“Why do I get all the babysitting jobs?”

Anson of Clan Fehu slouched in the chair across from his boss King of Clan Rekkr.

“Because you’re so good at it,” King said, not looking up from his phone.

They had just returned from the presentation ceremony of one of their coworkers. Van and his new mate Cora the previous weekend.

“Am I really?” Anson asked sarcastically.

“Whine all you like, but you forget that, unlike Eden, you won’t have to rotate duties through Princess Bliss.”

“That’s because the princess’s mother and her manager think she’s better off with a woman guarding her. It’s sexist.”

King looked up from his phone. “I can see if she wants to switch? If I remember correctly, the assignment is to cover her while she’s recording a new album. Imagine, being in Los Angeles and spending hours in a recording studio listening to take after take of live, auto-tuned songs.”

Anson shuddered. “There’s some good climbing though.”

“You can find good climbing here. There’s also work here, you know, things that you get paid to do.”

“I could become a professional climber. Get some sponsors. Or base jumping that’s a good one.”

King looked up at him. “Base jumping is not a career. It’s falling. It’s voluntary falling and there is no skill in that.”

“That’s what you think. It takes skills to not splatter yourself on the pavement.”

King grunted. “This is the job I was telling you about. She’s coming in tomorrow. I want you to do a little digging. AJ is in this afternoon, see if he can help you out. I’ve pulled preliminary information from her police reports. It’s been a lot of paperwork with very little policing done.”

Anson took the tablet from King and started swiping through the information. The woman was pretty, very pretty in fact. Her driver’s license photo showed a slightly stern-looking woman, her short dark brown hair was cut in a pixie style. It suited her face, which was delicate but still strong. The reports dated back almost eight years. The first one when she was about twenty years old.

The first report was from campus security at the University of Washington, a report that was then escalated to the Seattle Police Department. After that there were semi-regular moves to new addresses. Those could be attributed to just moving for work or family, but they seemed to coincide with additional police reports. There were hang-up calls, a break-in where nothing was stolen, but her apartment had been disturbed. The reports had to be just the breaking points in what was probably a longer running problem.

Looking back up to King he asked, “Is this full-time security?”

“Don’t know yet. She wanted to meet in person. I think she’s nervous that we’re Kindred.”

“Nervous?”

“It’s not an easy decision to hire us. We aren’t cheap and everyone knows that our bears will kick ass if needed.”

“Your bear, you mean, I do just fine in this form.”

“I’m impressed. Besides, you know these stalker cases are normally someone they know, they just haven’t realized it yet. If we can help her figure that out, she won’t have to be paying us long-term.”

“Well, aren’t you the philanthropist.”

“I just don’t see why people should live in fear if they don’t have to. By the way, what’s with the haircut?”

Anson ran his hands through his recently shortened hair. It was still a little too long on top, but he liked being able to mess with it.

“Conditioner was costing a fortune,” he smarted back. “Any word on when Van is coming back?”

Van and his new mate Cora were taking some time to relax after their presentation ceremony, but now that she had been introduced to the Clan, everything should progress fairly quickly. They had already been on a pre-honeymoon, now they were on a post one too. Anson knew Van well enough to know that it was more about Van not wanting to let his mate out of his sight than anything else.

“Soon. I know Cora wants to settle in and start planning their nursery.”

“That was fast.”

“Like you wouldn’t impregnate your mate as fast as you could.”

“I’ll be too old and decrepit to make cubs by then.”

“Somehow I doubt that. Make sure you talk to AJ this afternoon, he should be here after lunch.”

“I’ll go chat with Nadia and wait for him, then I’ll go to the gym and work out unless you need me?”

“No, Luca is skulking around somewhere. He did the diamond run this morning; it always puts him in such a great mood.”

“I’ll avoid him then, thanks.”

Anson took the tablet with a nod and went to the locker room to change out of his black camo pants and KSI shirt.

The guys sometimes gave him shit for wearing the monogrammed shirts but he reminded them that King had bought them, so why not supplement his wardrobe with them. Besides, there wasn’t really a dress code for private security. You had to adapt to the situations as they came and Anson didn’t put up half the fuss that Van did about wearing a suit.

Switching into a pair of running shorts and his tennis shoes, he took the tablet to the gym, which was set up with large padded mats that went up ten feet on the walls. King had them installed to protect against the utter destruction when the guys decided to wrestle while shifted. Big bears fighting could be hell on human furnishings.

He set the tablet on the treadmill and started at a low jog before building up to a full run. He looked through the information trying to figure out his client before he ever had to meet her. He came across as a bit of a jock to most people. They thought he was dumb and that his love of sports and adrenaline made him unintelligent. He didn’t bother to correct them. He had his own philosophy on life and what it meant to really live it and he didn’t care that the other guys gave him shit about it.

Being a bear shifter didn’t always mean you were destined for the military, law enforcement, or security like the men of KSI. Kindreds often gravitated to what they were best at. He hadn’t joined the military outright, although he did join the reserves, and was still on an active reserves, but Anson had found that he was much more of a lover than a fighter.

Security worked for him. It was a lot of planning and analyzing, and his insights on how people approached the world helped him predict how people would react to certain situations.

Keeping his pace steady on the treadmill he looked over Piper Armstrong’s family history. Mother and father, older sister and a brother. She was the youngest child.

The family business seemed to be banking of one form or another. So he wasn’t dealing with someone that didn’t understand confidentiality or security. He had to wonder how she’d let something like this go on so long. And what had made her want security now? Something, or someone, had obviously scared her enough that she couldn’t stand going it alone any longer.