by Moira Rogers
A baby. Sometimes Sera wanted one so much it hurt, and she couldn’t even pretend it was all the coyote, though the coyote was the reason she couldn’t think about it. Each generation seemed destined to suffer more than the last, and she would not do that to a child.
Though if the father wasn’t a coyote…
She trampled the thought before it could finish forming and swiftly changed the subject. “Speaking of adorable kids and the people who are crazy about them, how’s Cody doing?”
A sudden smile chased the exhaustion from his features. “Eight going on eighteen. I don’t know how Mackenzie’s going to handle the next ten years without going nuts.”
Mackenzie knew all about being valued only for her ability to save her species from extinction. Faced with the choice between the cougar she didn’t love and the human she did, she’d chosen love. And then she’d chosen to adopt a young wolf who needed a family.
Josh would probably call her a freak, too. Sera could think of worse company to be in. “She brought him around to Dixie John’s a couple weeks ago. He knows how to melt every adult woman in a ten-mile radius already. The servers were fighting over who got to give him milkshakes and cookies.”
Jackson groaned. “Lord help us.”
“He’s your kid all right,” Sera pointed out, trying not to laugh. “Do you think I’ll get to see him before Julio picks me up?”
He checked his watch. “They should be here in a few minutes.”
Sera picked up a pen and hesitated with the tip hovering over the top form. “Can I ask you something kind of personal? It’s okay if you don’t want to answer.”
“Shoot.”
She tried to think of a way to ask the question that wouldn’t make her own inner turmoil painfully transparent, but Jackson wasn’t just a detective with a keen understanding of human nature. He was the man who’d had to heal her face after Josh had smashed it in. He was the man married to a woman who’d fought her own battle against the coming death of her species.
He’d know. But she didn’t think he’d tell anyone else. “Is it hard? Raising a wolf when you’re…not one?”
“Yes,” he answered seriously. “But I don’t know that it would be easier if I were a wolf. Being a parent is supposed to be hard, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She filled out her name in carefully formed letters. Seraphina Agatha Irene Sinclaire. Her mother had named her for three different saints, and had raged when none of them proved worthy protection. “I guess for some of us, it’s worrying about the line between hard and tragic.”
“I think that line is unique to individuals, darlin’, and not always something you can see coming.”
“You’re probably right.” Sera made herself smile. “Hey, maybe the line’s not as thin as it used to be. Things are looking up around here, right?”
“They are,” he agreed. “Lots of changes, and plenty more on the way.”
Sera caught a whisper of Mackenzie’s voice at the edge of her hearing, still muffled by the wall but familiar enough to be recognizable. She capped the pen and swept all of her papers into a neat stack topped by a bright pink Post-it. “I think I hear Mac.”
Jackson didn’t quite jump out of his chair, but he did push it back and rise as the door opened with a jingle. Cody walked in first, his features schooled in a mask of concentration. “Ask me another one.”
“All right, smart guy.” Mackenzie grinned at Sera over Cody’s head. “Six times eight.”
“Forty-eight.” He didn’t wait for confirmation that he was correct, just whooped and stomped over to Jackson’s desk. “I’m practicing my times tables.”
“So I hear.” He ruffled Cody’s hair. “Good job.”
“Thanks.” The boy leaned on the desk for a moment before easing past Jackson to crawl into his desk chair. “Hey, Sera.”
“Hey, Cody.” He had dark hair and serious eyes, along with a tough little alpha shell that made her wonder what Julio had been like as a boy. “I think you’re better at math than I am already.”
His nose wrinkled. “But you’re a grown-up.”
Maybe this was too early for a stay-in-school lecture. Sera wrinkled her nose back at him. “Some grown-ups aren’t good at math. My favorite subjects were science and history.”
“I like P.E. I’m the fastest runner in the class—” He bit off the words with an apprehensive look at Mackenzie. “But I don’t run too fast, I promise.”
“I know you don’t, honey.” Mackenzie perched on the edge of the desk and smoothed a strand of Cody’s hair back before smiling at Sera. “How’re you doing, Sera? I heard you had some trouble the other night.”
Mackenzie’s concern pressed in on her, different than the dominant power that flowed from the wolves but every bit as real. “I’m fine,” she said, trying to put a little push behind the words. “Everyone’s got it under control.”
For a few seconds the older woman studied her, and the concern tipped over the edge. Not only pressing, but smothering. So well-meaning, but Sera couldn’t help the way it made her feel smaller.
In that heartbeat, Sera wanted to run away.
The moment broke. Mackenzie rose to her feet and kissed Cody’s head. “I gotta run. I’ll see you at home in a couple hours, okay?”
He nodded. “Can we have pizza tonight?”
“How about homemade pizza?”
“Pepperoni?” he asked hopefully.
“The kind we slice ourselves,” Jackson promised. “C’mon, kiddo. Mom’s got to go.”
Cody slid his arms around Mackenzie’s waist in a quick squeeze. “Bye.”
It was a sweet moment. Two parents and their child, negotiating over pizza. No sign that one cast spells and the other two should have been enemies in the supernatural world.
And now Sera had to go back to Julio’s apartment with his grown-up dishes and his warm, quiet safety and pretend she wasn’t imagining a life there with him and an adorable baby wolf with Julio’s dark eyes.
The institution looked more like a wilderness retreat than a hospital or temple. Julio sat on a stone bench outside a side door at one end of the sprawling building and toyed with a yellow poplar leaf while he waited for Sera.
But she wasn’t the first person to push through the exit. Callum appeared, his usual suit jacket discarded in favor of a crisp button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He veered toward Julio, an almost foreign smile on his lips. “Sera told me you were here. It was nice of you to bring her.”
He talked about it the same way Sera did, as if he’d done her a favor. “She shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“These visits can be hard on her.” The empath leaned one shoulder against the wall and tilted his head toward the building. “But Kelly’s been having a good week, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Is there something else going on?”
Callum didn’t run with anyone in Alec’s inner circle, so there was no reason he should have heard. “Josh showed up the other night. I guess he doesn’t like the ex part of ex-husband.”
“I see.” A crack appeared in Callum’s civilized demeanor, a vicious, predatory gleam in his eyes. “I assume someone is taking care of the situation?”
Another reminder that the empath before him was different from Julio’s sister or Kat. A realist. “I’d have ripped the bastard’s head off already—if I could have. I sent Anna after him to make sure he goes home. If not…” Julio shrugged.
Callum’s lips tightened. “The situation is more complicated than you might realize. But there’s not much I can say about—”
An enraged female shriek cut through the air and ended on a howl. Callum whirled and lunged for the door, but Julio caught it first, yanking it open with an alarming creak.
Sera stood at the other end of the hall, both hands extended toward a snarling coyote. “I’m fine. I’m fine, there’s no one—”
Another howl rose over her words, and the coyote turned and bared her teeth at Julio, her paws scratching over the h
ardwood floor as she prepared herself to pounce.
Fighting with Sera’s mother wasn’t an option, so he froze and backed against the wall. “What’s wrong with her?”
Sera looked too stricken to reply, her expression caught between guilt and misery. It was Callum who strode forward, one hand outstretched. “Kelly, be calm.”
The coyote shuddered and slumped to the floor all at once, like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Sera scrambled to her knees, smoothing her mother’s ruffled fur as frantic words fell from her lips in an incoherent jumble. Julio only caught a few. Mostly I’m sorry and I’m safe.
Callum lowered his hand. “Sera, you have to let us tend to her. She won’t calm down while you’re here, you know that.”
Sera flinched under the blunt words, but eased away and rose carefully. She didn’t meet Julio’s eyes as she walked toward him, moving like every step hurt. “Take care of her,” Sera whispered, then darted past Julio, shoving through the door and out into the sunlight.
Julio had to chase her. “Sera, wait. Sera!” He caught her arm, careful not to jerk her to a halt.
She was gasping for breath, dragging in deep lungfuls of air, as if she couldn’t get enough. “I’m so stupid. I know better, I know better.”
“Better than what?” He drew her closer. “What set her off?”
Sera shook her head so hard her hair whipped against his face, tousled red strands wrapping their floral scent around him. “Can we run?” she asked, her voice plaintive and shaking. “I need to run. I can’t be in my skin anymore.”
They couldn’t have built a place like this without safe space for such things. Julio nodded and peeled off his jacket. “Do you know where?”
She kicked off her sandals with such force that one tumbled into a nearby flowerbed. “There’s a path behind the fountain.” Her cheeks were flushed, her movements jerky and uncoordinated as she stripped off her T-shirt to reveal a pastel-green bra edged with ruffles and lace. “Lots of land to run.”
Maybe the priests and priestesses who ran the place saw this kind of thing every day and could ignore the pale curves of Sera’s body as she disrobed. Julio had to turn away before the image seared itself into his brain, fueled a thousand dirty fantasies he shouldn’t have been having in the first place. “Will things here be all right?”
“They can take care of her.” A zipper rasped behind him—Sera’s jeans, no doubt. The denim whispered over her skin. “If I’m here, she’ll stay upset.”
Julio dropped his shirt and toed off his shoes. “You didn’t answer me before.”
Her jeans landed on the grass at the edge of his vision. A flash of pastel green followed—panties that matched the bra. “What question?”
He jerked his gaze away. “What upset her?”
She hesitated for so long, he might have suspected she’d already shifted, if not for the absence of magic. Then she sighed, a quiet sound barely louder than the wind through the beckoning trees. “She could smell a male shifter on me.”
Before he could question her further, a surge of magic signaled her shift. He followed suit, hurriedly calling on the flare of instinct inside him, afraid she’d run without him if he wasn’t quick about it.
Instead she stood waiting for him, her body small and compact, even for a coyote. She was more brown than gray, her fur glinting reddish in the sun, and she hunkered lower as he looked at her, her tail low and her nose almost brushing the grass.
Submission rolled off her in waves, couldn’t have been any clearer if she’d rolled to her back to bare the vulnerable underside of her throat. Julio nudged her once, again, then took off around the edge of the building.
She shot past him, swift and nimble, paws barely touching the ground as she charged toward the woods. When he sped up, so did she, her joy at the chase almost palpable.
She’d tire herself out running so fast, so hard, but maybe it was exactly what she needed. So Julio paced himself to keep up but never quite catch her, and he let her run.
Her stamina gave out after a few miles. Her sides heaved as her graceful lope became more of a stumbling charge, clumsy paws slipping on clumps of leaves or bits of grass. She tripped over a branch and tumbled to the ground, only to scramble up on trembling legs and shift directions, moving more slowly.
Julio steered her toward a bed of moss and sprawled out, positioning himself lower than her. Anything to put her at ease, at least for a while. After a brief hesitation she trotted to his side and let exhausted legs give out, curling against his body slowly enough to give him time to jerk away.
Impossible to tell what she needed more—the comfort of another form or carefully chosen words. After several long moments, Julio shifted, riding a wave of magic until he reclined beside her, human once more. “I’m not very good at this sort of thing, any of it, but I know Callum is. He’ll help your mom.”
A fine trembling worked through her. Her power was quieter, a shimmer of energy as the coyote vanished, replaced by her human body. She pulled her legs up until she was curled on her side, back against him and her knees drawn tight to her body. This close he could see the pale freckles that dotted her shoulders and back, before the breeze caught her hair and spilled it across her body.
Sera’s breathing hitched. “She had a psychotic break when I was five. I barely remember her before. Just now that the world has broken her.”
Her tone chilled him even more than the words, hopeless and lost—and yet still resigned. “Is she sick, or did something happen?”
Sera went unnaturally still. “Something happened.”
She didn’t want to tell him, and he didn’t have it in him to push her. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is now. Are you all right?”
“No.” She squirmed back against him, the press of her naked body overwhelmed by the fear throbbing in the air between them. “I want to run, Julio. I want to run away, disappear. If he finds me—”
He won’t. I’ll protect you. I’ll take you away. He bit back the platitudes, the reassurances, and slid his arm around her. “Where do you want to go? Anywhere, you name it.”
“The beach.” It tumbled out, as if she couldn’t believe she was saying it. Her fingers curled around his in a desperate grip. “I don’t want to be a submissive shifter or Franklin Sinclaire’s daughter. I want to be a girl on the beach.”
“Florida?” Her hair smelled like roses. “Panama City Beach. They call it the Redneck Riviera, you know. We can wear flip-flops and cutoffs. Stay in one of those gigantic condos right on the water.”
“Are you offering to run away with me, Julio Mendoza?”
“Callum said I needed a vacation.”
She started to twist toward him, but froze when the movement brushed his arm against the underside of her breast. Color crept up her face as she turned her back to him again. “I can’t believe I forgot we’re naked.”
Maybe she thought he was the kind of creeper who would take advantage of a scared, sad, crying woman. “I’m sort of used to it.”
Her hand covered his again, fingers soft and tentative. “I don’t spend that much time with shifters who were born that way. The wolves who were turned, they don’t always get that sometimes it’s sex, and sometimes it’s…comfort.”
“I wish I could tell you it was better with born wolves, but they’re sadly just as liable to read things into a—a naked situation.”
She made a choked sniffling noise, caught between laughter and tears. “I know you’re only comforting me, but I’m liable to start reading things into this if we don’t head back. So agree to go on vacation with me before I do something stupid.”
“Wherever the road takes us.” He rose, helped her to her feet and smoothed back her hair. “I promise, Sera.”
She smiled and rocked up on her toes, bringing her lips even with his cheek. Her kiss was soft, her lips skating over his skin, barely touching. Then she laughed into his ear. “See? Only moderately stupid.”
Before he could respond she s
pun away, shimmering as she turned. Magic sang through the trees as she hit the ground on four paws and launched into the woods with a yip that dared him to chase her.
With Sera on steadier ground this time, the change that swept through him brought with it searing heat he knew would translate into arousal if it didn’t subside by the time he shifted back. She was sweet and a little wild, and distracting enough without his body having memorized the sensation of her bare flesh pressed to his.
Maybe he was a creeper, after all.
Julio growled and ran after her.
Miguel opened another beer—his third—and stifled a yawn as he watched Julio drop his second suitcase in the entryway of his apartment. “Jesus, how long are you going to be gone?”
“A week, I guess. Maybe more. I don’t know exactly.”
“You pack like a girl.” Miguel leaned forward and squinted at Patrick, who’d sprawled out in the chair across from his. “He’s not thinking about clock towers and high-powered rifles, at least. Mostly he thinks you packed so much shit because you’re covering up the fact that you’re going to be naked all the time, or you finally figured out you may as well not come back to face Sera’s dad. Who is massively scary, by the way. Have I mentioned that?”
“A time or two.” Or a hundred, Julio added silently.
Miguel smirked. “I heard that.”
Patrick rested his ankle on his knee and spread his arms along the back of the chair, his posture deceptively relaxed. “I’d never take a high-powered rifle to a clock tower. Too cliché.”
It sounded like diversion to Julio. “What would you take to a clock tower?”
“A hot chick and a six-pack?”
“Mm-hmm.” Miguel grinned. “Too bad Anna’s not a big fan of heights.”
“Fucking tragic,” Patrick drawled before pinning Julio with a look. “Get your brother out of my head. He’s not harmless enough for it to be cute.”