More Than Skin Deep (Shifter Shield Book 3)

by Margo Bond Collins

  And together, we dozed.

  Or rather, she did. I simply watched the setting sun moved toward the horizon, saw the shadows shifting and lengthening, smelled the world around me changing in all the tiny ways that humans so rarely notice. The small things low, low to the ground, in the grass, the things I missed living in the city.

  I loved my human life. And I was learning to appreciate my life as a shifter. I liked being part of a community of other people who had the same—or at least similar—abilities.

  But it didn’t leave much time for me to be Lindi the serpent. Lindi the counselor and Lindi the Shifter had been taking up all my time.

  It was good to get back home, get out into a snake’s world, and just be for a while.

  By the time I got back to the house and got Serena settled again in the terrarium, Mom was home cooking dinner.

  Yeah. It was good to have some things that remained the same, no matter what else might change.

  Chapter 7

  Saturday afternoon, I stood in front of the terrarium chatting with Serena. When I glanced down, I noticed something different about her bright green snake body. The colors were beginning to change, and the scales were smoothing out. Even as I watched, her body began to plump out and small appendages poked out of her side. Bright sparkles swirled around her. Unlike the earth magic that I saw when I shifted, these were multicolored, like tiny Christmas fairy lights glittering around her.

  She was absolutely beautiful.

  As I stood enthralled, I heard the door to the herpetarium open behind me.

  “Dad, come look,” I exclaimed. “Serena is finally shifting!”

  “She’s what?”

  The voice that answered me was not my father’s.

  By the time I spun around to try to intercept him, Shane was already standing next to me, staring into Serena’s enclosure, his mouth hanging wide open.

  “What the…?” His voice trailed off.

  I tried to intercede myself between him and Serena, but he was already peering down into the terrarium.

  Serena’s shift was almost complete.

  And Dad’s grad student had seen it.

  I didn’t want to leave an infant human in the snake enclosure for any longer than I had to. I needed to get her into the house and check all her vitals—and all of that machinery was in the house.

  For the first time, I realized how ridiculous it had been to assume that she wouldn’t shift while we were out in the snake house.

  I shouldered Shane out of the way, and he stumbled a little, still too shocked to have any real response.

  “You realize, of course,” I said, as I clutched the tiny baby to my chest, “that no one will believe you.”

  I made eye contact with him and let my vision go gray, a sure sign that my eyes had shifted to serpent form.

  A protective adrenaline rushed through me, and I let my fangs snap into place – a move I’d never actually made, but had often fantasized about. “If you expose her to the danger, I will come for you.” The S’s hissed with my most snake-like sibilance.

  I let my eyes shift back to human, retracted my fangs, and gave him a sunny smile. “If you tell anyone what happened here, they’ll think you’re insane.”

  Without another word, I turned on my heel and marched into the house, where I attached the miniature electrodes to Serena’s tiny, naked body.

  She was perfectly fine.

  I was trembling.

  * * *

  I stood in my old bedroom over the bed, where I spread out a small baby blanket and used it to swaddle the now-human Serena exactly as the doctor had showed me at the hospital. I was breathing hard, unable to calm down after the interaction with Shane.

  The clumping of masculine footsteps up the stairs didn’t help my mood at all. I scooped Serena up in my arms and held her protectively. Turning to face the door, I narrowed my eyes, preparing to respond to either my father for Shane.

  But who came through the door was actually Kade. An inarticulate cry escaped me, and I all but flew to him—at least as much as an arm full of human baby Serena would allow. He wrapped us both up into his arms, creating a protective cage that held us safe, at least for the moment.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer immediately, instead standing up on my tiptoes to press my lips to his. Everything about him seemed perfect in that moment. The fact that I didn’t have to stretch too much to kiss him. The amazing sense of presence he always projected into any space. The way his eyes swirled with hot, golden sparks after I’d kissed him. The fact that even as I stood there holding an infant, I felt his body’s reaction to mine as it pressed hard against me.

  “I’m glad to see you, too,” he said, his voice crawling low in his throat. He pulled me tighter against him for a moment then put both his hands on my shoulders and took a slight step back away from me. His beautiful, brown-gold eyes examined been carefully. Then he reached out to take Serena from me.

  He gazed down at her in his arms as he moved to the bed and sat down. Glancing up at me, he asked, “How long is it been since she shifted?”

  I checked my watch. “Maybe ten or twelve minutes?”

  “I’m a little surprised she’s not crying yet. That’s hungry work.” With a sure touch, he shifted her from one arm to his shoulder and balanced her there with one hand as he used the other to dig through the small black diaper bag Dr. Jimson had sent with me.

  He pulled out a bottle of baby formula, already prepackaged, and a separate nipple from another section of the bag.

  “Put these together for me?” He held out the items. I took them, a little bemusedly, and began figuring out how they all fit together.

  When I had the bottle ready, I handed it to him. He had spent the intervening few minutes talking to Serena, his voice sweet and quiet.

  “Is this what ‘supportive whatever’ looks like?” I asked as I handed him the bottle. He slipped it into Serena’s mouth, and once she was suckling happily, he grinned up at me.

  “This is exactly what supportive something looks like.”

  I dropped onto the bed next to him, sitting as heavily and suddenly as if my knees had actually given out. In actuality, they only felt like they had. “I think I might love you more right now than I ever have before,” I said, leaning my head over to rest it on his shoulder.

  Now,” he said, “tell me what you were so angry about when I came in.”

  So I did. Everything, from my dad and inviting Shane the grad student to come hang out, apparently in the actual hopes that he would see Serena changing, to the moment when I had shoved past Shane and out of the herpetarium entirely.

  By the time I finished talking, I was furious all over again. “And it’s like he has completely betrayed everything he ever knew about me. We spent my entire childhood keeping what I was a secret—and from what I’ve learned about the shifter world, that might have been what kept me alive. If people had known—if shifters had known—that I was a survivor of whatever extermination program y’all had put in place, I probably would’ve been assassinated. I do not want for these children to face something that terrible.”

  “And absolute secrecy is the only model you have for dealing with a dangerous situation like this?”

  I glared at him. “Don’t try to use counselor-speak on me. I know what you’re doing.”

  Kade moved Serena to his other arm, and I forced myself not to melt at the sight of him handling her so competently, so calmly.

  “I did go to medical school, you know,” he said. “We had a pretty substantial psychiatric series. I did a rotation in psych.”

  Shaking my head, I reached out and took Serena from him, holding her up onto my shoulder and patting her back. “No. It’s not the only possibility. But yes, it is my childhood model for dealing with a potentially dangerous situation that involves children who are also shifters.”

  “Have you considered possibly g
iving your father’s idea a try?” Kade’s gaze was a little too direct, a little too innocent.

  “You’re in on this, aren’t you?” I asked.

  He stretched out on his side on the bed, cupping his head in the hand on his propped-up elbow so that his biceps bulged.

  “Don’t try to distract me by posing like some pinup boy,” I said, trying hard not to laugh.

  Kade snorted, and began trying other poses for me. “What about this one? Is this distracting enough?”

  “Scoot over, you smartass.” I slid Serena onto the bed between us, and stretched out beside Kade. I put my head down along my arm and looked up at him. “Do you really think it’s a good idea?”

  His mouth twisted a little as he considered. “I’m just not sure it’s a bad idea. It may be an impossible idea, at this point. Now that he’s seen a shift, he may run screaming in the other direction.”

  “About that…”

  “What did you leave out?” Kade’s voice was flat.

  “When I told him that no one would believe him? I might have shifted my eyes and teeth a little.”

  Kade shook his head, but he didn’t actually seem bothered by it.

  “As long as he didn’t get pictures, no one will ever believing. And with the things they can do with photo manipulation, no one would believe him anyway.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. I didn’t want to admit how much my instant, furious reaction had been worrying me.

  “Okay,” I said. “If that little incident didn’t send him screaming into the wilderness, I will consider the possibility that someone like Shane Wills the grad student might be helpful as we attempt to raise up to eight snake shifter babies.”

  “There’s no we in this. I’m merely the supportive whatever, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sure you are.” I reached my hand over to run it along the side of his face. “So what are you doing out here, anyway? Not that I’m not glad to see you, but I thought you were on duty all weekend at the hospital.”

  “One of the other ER doctors had a request in to see if anyone could switch out for a different weekend next month—I thought I’d take him up on it and come see how you girls are doing.”

  Yeah, right. Supportive whatever, my ass.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said aloud.

  * * *

  “But you may have come out here for nothing. Dr. Jimson wanted me to bring Serena back in if she shifted. I should probably go do that now.”

  “Why don’t you let me drive the two of you back into town?” Kade asked.

  “But my car is out here.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe we could come out again tonight and shift.” He looked at me with raised eyebrows. All too often, our shifting time spent together ended up with us back in our human forms having wild, passionate sex in the dirt.

  “I think that sounds like an absolutely perfect idea,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  He gathered up all the baby gear, and as we went down the stairs, I asked him, “Why are you so good with infants?”

  “I have seven siblings of my own,” he pointed out. “I’ve been surrounded by cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews—there have been children around me all my life. “

  “Until you moved to Texas,” I said, realizing something for the first time. “Did you move here to get away from your enormous family?”

  We moved outside, and Kade deposited all of Serena’s equipment in the back of his truck.

  “Not so much to get away from them,” he said as he opened the door to my backseat and began expertly unstrapping the baby seat. “More like get away from the constant surveillance that came with them.”

  I nodded, as if I actually understood what it might be like to have an enormous extended family.

  Of course, with all the children who were likely to be coming into my life, it looked like I might be on deck to find out.

  “Okay, we’re ready to go. Give her to me.”

  When Kade gotten her settled into the baby seat, all strapped in and ready to go, she looked unbelievably tiny and frail. “What if she shifts back on the way into town?” I asked.

  “Well, better a snake in the baby seat than a baby in the snake cage, I suppose.”

  “What do shifter parents do?”

  Cage shrugged. “Probably the same thing human parents do. Improvise a lot.”

  I shook my head. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  I had just stepped up on the truck’s running board when the door of the herpetarium opened, and Shane strode out.

  He froze at the sight of me, but only for an instant. He drew in a bracing breath, then kept walking toward me.

  Kade watched him, his head tilted in a way that made me think of his golden furred mongoose form, alert and listening, with one ear canted to catch anything that might come its direction.

  Shane gave a respectful nod to Kade, but his attention was focused on me. “Can I talk to you for a minute before you leave, Lindi?” he asked, his tone diffident.

  “Okay.” I stepped down, back onto the ground, and moved around to the front of the truck, where I stood with my arms crossed over my chest defensively. “I’m going to get the air conditioner running to keep Serena cool,” Kade said, and tactfully moved into the cab of the truck, where he could sit and watch without actually listening in on us—or at least that would be true if he were human. As a mongoose, his hearing was keen. He wouldn’t be missing anything.

  I walked away from the running engine, closer to the herpetarium door. “What do you need?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral.

  Shane looked over his shoulder toward Kade, as if trying to make sure he couldn’t overhear.

  “Kade knows everything,” I said, careful not to give away Kade’s own shifter secret.

  “Of course he does,” Shane murmured, before glancing up to gaze into my eyes. “Whatever it was that I saw,” he began, “whatever it is that you and the… baby?… juvenile?”

  “Infant,” I supplied.

  He nodded. “Okay. Infant. Whatever it the two of you are, I not going to do anything to hurt you. I am a scientist, but I’m not looking to get myself ostracized from the scientific community. I know that I would be a complete laughingstock. Treated like some cryptozoologist. I don’t want that, at all. I do not want to ruin my career any more than you want me to ruin your life by outing you.”

  I focused my narrowed gaze on him. My human senses couldn’t tell me much, so I allowed my eyes to shift, and my tongue. I flicked my tongue toward him together his scent and analyze it. I expected him to recoil, but he stood and watched me impassively. And not with the impassivity of a man fighting to avoid responding, but with the calm assuredness of one who had no fear at all.

  This man was used to dealing with snakes. Apparently one snake woman and her snake child didn’t faze him at all.

  I tasted no deception on the air. There was a slight musk of human sweat, but it was the kind that came from work, not fear. Everything about him radiated honesty.

  I let my senses shift back to human, and nodded. “I appreciate that,” I said, stepping back toward the truck. I had gotten several feet away when Shane called out after me.

  “Your father says that the baby’s a foster child, that she isn’t yours?”

  “That’s true.” I sounded almost as wary as I felt.

  “Then there are more of you? A lot?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Chapter 8

  Dr. Jimson was delighted to see us back with Serena so soon. “That took even less time than I expected.”

  “What does that mean about her stay here?” I asked. “Will she be able to come home soon?”

  He pursed his lips judiciously. “Perhaps. We need to watch her in her human state for a little while, make sure she doesn’t have any troubles. She didn’t have any problems eating? The bottle didn’t confuse her?”

  “I don’t think so.” I gestured toward Kade,
who stepped in and took over the conversation easily.

  “None at all,” he said. “She didn’t try to bite it or swallow it whole or have any of the typical shifter issues switching from one infant feeding form to the other.”

  “Excellent.” The doctor beamed at Serena. “I can’t say for certain, of course, but I think you should probably be able to take her home sometime next week.”

  Next week.

  The words landed like lead in my stomach, but dissolved quickly—apparently I was still anxious about Serena’s homecoming, but less so than I’d been before.

  * * *

  “Back to my place?” Kade asked as we climbed into his pickup.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “That didn’t sound as certain as I might’ve expected,” Kade teased.

  It hadn’t been certain. Definitely not as certain as he was used to, anyway. I had managed to put off thinking about what was going on with Jeremiah and Shadow this weekend, despite having checked in with them on Saturday.

  “There’s something I have to tell you.” I needed to do it. I’d been avoiding it for far too long, anyway.

  Kade turned those insightful, golden-flecked eyes on me. “I’ve been wondering when you’d get up the courage to spill,” he said.

  I jumped a little in my seat. “You already know?”

  “Only that there’s something strange going on. It started late last week—you’ve been avoiding me.” He paused for a second, slanting his gaze at me as he pushed his seat back and turned to face me more directly.

  “I decided to assume that it wasn’t about me.”

  “Not even a little bit,” I said.

  “I’m ready when you are.”

  I bit the insides of my lips closed, considering where to start. Kade was certainly right—I had been avoiding talking about this particular issue since the hyena and Hunter had shown up on my doorstep, or at least the Shields’ doorstep.