by Lauren Dane
“Ah, there are my parents. Come on. You haven’t met them yet and I’ve been ordered to introduce you.” She waved to the cats who’d come out to the yard from the house. He’d seen pictures of course. He did look into her and her family after the first night. But it was so clear they adored her. He liked to see it.
“Mom, Dad, Grandma, this is Gibson de La Vega. Gibson, this is my mother Ellen, my father Jim and my grandmother Lettie.”
He nodded to the father and then the mother and bent over the grandmother’s hand. Lettie fluttered her lashes and flirted with him, nearly making him smile. He could see where Mia got her spine though when she straightened and gave the area a once-over.
“Last time I was here…well, never mind that.”
Mia kissed Lettie’s cheek and spoke in her ear. Gibson could have tuned it out. Because of super-sensitive shifter hearing, many times they had to force their attention away from a whispered conversation for courtesy’s sake. But he wasn’t feeling courteous, he was curious.
“If you’re uncomfortable, we can go right now.”
Lettie held her granddaughter’s gaze. “You’re a good girl. I’m fine. I still have sharp claws if anyone comes at me.”
He had to bite the inside of his cheek at that. He just bet she did.
Drew came out with his girlfriend, a cat whose family was quite active in jamboree events. And Dario’s sister. She waved in their direction and dragged Drew over. “Hello.” She hugged Mia. “My dad wanted me to tell you there’s going to be an apartment coming up available in my building. In two months.”
Mia’s expression brightened. “Really? Thanks for the head’s up. I’ll check in next week.”
He hadn’t known she was looking for a place. He’d have to follow up on that with her later on.
His sister Beth came out, holding his newest nephew. She’d had a rough time with both Kendra and Renee when they’d come into the jamboree. Her insecurity and resentment had made a once really wonderful and fun person into one weighted down with bitterness and a special sort of hate for humans. He didn’t know what to expect from her that night, but he hoped the baby would keep her calm.
He had to admit she was better, even just a little bit, in the wake of the horrible betrayal of their brother Carlos, who’d been working with the human anti-Other hate groups. That had shocked them all and had been a powerful—and painful—reminder of what was important.
Their mother moved to Beth, cooing and then snatching the baby from Beth’s arms. Few people loved babies more than Imogene. Beth smiled at their mother, shaking her head. He ached for the person his sister used to be.
“Dinner is about to start.” Cesar came out into the back. “Take your seats if you please. Gibson, please bring Mia and her family up here.” He indicated the table where the governing cats would sit.
“Ooh. Special.” She whispered it and he squeezed her hand, which he’d found himself holding an awful lot that evening.
“Don’t forget it, missy.”
His mother had spared no effort to make the evening lovely. The food was delicious, the drinks flowed and the chatter all around was easy and upbeat. It had been a while since it had been so drama free.
Max had given a speech. A warm, brief one that thanked Mia and her family. In his way he underlined how delighted they were to have the Porters there but managed to do it in a way that wouldn’t put anyone on the spot. There was a reason his brother was such a good Alpha.
At last he sat down, and everyone relaxed again and got back to eating and talking.
“So I’m told you were in the military. What did you do?”
Mia looked up from her plate to listen to Max’s question.
Instead, it was her mother who answered. “Mia’s a pilot. An amazing one. And she was decorated several times for bravery while she was in Iraq.”
Gibson hid a smile. Her mother was an awful lot like his. Clearly proud of her kids.
“Really?” Max flicked his gaze from Ellen back to Mia. “I don’t think I’m surprised given what Gibson has told me. What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t really know yet. I’m working on that.”
“Is it hard to get work as a pilot? Or are you wanting to do other things?” Kendra put another pork chop on Max’s plate before she added one to her own. Gibson loved the way she took care of Max. And truth be told, was a little envious.
“As you might be aware, Weres have been fired and barred from working for some airlines. Mainly I flew C130s and other large cargo planes. A challenge, but I enjoyed it.” Her lips flattened for a moment, and he wondered, yet again, what the hell had happened to her.
“Just give it time.” Drew spoke softly. But of course everyone heard and their nosiness took over.
“Did something happen? Were you injured in Iraq?” Renee asked.
“Renee is a healer. It’s her magickal gift.” Galen leaned over and kissed his wife’s temple.
“I was injured in Iraq, yes.”
“Twice,” Ellen added.
“Thanks, Mom.” She sent her mother a look, but it was Lettie who made a dismissive sound.
“She’s ashamed of her attack. As if it was her fault.”
“Grandma, that’s enough.” She vibrated with tension, and while he desperately wanted to hear the rest, Mia was clearly upset and didn’t want to talk about it. He found himself rubbing a hand up and down her back. And her father sent him a raised brow.
But he didn’t stop.
“So, you have another son?” Kendra smoothly interceded, asking Ellen.
Lettie wasn’t done. “She was attacked, pulled off the street in Los Angeles. Two miles from her apartment. They beat her up. Nearly killed her. Used silver on her. Silver-tipped hammer they said.”
Mia went totally white and Gibson’s stomach clenched.
She stood. “Please excuse me.” Her normally easy posture was stiff and ramrod straight.
“Stop it,” Jim said to Lettie quietly. Ellen looked to Mia, anxiety on her face. Imogene met her son’s eyes, clearly worried.
Lettie rapped the table with her knuckles. “She hides it like it’s her fault. It’s not her fault. She has no call to be ashamed. I know a few things about that. I won’t have her feeling guilty about other people’s crimes.”
Gibson stood as well. “Hey, let’s all just calm down. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about.” He kept Mia’s gaze, nearly losing his shit when he caught sight of the tears threatening to overflow. “Would you like to see the garden? It’s just over there. Has a great view.”
She nodded woodenly and let him lead her from the table.
The chatter, which had come to a screeching halt, began again. Stilted at first, but it picked up again as they continued to move away from the tables and toward the garden his father loved so much.
“I can take you home if you like. But no one wants that.” He opened the gate his father had installed to keep animals and toddlers away from his garden.
She went in and paused to take in the space all around her. “This is unexpected.”
Like she was to him. “My father has a gift. Living things respond to him.” He tipped his head to a bench that was out of sight of the rest of the gathering.
She sat and he joined her, pulling her close, and she didn’t stop him.
“Do you want to talk about it? Just between us?”
“I survived two tours in Iraq. People tried to kill me all the time.” She snorted. “It became part of the background noise, all that danger. It began to seem normal, the amount of time and effort it took simply to leave each day. I got back and I wasn’t ready to come home. Back to Boston I mean. I landed in LA with a friend I’d been in the Air Force with. We shared an apartment. She found a job pretty quickly. I’d been offered a job teaching at a flight school.” She shrugged. “I was mulling it over and living off my savings.”
Things got quiet for a while. The hum of conversation and the clinking
of glasses and flatware in the background.
“Lots of Others in LA, you know. But it’s different there. Infighting. There are so many people from so many places. It’s exciting and sort of scary all at once. And the humans, the anti-Others I mean, they’re active. So I was already pretty conscious of myself and my surroundings when I went out. It was daylight. Like one-in-the-afternoon daylight. I’d been at lunch, working a shift for another friend for something to do and a little extra cash. On the way back to my car there was this group of men. Humans. But I’m a fucking jaguar, you know? Christ, I turn furry and have sharp claws! I thought I could handle anything.”
How stupid she’d been.
“But as I walked to skirt around them, ignoring their taunts, one of them hit me in the back of the head, and when I stumbled, they yanked me into the building behind them. An old warehouse of some sort.”
She could still smell the abandoned space. The dust and mold. The leather of their shoes and the stink of sweat and fear. And hate.
“They all just started hitting me and I wanted to change, but then someone stabbed me. In the side.” She touched the spot absently. At that moment she’d thought, outraged, that they’d actually stabbed her. And then she realized why she wasn’t shifting. “It was silver and I couldn’t change. And there were so many. All hitting.” She’d tried very hard to keep her feet, knowing if she fell that’d be the end.
He growled low in his throat, but otherwise kept silent.
“Then they started using other things to hurt me. I used my right arm, my right side to try to fend them off. Anyway, I don’t remember exactly what they used after that. Only that they tore into the muscle and flesh of my chest and shoulder, and it hurt so bad. So bad my cat went mad, wanting to change. I’d never felt anything like it before. I lost consciousness. They hit me in the head again a few times.”
She moved a little and he put an arm around her shoulder. She shivered, but not from the cold. Tears thickened her voice, and she was so tired, so relieved to just be telling the story that she didn’t care.
“Some women had been working across the street and had seen them pull me into the building. They called the cops. They saved my life. I’d bled so much I would have died from that if the silver they sprinkled into the open wounds on my chest hadn’t poisoned me first. One of the cops was a werewolf. Thank God. He kept the questions about what I was to a minimum. They assumed I was a werewolf like him. I lived.” She took a deep breath and let herself hear that. “I fucking lived, Gibson. They didn’t want me to, but I’m alive and I won’t forget.”
He shook. No matter how hard he tried not to shake, he still shook. The catch in her voice and the way her heart sped up when she told him the story, the subtle scent of her fear and shame, it all battered him.
This fucking hate was ugly. What drove people to such behavior?
“What happened to them?”
“My attackers? They ran when the cops arrived. They sort of tried to find them. I’m being unfair. The overwhelming percentage of people I dealt with in the hospital and with the cops were good to me. They wanted to help. Wanted me to survive. Wanted to find the fuckers who’d hurt me. But not all of them and the ones who didn’t care are why, I believe, no arrests have been made.”
“Was there lasting damage?”
She nodded, her gaze glassy as she stared out over the garden. “I was in a coma for a week.”
For a shifter to be out that long meant she’d been so close to death her system shut down to continue to operate at the most minimal level until her body could heal.
“As for the rest? The silver filings they used in the open wounds in my shoulder fucked up my muscles. Some of the damage is permanent. At first I couldn’t even use my right arm. I’ve been going to physical therapy. I’ve gotten a great deal of my strength back, but if I’m lucky I’ll be at eighty percent. I used to rock climb. They don’t advise it now. And my coordination has been affected as well.”
“Can you fly anymore?”
“A lot of flying these days is really done with computers and autopilot. So I can do that, easily. And I’m told I can fly smaller aircraft and helicopters again once I get the okay from my PT. I don’t know about the other stuff, the speed of response and all that jazz.”
He heaved a sigh. “Christ. I’m sorry. Not sorry you can fly still. Because that’s a good thing.”
“Hopefully anyway.”
“If anyone can do it, you can.”
“We’ll see. I have about eighty percent of an engineering degree. I’ve been toying with going back.”
“Do you want to be an engineer?”
She laughed. “Not really.”
“Do you want to fly again?”
“I love to fly.”
“What’s stopping you? If you can fly helicopters and smaller planes, that is.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
“I wish we could get drunk.”
Surprised, he laughed. “Renee has this potion she makes. It started as a way to put Weres under for surgery. But it’s really moonshine. I didn’t make that up. My brother Galen calls it hooch.”
“Maybe later.” She sighed and he kissed the top of her head.
“I hear sex is also a good relaxer and mood enhancer.”
She laughed and he let some of his tension go. “That so?”
“It’s what I hear.” He paused a while. “You favor your left side sometimes. Is that weakness or are you in pain?”
She shifted, looking down at her hands. “Both. The doctors don’t really have a lot of experience with the lasting effects of silver poisoning. But it’s a possibility that the chronic pain will be permanent.”
He pushed to stand, needing the room to stalk a little. His cat was so very close, his control so very thin.
“But that day, the day I got shot, you lugged me to your apartment.”
“I’m not totally weak. I’m still a shifter.”
He loved the way she jutted her chin out. Defiant.
“I’m getting better. Three weeks ago I could barely stand. I couldn’t use my right hand at all. I had to go to physical therapy three times a week. Now I’m down to once a week. I’m so much stronger than I was.”
“Your grandmother is proud of you. And she’s right, you shouldn’t feel guilty about what other people have done. This attack wasn’t your fault.”
“Be that as it may, she has no right to share that with a whole room of strangers. No one needs to know unless I decide to tell them. It changes how people look at you. I don’t have time for that.”
He understood. In ways he’d never be able to put into words. Understood what it meant to always look strong in the presence of others. Especially other cats.
“She’s an elder. And your grandmother. As far as I can see she’s not shy either.”
That made her laugh.
Chapter Eight
When they got back to his car, after she’d been talked to by what seemed like a thousand people and her mother had apologized for her grandmother, and she’d told her mother it wasn’t necessary, Gibson had asked her to hold on a moment because he had to speak with Dario about something.
Once he’d moved off, her father approached. “I’m sorry. She loves you, you know. She wanted everyone there to understand how amazing you are.”
Mia nodded. “Don’t apologize for her. She’ll only be mad at you if she finds out. It’s who she is. I get it. She didn’t mean to hurt me. I know.”
He hugged her. “I’m proud of you. We’re all proud of you. This was supposed to be your night.”
She laughed then. “Dad, it’s all right. I promise. She can’t be anyone other than who she is. And now it’s not a secret and that’s all right too, I suppose. Anyway, it was a nice dinner, and I’m full and glad things appear to be on the mend between us and the de La Vegas.”
“What’s Gibson to you then?”
“What?”
“Honey, are
you really going to play that game with your father? Don’t waste my time. I watched him all night. He comforted you and you responded. He shielded you every time you two stood near each other.”
“It’s nothing serious. He’s investigating… Oh hell, I don’t know.” She snorted. “Really I don’t. But it’s not an engagement. He’s not a jerk. I’m not a jerk. We enjoy each other’s company.”
“If I thought he was a jerk, I’d have never come here tonight. But don’t fool yourself into thinking the way you two are is anything less than the seeds of imprinting. And if you go that route, you’d better understand what it is to be with a male like him. You grew up with laid-back men. Gibson is not laid-back. He’s an alpha.”
Boy did she know that.
“I’m not imprinting. I can have a relationship with another cat without it being imprinting.”
Jaguar shifters didn’t mate for life in the same way wolves did. There was no one true mate binding of DNA. But what they did was imprint. Their cats settled in, got the scent of the other, marked their territory. And once a cat did that, once the human allowed it and let themselves imprint on the other person and that other cat with them, it was forever. Forever in the same way the wolves had.
Cats could get married without imprinting. Many did. But Gibson de La Vega wasn’t the type of male who’d settle down without being imprinted. His cat wouldn’t submit to anyone else who wasn’t his forever. It was an important reminder of who she was dallying with. But she couldn’t lie and pretend the idea of imprinting wasn’t important to her as well. Her parents were imprinted. She wanted that connection with someone.
But for the time being, they were just enjoying each other. And that was that.
“You can fool yourself, baby girl. But you can’t fool your daddy.” He kissed her forehead, and she rubbed her cheek along his jawline as she hugged him.