“What am I supposed to do with this thing?” Jax muttered as he knelt down and pulled back the soft blanket that was covering the baby. It was all pink and squishy with big blue eyes that were looking at Jax expectantly.

He shook his head and sighed as he looked around. The sidewalk was empty on their quiet corner of the street. Gwen’s muffin shop was closed. There was no one to pass him off too.

“Can you talk?” he asked as the baby waved its hand around like a spastic.

The baby just looked up at him with its huge blue eyes that looked way too big for its oddly shaped head.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he said, huffing out a breath. Jax looked at the barbecue with longing as he put down the plate that had his juicy steak on it.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” he asked as he sat down on the pavement. “Where’s your mom and dad?”

The baby just stared back at him, grabbing its foot as a touch of drool dripped down its pudgy chin.

Jax took a deep breath as they stared at each other. “I know. My parents left me too.”

To Jax’s surprise, he didn’t feel the usual intense need to run away from it like he did whenever he saw other children. He still didn’t want to keep it, but he didn’t need to run away.

“What are you?” he asked, rubbing his chin as he looked it over. “Male or female?”

The clothes looked like boys’ clothes, but Jax could never tell with babies. They all had the same short hair and chubby looking faces.

“No, don’t cry!” Jax said, feeling a rush of panic as the baby opened its mouth. The baby’s lips curled into a smile and he let out a little laugh as Jax hovered over him.

“What are you laughing at?” Jax asked, feeling his own lips curling up into a smile too. “This isn’t funny. I had big plans for the weekend and none of them involved a baby. Sorry to break it to you, dude, but you’re going to have to find somewhere else to crash.”

The baby didn’t move.

“There’s an inn down that way,” Jax said, pointing in the direction of The Wilde Inn. “You can try there.”

The baby let out a yawn and wiggled around.

“Fine,” Jax said, grabbing the box and lifting it up. “I’ll make some calls.”

* * *

“How old is the baby?” the woman on the other line asked. She was from the social services office in the neighboring town.

“I don’t know,” Jax mumbled. He looked at the baby who was still in the box. What is he? Six years old? Seven? How the hell am I supposed to know what kids look like?

“Six,” Jax answered, taking a wild guess.

“Six months old?” the lady answered.

Right. I guess that makes more sense. “Yeah, about that.”

He rubbed his forehead as he paced around the kitchen nervously. The little guy never took his big blue eyes off him.

“Okay,” she said. “I have all the information you gave me. We’ll have social services come over first thing Monday morning.”

“Monday?!?” Jax shouted. “That’s too far away!”

What was he going to do with the kid for three nights and two whole days?!?

“Well, you’re calling on a Friday evening,” the lady snapped back. “All of our agents have gone home for the weekend.”

Jax cursed under his breath. Stupid small towns. They didn’t have the same type of services that larger cities had.

“There must be somewhere else I can take him,” Jax said, starting to panic. “He’s already starting to stink.”

The lady on the other end of the line sighed. “Let me check.”

Jax held his breath as he heard typing on a keyboard.

“There is another public service building where you can take him,” she said after a minute. “It’s our back-up in case of emergencies like this.”

“Thank God,” Jax said, taking a breath of relief. This kid would be someone else’s problem soon. “Where is it? I’ll take him anywhere.”

The sooner he could get rid of him the better.

“The Colwood Firehouse,” she answered. “Do you know it?”

Jax dropped his head. Shit.

“Hello?? Sir??”

He took a deep breath and squeezed the phone as he brought it back up to his ear.

“That’s where I’m calling from.”

“Oh great!” she answered with a chipperness in her voice. “Have a nice weekend.”

Click.

Jax squeezed the phone until the receiver exploded in his hand. He could picture her on her way out of the office on the Friday afternoon, heading for happy hour without a care in the world. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to be her.

She didn’t have to deal with this baby.

This baby who was really starting to stink.

“You smell like a sewer,” Jax said as he leaned over the box and looked at the baby. He giggled back at him as Jax crinkled his nose up and waved his hand in front of his face. “And I thought Gunner’s shits were bad.’

“I guess I have to change you,” Jax said with a frown. “I’m all out of diapers.”

He looked around and then grabbed a handful of paper towels and a roll of duct tape. The baby was laughing as Jax stood in front of him, trying to psyche himself up. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

He reached down and touched the baby for the first time, and was shocked to realize that it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. His skin was soft and squishy. He was actually kind of cute.

Not cute. Smelling and annoying.

Jax shook his head as he pulled down the blue pants and unbuttoned the onesie. “You’re getting soft in your old age, lion shifter,” he muttered to himself as he peeled off the dirty diaper.

“Holy hell!” he shouted, holding his nose as the diaper opened, revealing the rancid surprise inside. “So far, you’ve been a horrible house guest.”

With one arm over his nose, Jax clumsily cleaned the baby’s butt with some of the paper towels. “Well, you’re definitely a boy,” he said as he wrapped the rest of the paper towels around him in a bulky mess. He secured it with half a roll of duct tape and then stepped back to look at his work.

It was the worst diaper he’d ever seen, but it would do the trick. And the baby seemed to like it. He couldn’t stop laughing.

Jax grinned as he watched his little pudgy face light up. “Alright, dude,” he said. “We can get through this. It won’t be perfect, but we’ll get through this.”

He picked up the kid and brought him outside as he fired up the barbecue. Maybe some company won’t be soooo bad. As long as he stays quiet.

The baby was staring at the long grass beside him, completely fascinated with the thin blades as they swayed from side to side in the breeze as Jax cooked Zane’s Porterhouse steak.

“You’ll feel better after this,” Jax said, smiling at him. “Normally I would never share a steak, but you can have a piece. Just don’t tell any of the guys I shared.”

When the steak was done, he set them up at the table. The little guy could move his head around but he was hopeless at sitting. Luckily, Jax was a resourceful shifter. He propped the boy up on a few phone books and then duct taped his body to the chair.

“Try this,” he said, plopping a large piece of steak in front of the kid. “Cooked to perfection.”

Jax cut his steak and moaned as the juicy flavors exploded in his mouth. Man, that’s good.

He lowered his fork and frowned when he saw that the kid wasn’t eating. He was just staring at him with that blank look on his face. “Not hungry?’

“Right,” Jax said, shaking his head as he chuckled. “I have to cut it for you.”

He leaned over the table and cut the steak into smaller pieces but the baby still wasn’t eating. “Geez, you’re even more hopeless than I thought.”

With a sigh, he took a piece of steak and tried to put it in the baby’s mouth, but he started crying and kept spitting it back out.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jax asked as he stared at the baby in disbelief. What could he be sad about? Jax had taken the time to tape him to the chair in a makeshift baby chair and fed him a perfectly cooked steak. He should be thanking me as far as I’m concerned.

But the little guy was looking more and more upset with each passing second until he was screaming at the top of his lungs with his face turning red.

“Okay, okay,” Jax said in a panic as he peeled off the tape and picked him up. “We don’t have to eat steak.”

He held the boy to his chest and bounced him around, and to Jax’s surprise, the baby stopped crying. He snuggled his little cheek against Jax’s shoulder, looking like he was at home.

“What do you like to eat?” he asked as he walked the baby around the firehouse. “Ribs? Roast beef?”

Then it dawned on him. Wasn’t there little bottles of food for babies in the aisle that he always avoided at the drugstore? Maybe that’s what he wanted.

“Okay,” he said, heading outside. “Let’s go get you some food, diapers, and duct tape.”

He brought him into the pickup truck and placed him on the passenger’s seat, securing him in place with the seatbelt. Jax laughed as the baby sank down and the thick seatbelt strap covered his face. He looked so tiny sitting there alone in the big seat and Jax’s heart clenched a little at the sight.

“Are you going to be okay like that?” he asked as he shoved the keys in the ignition. The baby didn’t answer. He just kept sliding down the seat with his eyes widening in panic.

“I don’t think the seat is going to work,” he said, looking around. His eyes fell on the glove compartment and his eyebrow raised. “Nah,” he said, shaking his head after a second of contemplation.

The boy sank all the way down until he was laying flat on the large seat with his eyes bulging out in terror.

“Your lack of competence is embarrassing,” Jax said, chuckling as he watched him. “You can barely hold your head up.”

The baby’s chin started quivering as he stared up at the ceiling with wet eyes.

“Don’t cry, dude,” Jax said, quickly grabbing him. He cradled him in his big arms and the baby’s frown turned into a smile. “How about we walk instead?”

It was a beautiful evening anyway and the town was only a block away. Jax tucked the boy under his arm like a football and started walking down the sidewalk with the boy’s little legs dangling out behind him. The baby was loving it, laughing hysterically as he faced the sidewalk.

Jax picked up his pace as he got into the busier part of Colwood, hoping he wouldn’t bump into anyone he knew. He had a reputation of being a badass that he wanted to keep, and carrying around a little baby would ruin all of that.

The main street was lively like it always was on Friday nights in the summer. People from all over were flooding into the town to enjoy a night out at one of Colwood’s restaurants or to grab a drink at the bar after a long week of grueling work on their ranches. The terraces were packed with shifters and farmers enjoying pints of beer in the sun as they chatted and joked around with each other.

Jax would have joined them if he didn’t have a baby to take care of, so with a sigh, he slipped into the drugstore instead.

“Hi, Jax!” a voice called out from down the aisle. It was Stetson’s wife, Kylee, the sheriff of the town who was currently on maternity leave. She was pushing a stroller with a baby girl inside. “Whose baby is that?”

“I’m not sure,” Jax said as she rushed over. “Want to keep him?”

She quickly grabbed the baby, shifted him around, and placed him properly in Jax’s arms (with his head up this time). “That’s better,” she said, smiling nervously. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Jax shrugged. “Someone left him at the firehouse. They didn’t leave a note.”

“Oh, my God!” she said with a gasp, looking horrified. “That’s awful.”

“That’s what I thought at first,” Jax said, looking at the baby who was staring back at him. “But it’s not so bad.”

In fact, he was kind of enjoying the little guy.

“Kylee, do you know how babies like their steaks cooked? I had it medium rare and he wouldn’t eat a thing.”

Kylee looked horrified. “Jax you can’t feed a baby steak! They have no teeth! He’ll choke!”

“Oh, right,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “I didn’t think of that.”

“You have to give him baby food,” she said, shaking her head. “Come.”

She grabbed a spare cart and Jax followed her into the next aisle where all of the baby food was stocked. “He needs to eat some of this,” she said, dumping some bottles into the cart. “And formula. You have to give him formula.”

She opened the jar and showed him the white powder. “So, he has to like snort this or something?”

“Water, Jax,” she said, staring at him in disbelief. “You have to mix it with water.”

“Water,” Jax repeated. “Got it.”

She spent the next ten minutes dumping stuff into his cart and explaining everything that he had to do. He left with five bags, a one hundred and twenty dollar receipt, and with his head swirling full of stuff that he would never remember.

An hour later, they were back home and the baby was fed. “Two whole bottles of puréed sweet potatoes,” Jax said proudly. “You’re a beast! Hey, that’s what I’ll call you. Beast.”

The baby flashed him a sweet potato covered smile. He seemed to like it.

Beast watched Jax as he struggled to make the formula and set it up in a bottle. He took a diaper out of the bag and changed him, following along to a YouTube video as he went.

“Yes!” Jax said with an excited grin when he finally got it right. “We did it, Beast!”

Beast laughed as he watched the giant lion shifter do a little celebratory dance.

“You know you’re really ruining my night,” Jax whispered as he carried the little guy upstairs to his bedroom. Beast was getting sleepy in his arms as he drank the bottle. Jax smiled as he watched his big blue eyes starting to close as his eyelids got heavy. “I was going to drink and party and watch TV in my underwear,” he continued in a whisper. “It was going to be great, and now I have to take care of you instead.”

Beast lost the struggle with his eyelids and the little guy fell asleep in Jax’s arms. He held him close to his chest and cradled him protectively as he quietly tiptoed to his bedroom.

“I guess it won’t be so bad,” Jax whispered to him as he placed him in bed. “You seem pretty cool too. Just don’t tell Axel I said that.”

Jax laid down beside him, unable to take his eyes off the baby as he stroked his fine blonde hair, feeling a soothing contentedness gently flowing through him that he’d never felt before.

“I’ll find you a good home, Beast,” he promised in a whisper as he watched him sleep. “I know how you’re feeling. My parents abandoned me too.”

He swallowed hard as a lump formed in his throat. That wasn’t something Jax liked to think about. He had buried it down deep a long time ago and kept it there where it belonged.

Jax curled up around the poor kid and lowered his head onto the pillow, breathing in Beast’s sweet baby scent.

“I don’t know where your mother is, Beast,” he whispered as his own eyelids started to get heavy. “But you don’t need her. I didn’t need mine, and I turned out just fine. You’ll see. Everything is going to be okay. You have me in your corner now, kid.”

Jax closed his eyes and the new friends dozed off, sleeping like babies.