart, Knox had been so confused when suddenly all she wanted to do was sneak away to visit her lover.
Pain pierced his chest as he glanced at Jaycee, sitting cross-legged in the grass and throwing back her head to laugh at the male cub’s theatrics. The ache worked up his throat. Her life had just altered on its axis. The wards she so lovingly watched had become something new and foreign, yet she did not turn her heart away from them. She never would’ve done what his mother had. She wouldn’t have abandoned her only child no matter what man came into her life.
He wished he could be so certain she wouldn’t abandon him either. But a couple of nights in the sack did not a commitment make. He had deceived her, become an illusion to get close, and tricked her into thinking their time together was merely a dream.
He wasn’t sure if Jaycee could forgive that.
* * * * *
An entire new world had just opened up, and Jaycee was still reeling by the time lunch rolled around. Since her wards had learned they didn’t need to hide their shifter side from her, they’d been performing all morning, demonstrating everything they could think up, competing with each other to see who could amaze her the most.
They were the cutest little jaguar cubs she’d ever seen. She kept wanting to reach out and touch their soft fur. The girls, she soon discovered, were much more willing to play kitty and let her pet them. Dane was a bit pricklier; she could tell he didn’t like being treated like an animal.
She tried to adjust to this new side of her babies, wondering how she’d never discovered their secret before. Now that she knew, they were so free about switching back and forth—well, the girls were. Dane usually ran inside and to his room before he became human, not wanting her to see him naked, which made Jaycee roll her eyes; she’d probably changed his diaper more than anyone else alive.
Yet as she fed them macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, amazed they acted so human when she’d just seen exactly what they could become, her thoughts strayed to Knox.
He hadn’t followed her to the Griffins this morning. She wasn’t sure what to think about that. Was he mad at her, furious over the way she’d freaked out? Had he already left, never to return again? Or was he trying to be polite and keep his distance until she could handle the truth a little more calmly?
Shaw and Riley had offered to take time off work so she could find the wolf and talk to him, but she’d declined, worried and ashamed of herself for her immediate reaction to waking up in a face full of fur.
“Jaycee, can we go outside and practice climbing trees some more?”
She blinked and focused on the triplets, surprised to find all three had finished eating. Clearing her throat, she nodded. “Sure. But be careful; don’t fall off a branch.”
Dane rolled his eyes, but Brynn and Rhea chorused they’d be careful. Before her eyes, they morphed into four-legged, furry bundles of joy and scampered out the opened back door. She shook her head. This was definitely going to take some getting used to.
She’d just piled their dirty plates into the dishwasher when the doorbell rang. Glancing outside to make sure the children were still being safe, she caught a flash of orange and black in the branches of the oak tree. Tea towel in hand, she dried her fingers as she strolled to the front door. Her mind was still on shapeshifters and wolves and jaguars when she pulled open the lock, forgetting to check the window first.
“I can’t stop thinking about you, Jaycee.” Donald swept over the threshold and cupped her face, tilting it to the side so he could press his mouth to hers.
The kiss did nothing for her, except maybe make her throw up a little in her mouth. Gagging, she shoved him back, and immediately wiped at her lips. “Well, try harder. I told you six months ago; it�
��s over, Donny. And just because you think I’m some kind of forbidden fruit now because I’ve moved on and found someone else does not mean you can start harassing me. Now leave!”
He didn’t. “I want another chance.”
“Sorry. You’re not going to get one.”
“Jaycee. God damn it, we belong together.”
She laughed. Right in his face. “You are so pathetic. A year ago, you constantly made me feel like I should be grateful I was able to get a guy as wonderful as you. You were always belittling me, until I actually believed I wasn’t good enough to be your woman or anyone’s woman. And now you’re here, begging me to take you back. What a joke. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but Knox is a hundred times the man you’ll ever be—and not just in bed. He actually appreciates me.”
Donald’s eyes flared with anger and hatred a split second before the palm of his hand cracked against her face. Pain erupted through her cheek, reverberating to the back of her skull. Her head cranked around from the massive blow, and she hit the floor a second later, dazed and momentarily knocked silly.
By the time her brain stopped pinging around in her head like a pinball and she could think straight, Donald had grabbed a chunk of her hair and was dragging her across the floor toward the back of the house.
“I’ll teach you to appreciate me, bitch.”
As her butt skipped over the carpet, she vaguely realized he was taking her to the kitchen—the kitchen, where a wall full of windows revealed the backyard, displaying three shapeshifters currently at play. And the monster above her just so happened to be a shifter hunter.
Dreams of Wolf [Half-breed Shifter Series Book 2] Page 7