Keeping Her Pride (Ladies of the Pack Book 1)

by Lauren Esker

  "Oh, he's all bark and no bite," Janice reassured her, then checked herself. "Okay, no, that's not true. There's definitely some bite. He works hard and expects a lot of himself, so he expects a lot of the people around him. But if he thinks you're worth it, he'll do literally anything for you."

  "Like giving you the day off to spend with your son?"

  Janice paused in the act of flipping a page over. "What did Fletcher tell you?"

  Maybe it had been inappropriate of Fletcher to tell her, come to think of it. Debi had no children of her own; she wasn't sure how defensive a mother would be about her child's privacy. She flirted with a careful lie but, in keeping with what had apparently become her new life philosophy, decided to go for honesty instead. "That your son is chronically ill and you needed the time off."

  "Yes, that's true." To Debi's relief, Janice didn't seem offended, but she looked down as if she was embarrassed or guilty. "It's hard, balancing a job with a parent's responsibilities. Fletcher has been awfully good to me. I don't know where I'd be if not for this job, but I can't give a hundred and ten percent to the company when I'm already giving a hundred to my son."

  It was honestly something she'd never thought about. "I guess it's good that Fletcher and, uh, Chloe don't have kids, then."

  Janice looked puzzled. "Didn't you know? They have a daughter. Very sweet kid."

  "... oh?" was all she could manage. Her image of Fletcher had suddenly tilted sideways. How did father fit into his driven, dedicated businessman persona?

  Perhaps mistaking the reason for her silence, Janice said, "Tragic, isn't it? It's so hard on a young child when their parents go through a breakup. Bruce and I had some rough patches after Nathan came along, but we were able to smooth things over."

  "Tragic, yes," Debi agreed, still in a daze. She was trying to imagine Fletcher Briggs—controlled, emotionally armored Fletcher Briggs—doing parent things: reading to his daughter, tossing her in the air, getting down on his knees and helping her build sand castles, taking her to the water park ...

  Her imagination was especially obliging with that last one. Fletcher, shirtless. Fletcher, wet. She could tell from the way his shirts stretched across his shoulders that he was built. She could all too easily imagine him with nothing but a clinging, damp T-shirt—

  "Do you have any children?" Janice asked.

  Debi shook herself out of her brief trip to fantasyland. "No, no. My career was always the most important thing for me. I—"

  She broke off at the sound of raised voices in the hall. An instant later, the door to the Sperlin-Briggs office banged open and Fletcher strode in, carrying a shoebox. A woman stormed inside on his heels.

  "If you'd called the daycare like a responsible adult rather than failing to show up half the time," Fletcher was saying, his voice heated, "this would never have been an issue in the first place."

  "There was absolutely no reason to take her to daycare when I could just as easily keep her home with me!"

  Debi tried not to stare. Speak of the devil and he appears. Or she.

  Obviously this was Chloe. She was much as Debi had imagined a wife of Fletcher's would look, stylish and pretty, her dark hair trimmed in a sleek bob. But that wasn't what had drawn Debi's eyes to her as soon as she entered the room.

  Chloe Sperlin was a shifter.

  All shifters could recognize each other on sight; some described it as a tingle or a fizzing sensation, some as a smell or a buzz. Debi wasn't sure if they actually experienced those things or if they were trying to put words to a sensation that English had no vocabulary to describe. It wasn't nearly so concrete for her. She just knew.

  But humans couldn't sense it. Debi wondered if Fletcher had any clue.

  At the moment, Fletcher seemed to be winding up for a tirade. "No reason aside from the fact that now we have to find a new daycare after this one dropped us, and ones that cater to—to special-needs children like her don't grow on trees, you know. Which I guess I'll have to look for in my copious free time, since you can't be bothered—"

  "Oh, that is completely unfair!"

  Fletcher started to gesture with the shoebox and caught himself. "You! Take care of this." He shoved the shoebox into Debi's hands, and as she stared at him, he snapped, "Very good care! Don't drop it! Or open it!"

  Fletcher spun around to resume his fight with his ex-wife. Debi stared at the box in her hands. She looked around to find that Janice, sensible woman, had taken her work elsewhere. Fletcher and his ex were still going at it. Debi started to edge out of the room herself, holding the shoebox, and as she did, she felt something move around inside it, the weight shifting from one end of the box to the other.

  There was an animal in there. A mouse? Gerbil? Curious, Debi lifted the corner of the shoebox lid. He'd said not to look, but she was a lioness at heart; if it got out, she was confident she could catch it again.

  Two bright eyes stared up at her from a nest made of something pink and frilly. Debi was so startled she almost did drop it, recovering at the last minute. Having slammed the lid down, she opened it again for another peek.

  It wasn't the fact that there was a snake in the box that had shocked her; it was the fact the snake was a shifter. Just as she could tell with Chloe, she could also tell that the little brown snake curled up in the pink frilly fabric was actually a shifter kid.

  Debi's mouth fell open. This was the child they were arguing about. No wonder the little snake was curled up in a sad ball, staring up at Debi with eyes that looked more anxious than she had realized a snake could look.

  "Come on, kiddo," she said softly. "Let's go find somewhere quiet."

  She took the shoebox into the break room. Fletcher and his ex could still be heard yelling at each other in the outer office, but at least the words were muffled.

  "Poor kid," Debi murmured. She put the shoebox on the counter, next to a bright pink box of donuts.

  It had been a long time since she'd eaten a donut without hearing Roger's voice in the back of her head, telling her to think about her weight and the family image. Everything comes down to the damn family image. Defiantly she took a donut with chocolate frosting and bit into it. Delicious.

  The lid of the shoebox wobbled as if something was pushing up from underneath. Debi lifted the corner, and the snake's tiny head popped up. Its little tongue flicked the air.

  Snakes used their tongues to smell, didn't they? "Do you want a donut?" Debi asked. She took another bite of hers. "They're very good."

  The snake slithered over the edge of the shoebox and made its determined, squirming way toward the box of donuts. Debi quickly put her hand in the way like a wall. The snake's little nose bumped into her palm. It looked up at her, then arched its body upward like an inchworm and slithered quickly over the top of her hand. Its scales felt dry and cool.

  "Oh no you don't." Debi blocked it again. "No donuts for snakes. But you can have one if you turn back into a kid."

  The snake flicked out its tongue and tried another cautious foray over the top of her hand. Debi shoved the rest of the donut in her mouth and put her other hand over the top to block it from that angle too.

  "Nope," she said indistinctly. "No donuts for snakes. Snakes eat—uh—bugs." That was right, wasn't it? Grade-school biology had been a long time ago. "Yes, bugs for snakes. I can get you a donut with bugs on top. Flies, maybe?"

  The shift was sudden: in an instant, she had her hand resting on top of a mass of brown curls, and a naked little girl was giggling at her. "Bug donuts!"

  "Do you want one?"

  "Yes!" the child crowed.

  "With bugs?"

  "No!"

  The thought dawned on Debi that Janice was still in the outer office, and she might not know about shifters. The sudden appearance of a naked child would be awkward to explain. "Let's go somewhere more private," Debi told the little girl. "You pick a donut and we'll get out of here. Uh, I don't suppose your clothes are around here somewhere?"

  The chil
d pointed to the box.

  "Ah." So that was the pink frilly thing.

  "I don't want my clothes," the child told her solemnly.

  "I don't blame you." She remembered going through bouts of nudism during her early childhood years. Clothing was restrictive and uncomfortable, making it hard to change shape. Like all shifters, she'd learned to accept it as a necessity as she grew up. "No need for clothes around here. What's your name, kid?"

  "Olivia. I'm four years old." The child held up a hand with all five fingers extended, then thoughtfully folded down her thumb.

  "Good for you. I'm Debi. Pick a donut."

  Olivia picked one with pink icing. Debi took another for herself—one of the cream-filled ones, because fuck you, Roger. She clamped it in her teeth to free her hands and carried Olivia in one arm and the shoebox in her other hand to the bookkeeping office. She closed the door with her hip and slid some files aside with her foot to make a place for Olivia to sit on the floor.

  Debi sat with her and they ate their donuts quietly.

  She hadn't been around small children very much since she was a child herself. The only one of her siblings who'd been married was Rory, and his wife had separated from him now that he was in prison. They'd never had kids. While all of the siblings had dated outside the pride, most of their energy had been focused on building up Lion's Share Software—driven by Roger and Mara's programming talents, and by the business acumen of the rest of the family.

  She'd never felt like she was missing anything. The idea of having a family of her own (subordinate to Roger's control of the pride, naturally) was far off on the horizon, a possibility for someday.

  Now she began to wonder if Roger had intended to ever let them have that. Families of their own were a distraction from the fierce pride loyalty he'd worked hard to cultivate. He hadn't been at all happy with Rory's marriage. At the time, she had thought it was because he hadn't liked Rory's wife, but maybe what he hadn't liked was that Rory had developed a bond with someone outside the pride.

  She noticed the yelling from the outer office had stopped. Either that, or Fletcher and his ex were now talking too quietly to hear through a closed door and a couple of walls.

  "Do they do that a lot?" Debi asked.

  Olivia nodded quietly, eating her donut in small bites. There was pink frosting on her nose.

  "Awww, that sucks, kid." At least her own family life hadn't been like that. There had always been harmony within the pride, enforced by Roger's teeth and claws when necessary.

  Were shifter-human relationships always that tempestuous? Maybe it was inevitable. Not that there was any reason why she would be thinking about it now. She pushed aside thoughts of Fletcher's bright smile and the warm light in his gray-green eyes.

  The door opened suddenly. Olivia dropped the damp, uneaten remnant of her donut and shifted, dwindling to a little brown snake with a smear of pink frosting on its pointed snake nose. Debi scooped a hand under her and picked her up.

  "There you are," Fletcher said. "I, uh—" He stopped. Debi looked up from the baby snake cupped in her hands to see Fletcher looking at her in horror.

  "What?"

  "She's venomous. If she bites you, you'll die."

  Her first inclination was to flinch and drop Olivia, but she got a firm handle on herself. "I'm sure she knows that. Don't you, Olivia?"

  Now Fletcher was simply staring at her in disbelief. Debi couldn't understand at first why he looked so stunned. She had to run her words back to try to figure out why. He knew his daughter was a shifter, didn't he? He must!

  ... oh. No. Wait. He didn't know Debi was a shifter.

  "I ..." She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. The deepest prohibition that had been pounded into her was not to reveal herself to a human. But Fletcher surely must know about Chloe and Olivia. Now she was caught on the pivot point of a decision that, once made, could never be taken back.

  "Did Janice tell you her name?" Fletcher asked, the words coming out slowly while those sharp tornado-sky eyes stayed on her.

  She could just say yes. But she wasn't sure if he'd accept that. For one thing, she had obviously been feeding the snake a donut.

  "No," Debi said softly. "She told me herself."

  Fletcher's breath huffed out in a long sigh. He didn't move for a minute, and then he snapped into sudden motion. He stepped into the room, shut the door, and looked around until he found the shoebox, which Debi had set on the edge of the nearest desk. He crouched down and held it out.

  "Put her in here. It'll be safer for both of you."

  Debi still didn't think she was in that much danger, but Fletcher was, she supposed, the resident expert at dealing with his daughter. She tilted her cupped hands over the shoebox. Olivia made an attempt to keep from sliding off before giving in and slithering into the nest made of her clothing. She promptly vanished into the sleeve of the pink, frilly dress.

  "I think she's mad at you," Debi said.

  Her words seemed to hit him like a blow. "I know she is. She's got a right to be." He sat down with the shoebox in his lap and his back against the desk. There was a brief, tense silence before he said, "You don't seem surprised. Have you ..." He paused and seemed to be considering his words carefully. "How much do you know about what Olivia is?"

  In a way, perhaps without meaning to, he was giving her another out. She could even claim that she thought he was nothing more than a man with an unhealthy attachment to his pet snake; she didn't have to tell him she'd seen Olivia shift. She thought it was possible that he was looking for an out, too.

  After her emotional outburst earlier, all her emotions were raw and tender, hovering close to the surface in contrast to her usual calm. It made it hard to think.

  Don't reveal yourself to humans. Never reveal yourself to humans.

  "She's a shifter," Debi said.

  She was unprepared for the way Fletcher leaned forward, his face alight and eager. Delight lit him up from the inside. For a moment she thought he was going to grab hold of her. In that moment, she desperately wanted him to.

  "You do know! How long have you known? How did you find out?"

  He still thought she was human. How much had Chloe told him? Did he somehow think Chloe and her daughter were the only shifters in the world?

  "I've known for a long time," she said uncomfortably.

  Fletcher still had that incandescent brightness about him, in contrast to his earlier reserve. "You wouldn't believe what a relief it is to be able to talk to someone about this. I haven't been able to—I mean—I'd never have told you if you hadn't seen it for yourself, but I guess if you know, then you know it's supposed to be kept secret. You know that, don't you?" Now his look was pleading. "My daughter's safety is in your hands."

  "Of course I won't tell. I've kept this secret for a long time myself."

  "Thank God. It's only that Chloe's the only person I've been able to talk to about it, and—" He stopped. It was actually kind of cute watching the implications sink in. "Wait. Are you—"

  Debi bit her bottom lip, and slowly, very slowly, she nodded.

  Fletcher leaned back against the desk. For a quiet moment, they simply looked at each other.

  "So that's why you weren't afraid of her biting you," he said at last. "Her venom can't hurt you. Other snakes are immune, right?"

  "I'm not a snake."

  "Oh." His eyebrows went up. "I just assumed—but, yeah, there are kids at her daycare who are other kinds of animals. Of course there are a bunch of different kinds. What do you turn into?"

  "I'd rather not talk about it."

  "Ah." She hated seeing the happy brightness fade from his face, but it didn't vanish entirely. It was still there, that inner light behind the windows of his eyes. "Well, it's something though, isn't it? I don't have to hide what she is around you. And that's huge. I can't ever leave her with anyone if I'm not positive they're in on the secret. I can't even take her out in public if I can possibly avoid it. I never know when or where sh
e'll change."

  "We call it shifting."

  "Right, yeah, I knew that." He looked down at the shoebox. Occasionally the wadded-up dress wiggled a little in one place or another, though the snake had yet to reappear. "It's so hard not being able to touch her when she's like this. It doesn't feel natural, you know? I mean," he added quickly, "it's not unnatural that she does this. That you do this. What I mean is, I hate not being able to pick her up and hold her when she's like this. I don't think she understands why I can't."

  "I'm not sure you can't, honestly," Debi offered. "I don't think she'd hurt you on purpose."

  "I don't think so either, but she's only four. What if she bites me by accident? Watching Daddy d—get hurt because of something she did would be pretty awful for her. I don't want to risk it. C'mon, sweetheart," he crooned. "Come on out and shift back, okay?"

  There was no response except some muffled rustling at one end of the shoebox.

  "That was her mother out there earlier, right?" Debi asked, and he nodded. "Is she gone?"

  "No, she's in her office. I pointed out," Fletcher said with a wry smile, "that if she really wants the company so badly, she can damn—er, darn well do her share of running it."

  "If you want to get it away from her, isn't it better for you if she doesn't?"

  He met her gaze. "I don't want to get it from her—not like that. Not by trickery and legal deception. I just want my share. It's fine with me if she gets some of the assets and I have to rebuild. Losing the entire thing ... that's what I can't take."

  Chloe Sperlin, Debi thought with a flare of anger, you are an idiot.

  Everything Chloe was giving up—this man, this child, this human pride—were things Debi sometimes felt she'd kill to possess. Not the specifics so much as just a place to belong. Chloe used to have a home here, and she had not only walked away from it, but was systematically destroying it.

  But different people wanted different things out of life. Perhaps what looked like a safe haven to Debi had been a stifling prison to Chloe.

  Fletcher shook himself out of a reverie and stood up, taking the shoebox with him. "I'm keeping you from your work, aren't I? I'm really sorry about this. It's not your job to babysit for me."