The Lion's Surprise Baby

by Jade White

  “And you thought I couldn’t change, is that it? Tara, the world is full of men who became fathers by surprise, and they stepped up and dealt with it. Yes, I knew what I wanted from my life and I knew what I wanted from my future. But Tara…hell, if I’d had any idea that I was about to be a father, I would have changed anything I had to change. I would have stepped the hell up, Tara—if you’d given me a damn chance.

  Damnit, you didn’t even give me a chance. And now I’ve been a father for a year and I didn’t even know it.” He lowered and shook his head, and grabbed up handfuls of the bedspread in hands that Tara feared would morph into paws and rip the fabric to pieces any second.

  “So,” she said. “There was something I didn’t tell you. And there was something you didn’t tell me.”

  “They weren’t little things, Tara,” said Brenton. “Being a father is the biggest thing in the world.”

  “So is being not really human,” said Tara.

  Brenton frowned at that, a look of both anger and frustration. “We both screwed up.”

  A silence fell between them. Tara looked over at the drawer on the tabletop, where Daniel had morphed to human and somehow fallen asleep again in spite of all the tension in the room. Being very small and understanding nothing was a blessing that Tara and Brenton both almost wished they could share. Brenton got up and went to Daniel, and tenderly changed the little boy’s position so that his head rested on the pillows, and drew covers up over him. Looking over at Tara, he said, “There’s just one thing we did right.” He looked down at Daniel. “One good thing we did.”

  Tara exhaled, feeling completely drained. “I can’t talk anymore tonight, Brenton. I can’t say another thing, not after all this, since this afternoon. Part of me is still trying to believe all this. I can’t go on talking now.”

  “Yeah, we probably shouldn’t talk anymore,” said Brenton, his shoulders slumping. “We should both get some rest. The thing is, tired as I am, I don’t want to go to sleep.” He reached over and brushed just the tips of his fingers over Daniel’s hair. “I’m exhausted and I don’t want to sleep. He’s a year old and this is the first time I’ve seen him, and if I go to sleep I’ll have to take my eyes off him. I don’t want to stop looking at him. I just want to watch him, and just be his dad. That’s all I want now.” He glanced back over at Tara and found her watching him watch Daniel. “You can go on to sleep. I’m just going to sit up with him for a while—just sit and be his dad.”

  Tara finally permitted herself to yawn softly, and put her head down on the pillow at her back. She curled up on the bed, shut her eyes, and became still. Brenton felt relieved, in a way, to see her going to sleep. Tomorrow would be an even bigger day than today had been, for all the shock and upheaval of it. Tomorrow they would go shopping for things for their son—and Tara would have to start to learn to be his mother all over again.

  And Brenton would have to start to learn from scratch, a year late and totally unprepared, to be his father.

  Brenton did not care. The fact remained, however he had discovered it, that he was a father. And lying in a ridiculously contrived excuse for a bed next to him was the most beautiful and wondrous thing he’d ever set eyes on in his life.

  Quietly, he stepped over to his desk on one side of the room and took the leather chair from it, and wheeled it over beside the table where Daniel slept. He went to the light switch and dimmed the lights. Then he sat himself down in the leather chair and settled into watching his sleeping son.

  He did not know how long he sat there, just watching the little boy, imagining all the things they would do together, all the things he would teach Daniel, all the places they would go—and all the years of watching him grow up into a strong, proud young lad, and a strong, proud young lion. He took a moment to gaze over at the sleeping Tara. What would he do about the confused human woman he’d gotten pregnant?

  How would he help her to be Daniel’s mother, to learn how to accept what she and Brenton had made together? He had no doubt that Tara’s love for their son would remain constant, no matter what. But she was still human, and Brenton could imagine nothing more challenging, even intimidating, than having to raise a werelion cub with a human mother. How had he gotten himself into this situation?

  You frickin’ idiot, you did it by keeping her right where she is right now, in your frickin’ bed, he admonished himself. Right over there is where this probably happened, you horny bastard.

  He watched Daniel for a while longer, resolving to stop bashing himself for the perfectly natural thing he’d done and enjoyed: for it had given him the precious thing now lying in front of him. He would not have changed a thing, even if he could.

  After a while, Brenton stripped down to just his briefs, the way he’d been when Tara called him to tell him that he was a father. Not wanting to disturb Tara’s badly needed sleep, he went to the closet and pulled out one of the quilts under which he had mounted her by the fireplace. He spread it over the bed, covering Tara, and climbed under it himself. Lying in just his briefs beside the still-clothed Tara, Brenton turned up the corner of his mouth in an ironic smile at the thought that this was his and Tara’s very first time going to bed and doing nothing but sleep.

  As he descended into the deep fog of sleep himself, Brenton’s last thought was, Yep…we’re parents, all right.

  _______________

  The first time Tara came to this house, it had felt as though she were living out a fantasy. Being back here again now felt like a fantasy again—but a fantasy of a very different kind.

  She and Brenton woke to the sound of Daniel mewling, and found him sitting up in the drawer. They found he had wet the sheets—they had neglected to put anything on him after he morphed out of his lion cub shape—and took the sheets to the washer and the boy to the bathroom sink for a wash-up. Brenton did not have a bathtub, just a spacious shower in which he'd done the deed to Tara both standing up and lying down. But the bathroom sink was plenty roomy and they had no trouble making it a bathtub of sorts. Bathing accommodations for their son were among the things they would have to investigate.

  After the bath, they dressed Daniel and took him to the kitchen, where they let him play on the floor with some of his toys that Tara had managed to pack. They prepared breakfast for themselves and Tara heated some milk for Daniel—until they looked down at him and found him pulling at his clothes with hands beginning to morph into paws and a face and hair starting to shift from human boy to lion. Brenton responded immediately, pulling the clothes off the lad and letting him complete his change. He had Tara hand him the bottle and put the cub on his lap and began to feed him.

  Tara sat down at the table and watched Brenton feed the little lion. She looked sad and lost. “How do we know when he’s going to do that?” she asked. “How will we be able to take him anywhere? We’re supposed to go shopping for him today. We can’t leave him here by himself. How can we take him with us when we don’t know when he’s going to…”

  Brenton cut her off. “We can’t know when he’s going to change—yet. We have to teach him not to just do it whenever he feels the urge, that there’s a time and a place for it. It’s like potty training, something he has to learn and we have to help him with. He’ll get it.”

  “My God,” said Tara. “Potty training and…shifting training. How am I supposed to deal with this?”

  “It’s not just you,” said Brenton, carefully negotiating the angle of the bottle in the cub’s mouth while Daniel sucked hard at it and pawed both the bottle and Brenton’s hand. “It’s something we both have to deal with. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years—my people, that is. We’ll get it. And you’re not the first human woman to have a cub with one of us. I promise, you’ll get this.”

  “Other human women have been through this?” Tara asked incredulously.

  “You’d be surprised. Humans have been having cubs with us all along, all through the ages. It’s something we keep quiet, just like we keep quiet the fac
t that we even exist. Naturally, people in general don’t usually get to know about it—or us.”

  “And now I’m going to have to get to know about it—about you, about your people, about how to raise my son when I don’t even know anything about who he is. I don’t know how I can do this, Brenton. It’s having to learn things I never thought I’d have to know about my own child. And it’s like having to learn my whole life all over again. How can I do this?” She folded her arms on the table and put her head down on them. “I just don’t know.”

  Brenton pulled himself up from the floor, cradling cub and bottle in his arms, and took a seat next to Tara. He pulled the nipple of the bottle from Daniel’s little fangs, making the cub mewl and paw and twitch his tail at him in protest. “Ssshhh,” he said to Daniel, and rested the bottle on the table, then reached over to touch Tara’s arm. “Listen, I know this feels overwhelming,” he said, “but other human women have gotten through this. You will too. You’ll do just as well as they did—better, even. I’ll start calling around to the rest of my pride. They’ll be shocked, of course, but they’ll come running. And they’ll bring things. We probably won’t even have to go shopping; I’ll bet they’ll bring everything we could need, and stuff we wouldn’t even think of.”

  Tara looked up at him from her folded arms. “Your pride,” she said, gravely, apprehensively. “You’re going to have your pride come over. I’m going to be in a house with a pride of…lion people.”

  “Yeah,” said Brenton, matter-of-factly.

  Somehow, Tara managed to rise up on her elbows. “A pride of lion people,” she repeated. “A pride of werelions.”

  “That’s right,” Brenton said.

  “Brenton,” she said, “I’m not even used to my lion son and his lion father. Now I have to deal with a whole pride of you?”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of,” Brenton assured her. “They’re my family.”

  “And what will they think of me?” Tara asked.

  “The same thing any family thinks when one member has a surprise baby. They’ll be surprised and curious. If you’re thinking they’ll attack you, Tara, they won’t. They’ll want to know everything about you, naturally. And they’ll be a little cautious around you because you’re a strange human coming around the pride. They’ll be cautious and protective. And they’ll have as many questions for you as you have about us. That’s just to be expected. Obviously we don’t just go revealing ourselves to humans all the time.

  They’ll have to get to know you and you’ll have to start getting to know them. But I swear, there’s nothing to be afraid of. And one thing’s for absolutely sure: They’ll love Daniel the second they set eyes on him. They’ll love him and welcome him and they’ll all want to pet him and pick him up and play with him. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Tara looked ready to keel over from her seat. “‘Nothing to worry about.’ No, there’s nothing to worry about, just a lot of lion people coming over, suspicious of me and wanting to pet and paw my lion child.”

  Brenton said firmly and confidently, “Tara, it will be okay.”

  “Well, you know what?” Tara replied. “Before they all come and want to look me over, I want to know everything about them first. Before you get on the phone and call the pride and tell them to come and meet our child, I want you to explain to me everything about your family and your people and how you got to be the way you are and just how it is that you live with us, because there are still a couple of million things I don’t understand about any of this.”

  At Daniel’s insistent squirming and pawing, Brenton took up the bottle and began to feed him again. “All right, that’s fair. You’ve come into this whole thing blind, you feel like you’re in over your head, and you’re right, there are things you need to know. So I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything about us. And maybe it’ll help you calm down enough to meet my family and not be scared.”

  Tara rolled that last part around in her mind. And not be scared. Not the least of the challenges she would now be facing would be not being scared. She sat upright at the table and let Brenton begin to talk.

  “We’re not supernatural creatures,” Brenton began. “We weren’t created by magic; no one put a curse on someone thousands of years ago and created us, or any of that stuff you’d see in a movie. We’re as human and natural as you are. We’re…humans with a difference. The difference is in the DNA, the genes. We’re a mutation. If you had all the same genes working that we do, you’d be a werelioness and we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. We’ve existed for probably as long as humans have.

  No one knows just what happened, genetically, to make certain humans able to shift into a lion body. But physically, we’re two creatures in one. We think there may have been times, back in history or before history, when humans might have worshipped us. Mostly, humans have been afraid of us, and we’ve had to hide from you because there are billions more of you than there are of us. The mutation is very rare; only a small number of people have it, relatively speaking. So we’ve had to learn to live either separately from you or secretly from you. And we’ve had to learn to protect our own.

  “A werelion family is called a pride, just like a real lion family. There are prides in different parts of the country. We mostly live in rural areas, or areas where there aren’t big cities. There are other prides in California, and prides in some other places, mostly where the winters aren’t that harsh. Humans come into contact with us all the time and don’t usually know it, unless it’s someone who’s proven we can completely trust them—or a human who becomes a member of a pride because they’ve mated with one of us.”

  Brenton paused at that, to study and measure Tara’s reaction. For a moment, the only sound was Daniel sucking at the bottle. Tara looked as if she were not even breathing as she listened to him. Brenton decided to take that as a positive sign. At least she was listening and she was calm—at least outwardly.

  Brenton decided to go on from there. “We usually live in places where there are forests, or open fields with not a lot of people around and not a lot of roads going through, where we can feel safe taking our other shape when we want to or need to. Psychologically we have a need to be lions at least part of the time; it’s not good for us to stay human for too long. But we have to train our cubs carefully to know when it’s safe to change.

  There’s nothing more dangerous to us than being spotted by a human when we’re in our other shape. That’s why a lot of us go into real estate or become property owners. If we have land of our own, or places of our own, where we can control who gets to be there or we can create safe spaces where just anyone can’t see us, it’s better for our health and our safety. That’s why I bought this place. It’s a safe space for me, and it’s a safe space for my pride to visit.”

  “Your pride…the other werelions in Napa. They’re all your family.” Tara sounded almost as if she were in a trance.

  “We settled here a long time ago,” Brenton continued. The Napa Valley Pride, the Morgan Pride, we’ve been here for generations. Not as long as the wine growers, but a long time. The main pride is mostly females, just like a real lion pride. They live in the main family compound, not far from here. Most of the male members of the pride leave the compound, also just like a real lion pride. It’s really usually no more than three older males who stay. The rest of us leave. Some of us have gone to other places, to join other prides or start their own prides. I like it here, so I stayed here.”

  “And you…your people…you’ve lived this way for hundreds—thousands—of years?”

  “We go back about as far as humans do. Not all of us go into owning and trading land. You’d be surprised at where some of us live and what some of us do. There are some of us who live in cities, but they have kind of a secret life and secret places they go, where they know who they are and who everyone else is, and there aren’t any humans, or there are at least very few humans. It gets to be like a club, with secret memberships
and codes and passwords—kind of like speakeasies back when humans prohibited alcohol. And some of us even go into law enforcement…”

  Now Tara seemed to come back to full attention, stiffening in her seat and widening her eyes as if suddenly jolted with electricity. She grasped the edge of the table and exclaimed, “What? Law enforcement? You mean like…police…FBI? Cops?”

  “Yeah,” said Brenton. “There are places where werelion cops and law enforcement people look out for other werelions. They help when one of us gets into trouble, and they help us…cover our tracks when necessary. They make sure that information about us doesn’t get in front of the wrong eyes or into the wrong hands. They’re some of the most valuable members of our community. There have been times when we would have been in the worst kind of danger without them.”

  “Oh my God…” said Tara, breathlessly.

  “Like I said,” Brenton told her, “we take care of our own. We have to. We look out for others to keep ourselves and all of us safe. The only reason I’m telling you any of this now…is Daniel.” And as if he understood what his father was saying, Daniel pawed at Brenton’s hand and twitched his tail. “Because of him, now these are things you have to know. Tara, there’s no choice now. You have to learn to trust us, and we have to learn to trust you—for Daniel.”