Miguel's Secret Cub

by Abigail Raines

  Miguel’s Secret Cub

  Hockey Playing Lion Shifter Dads

  Abigail Raines

  A sports paranormal romance series

  Contents

  Chapter One: Miguel

  Chapter Two: Daisy

  Chapter Three: Miguel

  Chapter Four: Daisy

  Chapter Five: Miguel

  Chapter Six: Daisy

  Chapter Seven: Miguel

  Chapter Eight: Daisy

  Chapter Nine: Miguel

  Chapter Ten: Daisy

  Chapter Eleven: Miguel

  Chapter Twelve: Daisy

  Also by Abigail Raines

  About the Author

  © Copyright 2019 - All rights reserved.

  It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

  Chapter One: Miguel

  It was night in the woods and there was no moonlight to guide my way. I was running, as fast as my legs could carry me, my lion’s form pushing itself to the limits as I leaped over boulders and streams and chasms, my heart pounding so fast it was painful. I had to get away. I could feel him coming for me, hunting me down. He would kill me and then he would kill everyone I cared about. The forest blurred around me and the darkness closed in. My breath puffed in the crisp, chilly air.

  All at once the ground gave out from under me.

  I was falling, falling, falling…

  And I could hear him laughing somewhere. He had me. I was dead.

  “Fuck,” I whispered, jerking awake in my bed.

  I was soaked with sweat and I grimaced, rolling out of bed and stripping off my pajama pants. I rubbed my eyes and trudged off to the bathroom, ramming my hip into the corner of my dresser because, of course I did. In the bathroom I flicked on the light and groaned, shutting my eyes against the instant brightness before slowly acclimating.

  The man in the mirror did not look like the badass I was used to seeing in the day time. I looked pale and haunted. I looked terrified. But nightmares always did that to me. I splashed some water on my face and grabbed a towel, doing away with the sweat as I breathed through the vestiges of panic from the nightmare, bracing my hands on the calming, cool porcelain of the sink.

  I was used to having nightmares, but my body still reacted this way every time. I’d never told my fellow alphas and team mates, Charlie and Dylan, about them. I’d told Luca. Or rather, Luca knew more about my past than the others and I’d offhandedly mentioned that I sometimes had dreams about it. I’d never told him that I often woke up in a panic over them. At least I didn’t scream in my sleep or anything. The last thing I wanted was to wake up under the concerned gazes of the guys. I don’t like that much attention even about something that isn’t so embarrassing.

  The nightmares were always different. Sometimes I dreamed I was still in my old pride, fending for myself and terrified of the other alphas like I was before I’d finally run away. But a lot of times I dreamed of that wizard I worked for before I came to St. Dominic and found The Cougars and Luca took me in. In my mind he always loomed so large and his gnarled fingers, twisted from using so much dark magic would tremble as they pointed at me to cast some spell that might maim or kill me. Other times I dreamed of the girls and those dreams were always worse.

  I never thought of the wizard when I was awake. I didn’t let myself think of him. I already thought of them ; the girls looking scared and betrayed… I thought of them all the time. Sometimes I’d be in the middle of a game and I’d see one of their faces in the crowd. It was just my brain playing tricks on me. But it was everything I could do to keep my shit together when that happened.

  “C’mon, Migs,” I muttered, staring at myself in the mirror. It was my childhood nickname. I still sometimes thought of myself that way. Little Migs. He was too small for his age so he had to fight twice as hard not to get left behind, had to learn how to intimidate just to get enough food when all the other cubs were fighting over the last of the deer meat. “Get it together.”

  I took a deep breath and stretched, leaning back to look back at the alarm clock in my room, the neon green letters glowing 4:12. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep now. I often got up at five anyway.

  I rubbed my face vigorously to get the blood flowing and rolled my neck before going back to my room to dress for a warm-up outside. It was early winter out and it had snowed just a bit but more importantly the pond right out back in the clearing of the woods was perfectly iced over.

  Minnesota winters can be brutal, but I love skating on that pond. I like it more than the lake that cuts right between the fringes of Stone River and St. Dominic. The pond might be small but it’s like home and half hidden by the trees. Best of all, once I wear myself out, the house is right there and so is a hot cup of coffee after the bitterness of the cold outside.

  I put thermals on under my jeans and sweatshirt and grabbed my skates before pounding down the stairs. Nobody else was up yet but I knew Luca’s baby, Jack, would be crying for his mama pretty soon. Luca liked to say that Jack only ever cried because he couldn’t skate yet and Chloe would roll her eyes. But I’d be surprised if the kid didn’t turn out to have hockey in his blood just as much as lion shifter.

  Before skating, I stretched a bit and then shifted and took off at a full speed run through the forest. It was a deliberate move to mimic what had happened in my nightmare. Now I was running knowing nobody was chasing me. It was like I could fix what had happened in my dreams. I relaxed inwardly as I felt the pull and give of my muscles, pushing myself to run as hard and fast as possible through the woods just because I could and not because I thought some evil goddamn sorcerer was after me.

  He was alive. That much, I knew. Or anyway, I had left him alive. That’s what has always made me fear that he’d come after me someday. Most people who betray dark wizards also meet dark ends. It was just a matter of time really…

  I tripped. Even as my back leg caught on a log on the forest floor, I was relieved that at least nobody was there to see it.

  I might have been a neurotic, haunted mess in my head. But I had a reputation to uphold.

  I went tumbling to the ground and groaned, except that in lion form it came out more like a growl. I rolled over on my back and caught my breath, my paws limply pointing at nothing with my legs sticking up funny. I looked like a kitten playing. Finally, I got to my feet and shook off the snow and mud I’d fallen into, grunting and growling in frustration. I turned around and headed back to the house and the icy pond in the clearing behind it, eager now to shift back and skate a bit.

  I shifted back just as I yawned, the sensation giving me a strange tingly feeling. I scratched my head and sat on a boulder, picking my skates up where I’d left them and pulling them on. The brusque cold was waking me up quickly in my human form and I shivered before plodding through the snow to the ice, my blade scraping along the smooth surface.

  I felt much better when I skated. It had always been like that for me since I’d started. My old pride had been a hundred miles from here and there had been plenty of hockey culture there too. About half the lions in my old pride had played hockey just for fun though there had been no formal team. All of us had played in high school too, among other human kids (who I wasn’t allowed to hang out with). I was so proud the day I made varsity. It was the only time I was ever happy back then; playing like a champ
ion on the ice up against older, bigger guys. I got beat up all the time for showing them up but it had been worth it. And anyway, all that shit had made me tough. Eventually I’d been strong enough to run away. That was when I was fourteen.

  “Augh!” I grunted, and the sound echoed in the stillness of the morning as I turned sharply, zooming back across the ice. I laughed to myself about nothing and sped to a stop, standing up straight and rubbing my neck, catching my breath.

  Through the woods, I saw a shadowy figure. A tall man, looming.

  It was him.

  I blinked and he was gone.

  But my heart was already pounding. All that relaxation and good feeling I’d just built up came crumbling down as I broke out in a sweat that made me shiver in the chill. I thought I’d seen the faces of the girls before, sure. I’d never seen the wizard before. I shook my head, rubbing my eyes, willing myself to let go of it. There was nothing there now. It had just been a trick of light or something.

  Daisy.

  The name popped into my head and I shut my eyes. “Fuck…”

  I hated thinking of Daisy. Of any of the people I had ever hurt, the one I hated thinking about the most was Daisy.

  Daisy...the one I’d let go. Sometimes I was convinced that Daisy had been my true mate, my fated mate like in fairy tales, like the way Chloe was Luca’s mate. When he’d told me about the powerful feelings he’d had around her, even when they’d first met, it had all reminded me so much of Daisy. But I’d left her. I still thought it was for her own good. But I’d left her…

  I was in a grumpy mood now and I sniffed, skating back to the ground and trading my skates for boots before heading back to the house, the morning wind blowing my long dark, wavy hair around. The guys kept bugging me to cut it and I only responded with a flip of the bird. I liked it long. I was used to it long and I thought it suited me. It was touching my shoulders now; thick and dark. You’d never know I was a golden furred cougar when I shifted. Although my fur was the darkest of the four of us.

  “‘Morning, Miguel!” Charlie chirped as I trudged inside, shutting the backdoor behind me. Everyone was already at the kitchen table and looking much too cheerful, especially Charlie who was generally a cheerful person, especially in the morning. Yet somehow I remained friends with him.

  I responded with a grunt and slumped down at the table where a plate full of food was immediately placed in front of me. Luca’s mate, Chloe, was at the table attempting to eat with Jack in her lap and the sight of it did cheer me a little, especially when Jack’s eyes got big and he smiled at me. It had been strange at first to suddenly have a woman and a baby in the house with the rest of us. But I’d become pretty used to it and outside of occasionally having to change a dirty diaper and attempt to quiet the crying baby while sitting as a favor to Luca and Chloe, it was kind of nice. The kid was okay and he actually improved my mood sometimes. I’d even gone into the nursery to hang out with him from time to time when I was in a crap mood. Because unlike anyone else, Jack wouldn’t ask me what was wrong or want me to talk about stuff I didn’t want to talk about. Babies were cool that way.

  “You have a rough night?” Luca asked, tossing me a nod. Chloe looked concerned and I tensed up, shoveling a forkful of eggs into my mouth.

  I mumbled something unintelligible in reply and finally swallowed. “S’fine.”

  “I was thinking of making barbecue chicken tonight,” Chloe said softly.

  That was my favorite and she knew it. Chloe and I hadn’t gotten along great in the beginning but she was so sweet sometimes. She sometimes mothered me in a way that was comforting and not smothering. My shoulders dropped and I sat up a little in my seat, wanting her to know her concern was appreciated even if I sometimes wished everyone would just ignore me when I was having a bad day.

  “That sounds great,” I said. “Thanks, Chloe.”

  “Aww,” Charlie said, grinning. “Miguel had the grumps and Chloe fixed it with the magic chicken!”

  “Shut the fuck up, Charlie,” I said, rolling my eyes. But I didn’t mind it too much. That was just Charlie being Charlie.

  After breakfast, we all got dressed for practice and left for the rink. It was close enough that more often than not, we didn’t bother to drive. Sometimes we shifted and ran there instead. But today we took a leisurely walk, even in the softly falling snow. I lagged behind the others but I wasn’t being dour enough that anyone seemed worried.

  It was on McGovern street that I saw him again. The wizard. But when I blinked, he was gone.

  Chapter Two: Daisy

  “Order up!” The fry cook hollered and as automatically as if I were an actual robot, I spun around and scooted behind Elma, making my way to the order counter. I grabbed the plate of pancakes, glancing at the table number on the tab before sweeping off to take it to a customer who nodded in thanks.

  My shift was over in five minutes and it couldn’t come fast enough. I’d been working for nine hours since opening and hardly gotten a proper break. I felt like my feet were about to fall off. Even a lion’s stamina was tested by a long shift at the diner.

  “Anything else I can get you?” I said to the customer. They waved me off and I nodded, leaving the check on their table before heading back to the counter to refill some coffees. For the tenth time in ten minutes, I glanced up at the Coke-a-Cola clock on the wall. Three more minutes.

  My next door neighbor, Alyssa, was a struggling mom like me and we helped each other with childcare whenever we got the chance. Andy was with her today and hopefully he was pouring over the preschool appropriate books I’d bought him. I was dying to have him in pre-school but I just couldn’t swing it yet. Instead I was trying to teach him as much as I could to get him ready for kindergarten as much as possible.

  It would be easier if he had a father.

  That stupid thought was one that wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and lately the feeling that I should find Miguel had been keeping me up at night. I’d almost approached him a couple times already and always chickened out.

  I lived in Middlesmark, just a few towns over from St. Dominic in Minnesota. I wasn’t more than an hour away from Miguel. Once I’d found out where he was living (via a spell that had cost me a pretty penny in witch’s fees), I’d moved nearby. It wasn’t as if I was leaving a better life somewhere else either. I’d just been a waitress at a different crappy restaurant in a different town a couple states away. But the older Andy got the more I couldn’t turn off that repeated thought that had plagued my mind since his birth: Find Miguel.

  The nerve racking part was that once I told Miguel he had a son, I had no idea what happened next. I’d watched Miguel play hockey for The Cougars a few times while I hid; another face in the crowd. A couple of times he’d seen me, or I thought he had, and I’d taken off immediately. I had to work up to facing him, I’d thought.

  Not yet...not yet…

  But now Andy was four and I kind of liked this part of Minnesota. I liked how many shifters lived there. The towns were small and nobody had very much money. But there was a sense of community and it was near the woods where I could shift and run and hunt. Middlesmark was particularly small and very quiet. I kind of wanted to live in St. Dominic, which had a little more life to it and things to do. But maybe that was just because Miguel lived there. I had a fantastical notion of how things would go. What if Miguel was happy? What if Miguel wanted to be a dad? What if Miguel wanted to be with me?

  They were the hopes of a child and I’d seen too much to think that way. And yet...I hoped.

  I had two minutes left and seeing an empty ketchup bottle on the counter, I was about to grab it and refill it before I left. I reached out and abruptly felt a kind of vibration in my body that I’d felt many times before and always tried to ignore. I’d intended to reach out for the ketchup bottle but instead it slid across the counter by itself and practically jumped into my hand.

  Magic. I took a deep breath and glanced around. No one had not
iced it. There were shifters in this town, sure. There were witches and other magical folk and perhaps sorcerers who could do things like I’d just done by accident, but it certainly wasn’t normal for an ordinary lion shifter to be moving objects with her mind for no reason. Unfortunately, it wasn’t new to me. I had magic in me that had been put there. It was something I tried never to think about and when the magic came out it frightened me. I didn’t like thinking that there was this power inside me I hadn’t asked for, that someone had stuck in me without my consent. But sometimes it came out of its own volition. I swallowed and my hands shook as I grabbed the jumbo tub of ketchup under the counter to refill the bottle.

  I remembered the moment that magic had entered my body. I remembered the pain. Even if I knew how to use the magic properly, I knew I never would. I didn’t want anything that came from that awful time or that awful man. I took a deep breath, trying to shove the memory away and glanced up at the clock. I could leave now. I finished with the ketchup, putting everything away, picked up the check and tip on my last table, and made my way to the back, taking off my apron.

  Forget magic, I thought. Those little bursts of unwanted power were just a side effect from a time I’d rather forget. Whereas Andy was the beautiful rainbow that had come after a storm. I smiled as I grabbed my parka and scarf and bundled up before hopping in my beaten up little Mazda to head back to the shabby apartment building where I lived in Middlesmark.

  I was taking Andy to another Cougar’s game. This time, I was determined to talk to Miguel.

  Minutes later, I knocked on Alyssa’s door and she quickly opened it, looking a little harried as she carried her own two-year-old daughter on her hip.