Hard Mated

Spike caressed his cub’s back again. “I can call for one.”

“Fine.” She hesitated again. “Be discreet when you leave?”

“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?”

Another dithering second, Spike scenting Myka’s sharp worry. Finally, she opened the heavy door and walked out. Spike heard her footsteps clicking down the hall, as though she were determined not to let herself turn back.

Spike walked out of the hospital ten minutes later, holding Jordan under the hooded jacket he now wore. He’d gone down back stairs and through empty corridors, avoiding all humans as he made for the dark parking lot. Jordan felt right nestled against his side, his little fists gripping Spike’s shirt, as though he knew, even in his sleep, that Spike was his new protector.

Cell phone use hadn’t been allowed on Jillian’s floor, so Spike had turned his off. In the dark and chilly parking lot, he turned it on again to find five missed calls from Liam’s number and the phone ringing again.

“Spike, where the f**k are you, lad?” The Shiftertown leader’s Irish baritone came flooding over the line. “We have a situation. Get back here. Now.”

“I have one too,” Spike said, his voice calm. “I’m gonna need a ride home.”

*** *** ***

“So what’s the sitch?” Spike asked Sean Morrissey as they sped away from the hospital in Sean’s father’s small white pickup.

Jordan was still hidden under Spike’s jacket but was an obvious lump on his right side. Even if Sean hadn’t noticed the lump, he would be able to scent Jordan.

“What the hell is that?” Sean asked.

Spike couldn’t keep the pride from his voice, though he had an almost crazed need to hide Jordan from all eyes until they reached home. “My cub.”

Sean jerked the wheel, narrowly avoiding running into another car. “What?”

“My cub.” Spike was torn between laughing at the expression on Sean’s face or growling.

Shifters of old had stolen each other’s females and cubs, and males had put rival males’ cubs to death so they wouldn’t grow up to become threats. Sean had a mate and cub of his own, these were more civilized times, but instincts died hard. Spike didn’t like the way Sean kept trying to look at Jordan. He pulled his coat closed and gave Sean a warning look.

“What has Liam so bothered?” Spike asked. “What does he expect me to do?”

Spike was a tracker. That meant he worked for the Shiftertown leader as bodyguard, watcher, and fighter, finding trouble before it could escalate into a problem. Liam, as Shiftertown leader, trusted his trackers implicitly. Had to. Liam couldn’t be everywhere, and the Austin Shiftertown was large, covering three species, two dozen or so clans, and many prides and packs within those clans.

Spike’s pride family was small—he and his grandmother Ella the only survivors—and they were the only jaguar-type Felines around as well. Shifter Felines had been bred from all species, but families and clans tended toward one type of cat more than others. The extensive Morrissey clan, for example, were lions. The Morrissey clan had made Spike and his grandmother honorary members when Spike and Ella had first come to Texas, because all Shifters had to be part of a clan to survive.

Which was how Spike had found himself in the position of tracker to the previous clan leader, Fergus, who at the time had also been the leader of the San Antonio Shiftertown. Previous meaning now dead. Spike had never taken a mate, never had a cub, and with the limited number of Shifter females available, Spike thought he never would.

And now here was a cub of his body, born of a single night with a human, clinging to him, depending on him.

The sudden responsibility both elated him and made him viciously protective.

Sean turned his attention to the road, but he remained tense. “The situation is that gobshite. Gavan Thibault. Your old friend.”

Friend was stretching it. Spike, Nate, and Gavan had been the three top henchmen for Fergus, until Fergus’s untimely demise about a year ago. Spike and Nate had moved to the Austin Shiftertown to work for Liam, while Gavan had stayed in San Antonio with the new, and much calmer, leader there.

“What was up with him?” Spike asked, his attention only marginally on the problem. Gavan was a shithead and unimportant at the moment.

“He was up at the fight club whinging on about how the fights should be to the death, because we have too many Shifters around, and we need to start weeding out the weak. Typical ‘back-to-nature’ Shifter shite.”

True, some Shifters liked to moan about how everything had been better in the good old days, when Shifters had roamed free and lived in secret from humans. They’d also been starving, dying out, and killing each other for survival.

No decent beer or TV in the wild either. In this captivity, Shifters weren’t allowed cable or HD, but they were good at finding ways around the restrictions.

“Dad and Ronan made Gavan back down, but we thought you were still there,” Sean said. “But you were at the hospital. Picking up your cub? What the hell?”

Sean in addition to being Liam’s younger brother, was the Shiftertown’s Guardian, which meant he carried a big sword—tucked behind the seat—with which he dispatched the souls of dying Shifters. The Shifter’s body dissolved to dust when the sword went through the heart, releasing the soul and ensuring that the physical remains were undefiled. The idea of being buried or cremated in the human way sent a shudder of horror through every Shifter.