by Nalini Singh
Then, as Bastien held Kirby, the detective told her why the victims had never been identified. “Your family was just passing through. Came in on the train, rented the vacation house with cash for a week. No paper trail outside the home, and everything in it went up in smoke when an electrical fault caused a fatal overload early that morning.”
“The owner?” Bastien couldn’t believe he—or she—hadn’t remembered the names of the people to whom they’d rented a home.
The detective rubbed her hands over her face. “I went looking the first day, had a bad feeling it may have been a cash rental, given his habit of them.” Lips twisting, she said, “Turned out he’d had a fall while doing maintenance on another one of his properties two days earlier, took a serious bump to the head. Ended up recovering totally, except for some short-term memory loss.”
Bastien didn’t need the detective to spell it out to realize the time span of that memory loss had included the landlord’s meeting with a small lynx family. Luck had not been on the side of his little cat that long-ago day in Georgia, he thought, holding her tighter as her hand flexed and fisted convulsively against his back, her arm wrapped around him.
“Far as we could figure,” the detective continued, eyes on Kirby, “you must’ve squeezed outside through a pet door your parents probably didn’t expect you to fit through.” Shaking her head, she said, “Your palms were burned, too, soot and tears on your face.”
“Were you able to recover anything?” Bastien smoothed his hand down Kirby’s spine, able to feel the fine tremors shaking her frame. “The smallest piece could help Kirby trace her family.”
“I found a photo that looked like it was taken in a maternity suite of two adults with a baby,” the detective said. “Posted it everywhere I could think of, used it to search through missing persons files for years, but I made a mistake.” Her shoulders slumped. “I searched only through the missing tagged human, figured it had to be right since you were human.”
Kirby, his strong Kirby with her courageous heart, shook her head. “You had no way of knowing.” Taking a deep breath, she said, “The photo . . . do you still have it? Even a copy in a database?”
Shona Bay blew out a breath. “We had a major server meltdown ten years back that affected a lot of systems, so I can’t promise. I’m sorry.” The other woman tapped a finger on her desk. “I’m going to hunt for the physical file and the original photograph, but given the time that’s passed, there’s a good chance it’s already been destroyed.”
Kirby nodded, holding it together until the detective signed off. Then she screamed, thumping her fists against Bastien’s chest. “It’s not fair! I just want to know who I am! I just want to know!”
Aware she couldn’t hear him right now, Bastien simply kept her safe while she worked out her rage and sorrow, then held her skin to skin all night, his own fury a wild thing inside him. He wanted to fix this for her, make it better, but there was nothing he could do but be with her as she built a new life for herself out of the ashes of the old.
IN the three days that followed, Bastien grew even prouder of Kirby’s strength. She came back fighting, determined not to let the dead end of the records search stop her from living her life. “I made it this far alone,” she said, then touched her fingers shyly to his jaw. “Now I have you. No excuses for not going forward.”
Owned utterly, he took her to meet Lucas so she’d know she had the DarkRiver alpha’s sanction to join the pack. She handled the meeting with a sweet self-assurance that had Lucas giving her an approving look and a gentle kiss that was more than simple acceptance; it was the welcome of a predatory changeling alpha pleased with this new member of his pack.
Smug and happy because she was his, Bastien showed Kirby more about being changeling, watched over her during another session with Dorian, taught her about pack life, and introduced her to a lynx family that lived in the territory. The Bakers were a mature couple, with a grown son and a younger daughter, but Enid and Kirby clicked at once.
As a result, she felt comfortable enough to go off on exploratory trips in the forest with the older woman, Bastien and Kirby both aware Enid had much to teach her about her unique lynx senses. Bastien remained violently proud of his mate for her courage, but he had to fight his protectiveness each time she disappeared into the trees. He refused, however, to stifle her confidence or damage her new friendship by insisting on accompanying the women.
Instead, he spent the time working via a comm link to the office . . . and worrying, conscious of how new Kirby was to her animal form, her reaction times slow. The forest was their home, but it had its dangers, and she didn’t yet know them all.
Now, late afternoon on the third day, she tugged him down with her hands gripping his hair and nipped at his lower lip. “Go to dinner with your brothers.” It was a passionate order, her brow dark. “Otherwise you’ll pace a hole in the floor, and I won’t be able to concentrate for thinking about you.”
Seeing the truth of the latter in the pale gold of eyes gone lynx and hating that he was causing her anxiety, he forced himself to do as she asked. Somehow, he even managed to fool Sage and Grey into thinking he was on an even keel as the three of them unanimously decided to invite themselves to dinner at Mercy and Riley’s, the couple having returned from Arizona the previous night.
“We’ll take upside-down pineapple cake as a bribe,” Grey said with mischievous feline cunning. “Mercy can’t resist it.”
Bastien wasn’t the least surprised to discover his sister already knew he was seeing someone—though Sage had apparently kept quiet till then. The normality of his siblings’ ensuing ribbing helped the time pass, soothed the ragged edges inside him. He especially got a kick out of telling Mercy to do her worst; his lynx, he thought with snarling confidence, could handle it.
Back at the aerie just after nine thirty, he didn’t panic when he found it empty, despite the fact the plan had been for the two women to return by nine. Following Kirby’s scent—as vivid to him as if it was his own—he found her a short distance away, having a grand old time playing a game with three non-changeling lynx.
Bounding up to him the instant he appeared, she looked at him in wild welcome. And since Bastien had no resistance where Kirby was concerned, he stripped and shifted . . . to find himself pounced on, his mate in a playful mood that translated into her human form when they shifted back twenty minutes later.
Purring in his arms in bed, her skin flushed, Kirby kissed him with luscious slowness. “Why are we torturing ourselves again?”
“I have no fucking idea.” His chest heaved up and down, his leopard’s fur brushing against the inside of his skin.
Kirby ran her fingers over his kiss-wet lips. “I want you.”
At that instant, he couldn’t think of any rational reason not to take her, brand her. So when the comm panel chimed, he ignored it—until he realized it was his alpha’s code. Groaning, he left the erotic warmth of Kirby’s arms to answer the call, audio only.
What Lucas had to say changed the tenor of the entire night. “We’ve had word from a lynx pack in Calgary that’s been searching for a small family unit that disappeared twenty-three years ago.”
Kirby began to tremble, hope a tremulous whisper inside her.
Striding over to cradle her in his lap, Bastien asked the question she couldn’t form. “What did they say?”
“One of their members decided on a largely solitary existence when he turned eighteen,” Lucas replied. “He stayed in erratic touch with the pack—sometimes nothing more than a scribbled postcard after a year.”
His lynx nature, Kirby understood, must’ve been very strong.
“A year and a half after they’d last heard from him,” Lucas continued, “he contacted them to say he’d fallen for and mated with a human woman, had a baby girl, and intended to head home with his mate and cub in a month. No one ever arrived, and neither did the photos he’d promised of his new family.”
Blood cold, Kirby found
her voice. “Why was I . . .” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t ask why the pack hadn’t come for her.
“They couldn’t find you.”
“What?” Bastien growled. “They lost a child?”
“The last message just said the family was on the road, roaming their way home.” Lucas’s voice held taut frustration. “It meant the pack had no idea where to look when Kirby and her parents didn’t arrive. They dispatched trackers, sent out requests to countless local and international agencies, asking for news on a family composed of an adult male lynx, a human female, and a female lynx cub.”
“But I never shifted.” Kirby ran a shaking hand through her hair, her thoughts in splinters. “W-what happens now?”
“You look very much like the elder who contacted me,” Lucas told her, “so there’s not much doubt in my mind about the familial relationship. Still, I’d suggest a DNA test to confirm it, and quickly. Your grandma doesn’t strike me as a patient lady. She’s ready to claim her cub and your grandpa is willing to fight us all for you.”
Kirby’s lower lip quivered as Lucas signed off, her throat thick. “I have a grandma and a grandpa.”
Bastien wrapped her in the solid safety of his arms. “Yeah, and they sound just as tough as their grandchild.”
Kirby began to cry in earnest. She had a family, and they hadn’t thrown her away. They wanted her, had searched for her all these years. It altered the foundations of her existence.
THE DNA test was done by Dorian’s scientist mate, and a mere twenty-four hours following Lucas’s call, Kirby walked into the living room of DarkRiver’s healer. To come face-to-face with an older woman who had eyes of pale lynx-gold set in a face that echoed Kirby’s as strongly as Bastien’s echoed his brothers. She took one look at Kirby and enclosed her in an embrace so fierce, Kirby could barely breathe.
But it was all right, Kirby holding on just as hard. Then she was being hugged by a man of medium height with snow-white hair who had tears in his eyes and called her “my cub’s cub,” a hundred, a thousand words spoken over one another as they tried to catch up on a lifetime.
“My son,” her grandmother said an hour later, the three of them walking alone in the woods behind the healer’s home, “he was a strong, wild one, and he loved you.” Her hands touched Kirby’s cheeks. “Don’t ever doubt that.”
Throat scraped raw from the emotional storm that had passed, Kirby nodded, asked, “My mother’s name, can you tell me?”
“No, kitten, I’m so sorry,” her grandmother said, squeezing her hand. “The silly boy, he was so possessive—called her his mate in the message he sent.” Old sorrow in her gaze, before the pale gold filled with determination. “But now that we have your name, we should be able to use it in concert with our son’s to trace your mother.”
It might take time, Kirby realized on a crashing wave of hope, but it was very, very doable. Kirby’s birth must’ve been registered somewhere. Those records would exist. Even if not, there had to be travel records, or a rental agreement, a co-signed loan . . . Taking a shaky breath she hugged both her grandparents in turn. “Thank you for searching for me.”
“We will always be there for you.” Her grandfather held her close with one arm around her shoulders, while his mate stroked Kirby’s hair back with gentle hands and said, “We have something for you.”
It was a gift beyond price.
“A recording of my father’s last message home,” she said to Bastien that night. “Will you watch with me?” She couldn’t imagine sharing this painful, beautiful instant with anyone but her green-eyed leopard, strong and protective and her rock.
“I’d be honored.” Slotting in the data-crystal, he wrapped his arms around her from behind and they watched the comm screen fill with the image of a handsome blond man with unusual green and yellow-flecked hazel eyes that lit up when he spoke of his mate and child.
“I can’t wait for you to meet my beautiful mate.” His pride poured out of the screen. “She’s small and human, but fierce as any lynx. And our cub? A gorgeous, wild thing.” Love filled his expression. “You’d laugh to see me, Mom. I’m gaga over my girls, can’t bear to be parted from them. We’ve explored the world together, but our baby will be shifting soon, and we want her to be able to play as a lynx with her cousins, grow up surrounded by pack like I did.”
Pushing a hand through his hair, he pressed two fingers to his mouth, then onto the screen. “We’re roaming the long way home, but we’ll be there soon. Then you can tell me what a fool I was for thinking I’d never want to bond with anyone.” Laughing, his self-deprecating smile contagious. “I love you both. See you in a month.”
Kirby cried again in Bastien’s arms, for all that had been lost, for the fact she’d never meet her mother and father, and for the joy of having found her grandparents, of knowing she had never been unwanted.
She was Kirby.
She was changeling.
She was a lynx.
She adored a certain possessive red-haired leopard.
She had family. She had friends. Her life was full to overflowing.
CHAPTER 11
The next two days were both strange and wonderful for Kirby. First came an envelope from Detective Shona Bay. In it was a note scrawled in blue ink:
Turns out I never returned your file to Records after the last time I checked it out. Bad behavior on my part, but it means it wasn’t destroyed as per protocol. I’m glad I can give you this at least. I only wish I could’ve done more.
—Shona
Below the note was the original photograph found in the fire-ravaged home, of the man Kirby had already seen on the message, a tiny baby swaddled in a white blanket, and a woman with shiny light brown hair and an enormous smile, her eyes turned lovingly toward the child in her arms.
Joy blazed from the image, and it was enough to heal the last of the ragged wounds in Kirby’s soul. “I have her face now,” she whispered to Bastien, the two of them sitting on the edge of the aerie balcony, her wild lynx friend curled up by her side. “I can see with my own eyes that she loved me, that they both loved me. One day, I’ll discover her name, but until then”—tears smeared her vision, turned her voice husky—“I’ll just call her Mom.”
Enfolding her in his arms, Bastien said, “I dared call Mom by her name once when I was a cub. It did not end well for young Bastien.”
Kirby laughed, the sound wet. “I think my mom would’ve been the same. My dad, too.” It felt good to say that, to acknowledge the two loving people who’d brought her into this life.
Her grandparents cried when she gave them a copy of the photograph, then asked her to stay with them in the guest aerie they’d been assigned on DarkRiver land. She hated being separated from Bastien—in this, she was her father’s daughter, she thought, her throat thick—but hungry to get to know more about her family, she acquiesced.
However, when her grandmother asked her to come to Canada, join their pack, she didn’t hesitate to shake her head. “I want to visit, meet my aunts, my cousins, spend more time with you, but my place is here.” With Bastien, his name branded on her heart so deep, she knew nothing would ever erase it.
Mate. The lynx swiped a claw inside her mind, a little exasperated at the human half’s thickheadedness. Mate!
Oh!
Champagne in her bloodstream, her joy effervescent, Kirby had to force herself to stay in place rather than running to pounce on Bastien. Enid had been explaining the more intimate facts of changeling life to her during their time together, things a parent would normally teach his or her growing cub. Kirby had been reticent with her questions at first, but Enid was so matter-of-fact about it, having already brought up a son, her daughter apt to be as curious when she grew older, that there was no awkwardness.
One of the things Enid had spoken to her about was the wonder of the soul-deep connection that was the mating bond. So Kirby understood the precious gift of it.
More, she felt the beauty of it deep within.
> Once, she would’ve worried that Bastien hadn’t initiated the bond because he wasn’t sure he wanted her for life. To think that now would be an insult to her leopard, strong and loyal and so insanely protective that she knew they were going to butt heads about it on a regular basis. She couldn’t wait.
“What?” Her grandmother scowled at her. “Your far-too-charming leopard refuses to relocate to our territory?”
Kirby knew full well her “far-too-charming leopard” would do anything to make her happy. She felt the same about him. And Bastien’s bonds to his family, his pack, had grown over a lifetime, would hurt to rip out, while hers were just budding. Care for his heart was the most important, but not the only reason for her decision.
Closing her hand over her grandmother’s, she said, “This land has become my home.” An absolute truth. “I’ve made friends”—she stroked her fingers through the fur of the wild lynx who’d followed her to the guest aerie—“started to put down roots, been treated as a packmate.”
It was her grandfather who placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezed. “I always knew my boy would sire a strong cub. Strong as another lynx I know.”
Making a face, her grandmother patted Kirby’s hand. “I’m proud of you for building a life for yourself, but I’m greedy to have you in mine, too.” A kiss pressed to her forehead, the older woman’s eyes narrowed as she said, “I expect you to visit several times a year. Bring your leopard so we can make sure he’s treating you right.”
In her grandmother’s voice, Kirby heard the resonance of old pain, of the agony of waiting for a young family that had never arrived. “I will,” she promised. “I’ll comm call every few days, too, if you don’t mind.” Never would she take this gift for granted.
“Mind?” A blinding smile. “I’ll look forward to each and every call.”