CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

It was Sunday dinner and every member of Jackson’s family was present and accounted for. It was the best Sunday dinner of his life. Mostly because since he’d started sleeping with Kaya earlier in the week, every single day had been the best day of his life since then. But also because tomorrow was the full moon and for the first time in living memory, Jackson wasn’t dreading it.

His family had greeted the news of his non-full-moon shift with joy and relief and many wonderings over why now? And what had changed? He and Kaya still hadn’t told anyone about the two of them and Jackson felt that perhaps they were both waiting for the full moon to pass. He’d have a good shift, a calm shift, with his brothers and Bauer and everyone would be so relieved and excited for him that the news that he and Kaya were dating would barely be a blip on the radar.

Or something.

Or maybe they were just too chickenshit to tell their family. Or, most likely, they were having such a good time, just the two of them in their little bubble of dating and getting to know one another and sex, that they were reticent to let anyone else in.

For instance, right at that very moment, Kaya caught his eye across the dinner table and nudged her fork off the table with one elbow. With an almost absurdly innocent look on her face she ducked down to get it.

Jackson almost groaned aloud. She was teasing him about the fantasy he’d revealed. About getting head during Sunday dinner. He put a dry expression on his face and waited for her to resurface, to smirk at him about her joke. But then a soft hand slicked over the bulge between his legs and Jackson jumped so much he almost spilled his soup.

“Jackson! Are you all right?” his mother asked.

“Yeah. Um.” Fuck. “Charley horse.”

He reached under the table and made a show of rubbing out his calf.

Kaya resurfaced on the other side, holding up her fork and looking like she might pop a blood vessel to keep from laughing. Jackson couldn’t decide if he wanted to kiss her or spank her. Maybe both.

He got his chance at retribution when the group retired into the living room to watch a movie by the fire. Luckily the volume was up all the way to the top, so Jackson didn’t worry at all when he grabbed Kaya’s arm on her way back from the bathroom. He ducked them both into the pantry behind the kitchen.

“Jacks!” she whisper-laughed. “What are you doing?”

“Did you enjoy teasing me at dinner?” he asked, turning her around so that her back was to his front. He dropped open-mouthed kisses on her neck, brushing her hair to the side. She’d been wearing it down a lot more often and he couldn’t get enough of it. He was taking handfuls of it and burying his face whenever he could.

“Very much,” she said impishly.

He pulled her hands out of his own hair, where she’d been reaching back to, and placed them on the pantry shelf in front of her. “Well, I’m glad you had your fun. Because I’m about to have mine.”

His hands were hungrier than they’d ever been with her before, but he’d been upping the ante little by little over the week and he knew she could take it. Better than that, he knew that she’d tell him if she couldn’t. He roughly massaged her breasts over her sweater and then dipped a hand into her yoga pants, feeling her wetness through her panties, and then shoving the panties aside and pausing, waiting for permission.

“Jackson,” she gasped. “We can’t.”

“We can’t, or we shouldn’t?”

“What if someone finds us?”

“Then we’ll explain that we’re dating and I can’t keep my fucking hands off of you.”

She bit her lip and looked up at him. “We’ll have to be quick.”

He groaned in relief that she’d said yes and sank two fingers into her, twisting and rubbing and opening her up for him. Quick didn’t mean that he could skimp on foreplay. She was the tightest woman he’d ever been with and it was deeply important to him that she was always ready when he took her.

He worked her clit with one hand and pushed into her channel with the other. His mouth he clamped onto hers, trailing down to her neck and shoulders and ear. When she started whimpering into his mouth, when his hand was wet to the palm, he figured it was time to get the show on the road.

He pushed her underwear and her yoga pants down to mid-thigh, unzipped his pants, and slid a condom on, putting the wrapper in his pocket. He pushed his own pants down a few inches and laid a palm on her back, pushing her forward a bit. “We can’t move much in here, baby. So, you’re gonna have to just come on it as best as you can.”

She laughed but it trailed into a gasp when he lined himself up and pushed into her. They’d slept together six times in the last four days but every single time was devastating to his senses. She was the hottest, tightest, wettest, most perfect pussy of his life and he knew it wasn’t simply because of the way she was built—it was because it was her. His mate.

“I love you,” he groaned, the way he always did when he was inside her, stroking into her only a few inches at a time. She was grinding herself back on him and gripping the shelf for dear life. He knew they were making too much noise so he pushed into her to the hilt and held, a solid presence inside of her while his fingers painted circles over her clit. It only took a few moments of nudges from his hips and circles from his fingers until she was arching her back and going up to her tiptoes, her pussy clamping down on him so hard he saw stars.              

But there wasn’t enough room for him to get the friction he needed, and besides, it was too loud. So Jackson gripped the base of the condom and pulled out from her. Seeming to understand his dilemma instantly, Kaya whirled around, flames in her eyes. She yanked the condom off of him and fell to her knees, taking him by the hips and swallowing him down farther than she ever had. Just when he thought she’d taken all she could, she took another, final inch and he felt her nose against his midsection. He took her by the hair and looked down at her in the dim light.

The image seared itself into his brain. Her big, blue eyes blinking up at him, his entire dick disappeared into her mouth, her hair everywhere. He pulled out and thrust into her mouth once, twice, she gagged on the last one but didn’t let him go anywhere, swallowing him down again. And that’s when he lost it.

“I love you. I love you,” he whispered over and over as he came down her throat.

She stood up and kissed his mouth. He shivered when he tasted himself there. They put each other back together and Jackson opened the pantry door, checking to make sure the coast was clear. She went to the bathroom first to wash up and then made her way to the living room. He did the same and found his place on the floor of the living room, next to the fire, his eyes on the television like absolutely nothing was up. Nothing at all.

“Where have you been?” Seth asked, nudging Jackson with his socked foot.

“Client called. Sick cat.” The lie was simple, which was the only reason it worked. Because it didn’t sound natural coming out of his lips. He wanted to tell the family the truth. Well, not the whole truth. They probably didn’t need to know that he’d just fucked Kaya thirty feet from them. But he wanted to tell them the rest.

Then he looked up and caught her eye across the room. Her eyebrows were raised at his lie. “Pussy cat?” she mouthed, cocking her head to the side in a deceptively innocent way.

Jackson looked away, trying to smother his laughter but failing. He looked up to see Raphael eyeing him suspiciously.

“What is up with you these days, dude?”

“Are we just talking through the movie?” Nat asked the group. “Cuz, that’s fine if that’s what we’re doing. But somebody tell me now so that I don’t tear my hair out.”

Raphael laughed and tucked Nat into his side. “Yes, we’re talking through the movie as long as Jackson tells us what the hell is going on with him. He’s been acting like a freak for a month and we’ve all been waiting for him to explain what’s going on. But he isn’t giving up the goods, so now I want to hear it. Movie or not.”

Jackson stretched out, his feet warming by the fire, and looked around at his brothers’ faces, at his mother’s face. They were all looking at him now, obviously sharing the same sentiments that Raphael was expressing. Varying levels of concern greeted him in each face he looked at, besides Bauer, who had his eyes glued to the TV screen, pretending that none of this was his business, and Kaya, who was blinking baby deer eyes at him, pretending to be as curious as the rest.

Jackson stifled another laugh at her innocent act. What a turkey, she was. God, he loved her.

“How have I been acting weird?”

Raphael and Seth tag-teamed the answer immediately, as if they’d been waiting for him to ask exactly a question like that. “You’ve been even more withdrawn than usual.”

“You never come over for dinner anymore.”

“You aren’t calling. You’re barely texting.”

“You’re spending all this time training with Bauer and apparently making huge leaps and bounds—”

“But you haven’t even celebrated with us. I mean, how crazy is that? The one thing you’ve wanted for, like, your entire adult life is finally happening and you haven’t even taken the time to celebrate it?”

“Yeah. I thought that once you finally started to get your shift on track you’d relax some. You’d open up a little, go easier on yourself, but you’ve been even more withdrawn than normal.”

Jackson held up a hand to stop them. He had to shake his head and laugh at the irony of all this. For the first time in his life, Jackson was relaxed. He was proud of himself. He was getting off work at a reasonable hour. He had a fucking girlfriend, for God’s sake. He, Jackson Durant, was in and maintaining a relationship. It was the healthiest he’d been in years but his brothers and mother had absolutely no idea.

He glanced at Kaya and saw that she’d raised her fingernails up to her mouth and was nervously biting them, her eyes glued to Natalie. It would be a lot easier if he could just blurt it all out and explain, but not without Kaya’s permission. Not without her wholehearted excitement. So, instead, he told a half truth.

“Actually, I’ve been doing really well. It’s been a good time for me since Christmas. The best of my life, probably.”

Her eyes tracked back to his and warmed considerably, but he could still feel the nerves pulsing off of her.

“Why? What’s been going on?” Seth asked.

“Do you all remember Officer Woodrow?”

“The cop who showed up the night Race attacked me?” Natalie asked. Everyone else in the room winced, especially Raphael, who tugged her close. It was still hard for everyone to process what had almost happened to her in those woods last year, how close they’d come to losing her. Not so hard for Natalie, though, who plowed on without hesitation. “He was awesome. Didn’t say anything about the fact that Raph was naked.”

“Right,” Jackson said. “Something about that stuck in my mind. Wouldn’t a cop ask more questions about that? I figured that he would, unless he already knew the answers without having to ask.”

“You think he knew Raph was a shifter?” Seth asked, although the tone of his voice implied that he, too, had already come to the same conclusion.

Jackson nodded. “But all’s well that ends well and the whole thing ended without him bringing it up. But about eight months ago, he came to the vet clinic with his parrot. I treated the bird and sent him on his way. A couple weeks later he was back with his dog. Then there was a hare, a hawk, even a fox.”

“Wow,” whistled Sarah. “That’s… very weird.”

“He told me that he and his wife, Shelly, are running a rehabilitation and rescue center for animals out at their farm. I looked into it and sure enough, they were more than certified, both of them. Maybe I shouldn’t have expected less from a law enforcement agent, but I was impressed when I visited the first time. They must have put a lot of money into the facilities because they’re beautiful and clean. They do good work.”

Jackson gathered his thoughts for a second, and for the first time, looked at his mother, really looked at her. She looked terribly nervous, like he was about to reveal something that would age her ten years. For a moment, he felt awful, but then he glanced down. She’d surreptitiously reached over and taken Bauer’s hand. The two of them were laced together, drawing strength from one another. It surprised Jackson to see it, but it also surprised him that it didn’t hurt at all. He liked seeing his mother supported in this way. It was new and would take getting used to, but it was so good for her. For all of them.

One by one, he looked around at the faces of all the people who’d stood by him over the years. In just a short matter of time, his family had changed so much. They’d gone from being a family of loners, guarding their secrets at all costs, to being partnered up, living rich lives filled with love and purpose.

He took a deep breath. He had to let them in. “It took a while for me to figure out, but a few weeks ago I finally realized what was going on at Ben and Shelly’s. They’re not running an animal rehab center. They’re running a shifter rehab center.”

It was like someone had pressed pause on his family. For a long minute, no one even blinked, except for Kaya, who glanced nervously at all the faces around her.

“You’re kidding,” Raph eventually said. “That’s fucking awesome.”

Jackson laughed, letting out a long breath. “Yeah. It actually really is. They take care of animals there as well, but it turns out that most of the animals that Ben had brought to me at the vet’s clinic over the year have been shifters in their animal forms. It was safer to bring them to a vet than to bring them in their human forms to ERs where they might get reported. And it was safest yet to bring them to a vet who he knew for sure had a brother who was a shifter. He figured I wouldn’t have a huge interest in blowing the horn on shifters.”             

“Holy shit,” Natalie said. “This is insane. There’s a shifter safehouse right here in Boulder? Did you know that?” She directed her question at Bauer.

He cleared his throat. “I’d heard there was one in the area. Though I’m pretty sure it was much smaller then. That’s what I thought this place was. Where else would have wolf shifters running in and out of the house?”

“Hold the phone. Are you two holding hands?” Raphael asked, leaning forward suddenly, his eyes squinting at Bauer and Elizabeth.

For the second time in two minutes, the room record-scratched.

Bauer and Elizabeth whipped their heads around to look at one another, their eyes wide and their cheeks red. Immediately, they broke into laughter.

“Well,” Elizabeth said. “Yes. We are.”

“Are you…” Seth started, trying to get his thoughts together. “Dating?”

“Yes. We are,” Elizabeth repeated.

“Holy shit,” Natalie repeated. Then she jumped to her feet and clapped her hands. “This is incredible! Congratulations!”

Seth leaned over and slapped some cash into Raphael’s hand, who smugly slipped it into his back pocket.

“We were trying to figure out a time to tell you boys,” Bauer muttered, rising up to shake hands with Raph and Seth, who’d strode over to hug their mother. “Except for Jackson. He knew a long time ago.”

The twins rounded on their older brother. “What the fuck!”

Bauer cleared his throat. “I had to ask for somebody’s blessing. He was the one who I knew would give it to me.”

“Really?” Jackson asked, a smile on his face. “That was your reasoning?”

Bauer shrugged. “Figured you knew me well enough at this point to know my intentions were good.”

Jackson was touched. That was as good as Bauer saying he loved him. It surprised Jackson in that moment to realize that he loved the old man right back. When he’d met him all those years ago, he’d been suspicious and hateful. He’d wanted him gone. His relationship with Bauer had changed as much as the rest of his family had. There was room in his heart for the risk of loving someone. There was more than enough room.

The group went around, hugging and laughing, congratulating Bauer and Elizabeth, trying to wrap their heads around this new development. And when they all settled back into their seats, Bauer forewent the rocker he’d been occupying. He sat dead next to Elizabeth, their clasped hands resting on her knee.

“Okay. Wow. Where were we?” Raphael asked, looking for all the world like the earth had just tipped on its axis.

“Jackson was telling us about the Woodrows,” Kaya said in a quiet voice. He held her eyes for a long moment before clearing his throat and starting again.

“Right. Anyhow, a couple of weeks ago, I figured it out because of a one-eyed goose.”

The room sort of burst into laughter and for a moment, Jackson was a little startled. He wasn’t used to making rooms burst into laughter and to his knowledge, he hadn’t told a joke.

“Literally,” he said, clarifying.

That made them laugh harder and he looked to Kaya for help. But she was absolutely zero help as she’d simply clamped her hands over her mouth as her shoulders silently shook. She finally gathered breath. “You should see your face,” she said. “You look so confused.”

Well, that was probably because he was confused. He shook his head, waiting for their laughter to subside. “I know that sounds like the punchline to a dumb joke or something, but yeah. I recognized him from the news.”

“Oh. Shit.” Mirth fell from Seth’s face. “I heard about that. He was the shifter who got attacked last month, wasn’t he? The one who lost an eye?”

“Yeah.”

The laughter stopped abruptly, replaced with a somber understanding that Jackson knew he didn’t need to spell out to anyone in this room, but did so anyways. He had a point to make.

“He is a man who was attacked in a hate crime, brutally. Lost an eye. And was too scared to go to the ER. Had to scramble his ass up to Boulder to search for a shifter haven that he hoped he could find and hope that they would be able to give him some medical attention. All because to be born the way we’re born is fucking illegal. It’s criminal. It’s so outdated. It’s heinous. In fifty years our children will be mortified that shifters were treated this way. But there’s nothing that can be done right now. Our hands are tied.”

He ended his speech with a rough hand through his hair and every eye in the room trained on him.

“Well, there is something that we can do right now. Only…” Raphael appeared to put the pieces together. “You’ve already been doing it, haven’t you? You’ve been helping them?”
Jackson let out a long breath. “I have. I’ve been going over there and volunteering my time. Tending to the shifters in their animal forms and even their human forms occasionally. Though it would be great to get a doctor on board. We’ve—” he cut himself off and his eyes accidentally tracked over to Kaya before he looked at the ground again. “I’ve been working on a way to get Ben and Shelly more food over there on a regular basis, considering they house anywhere between three and fifteen shifters at a time.”

“Fifteen shifters at a time?” Elizabeth leaned forward, shock apparent in every line of her face. “How the hell do they manage that? How the hell do they fly under the radar?”

“They stay in their animal forms almost all the time.”

“Bauer,” Seth asked, “I know that’s how you stayed hidden for so long as well, but how does a shifter do that? After only a couple of hours in my wolf form, my body is burning to turn back human.”

Bauer sighed. “I’m happy to say that shifting has never been life or death for you boys. You’ve had this home and this mother to protect you for so long. But when you’re scared for your life, when you know that shifting means death, that your animal form is the only thing that can protect you, well, you ignore the burn as best you can. And after a while it subsides. After a long while, it starts to feel strange to be in your human form.”

“Even so, all those shifters are trapped in their animal forms just because they’re scared of the consequences? It seems like some of the younger or more inexperienced ones would trip up and give the game away,” Natalie mused.

“They often do,” Bauer agreed. “That’s how so many of these safehouses get their covers blown. Somebody spots a housecat shifting into a twenty-year-old kid and the shit hits the fan. Everybody gets dragged in. I’m surprised they’ve been able to stay under the radar for so many years. Especially if they’re housing fifteen shifters at a time. I’ve never heard of a safehouse that big.”

“That’s where Shelly comes in.” Jackson stretched his legs out in front of him. “She’s a shifter, too. A lynx. And she has a strange sort of gift. She can sort of calm any shifter down. I never told her that I’m a shifter, but I’m sure she can sense it at this point. Her manner works even when I’m in my human form. I think, being around her, it wouldn’t be hard to stay in your animal form. Though I’m told that things can get pretty raucous on a full moon, even with her around.”

“This is so crazy,” Seth said into the hands he’d dragged over his face. “For so many years we’ve sat on this secret, feeling so alone in the world, only to find out that we’re the lucky ones. That there are so many shifters everywhere around us and we’ve done nothing to help any of them.”

“Seth,” Elizabeth acknowledged. “Don’t go feeling retroactively guilty. Your health and safety were the top priority around here. And I’m not a shifter! How the hell were we supposed to know anything about shifter culture? There wasn’t anyone to learn it from. There’s not exactly how-to-raise-your-shifter-sons support groups out there.”

Jackson leaned forward and rested a hand on his mother’s socked foot for a moment. “It’s not a complaint about how we were raised, Ma. None of us would ever be ridiculous enough to complain about that. No. Seth’s complaint is about how the system treats shifters. It’s got us all so trapped in so many ways that we don’t even know that there’s relatively easy ways to help our own kind just ten miles down the road.”

“So, they need help, then?” Raphael asked, his eyes burning with something Jackson had never seen before. “Ben and Shelly, they would let us help, too?”

Jackson felt his chest squeeze down. He dropped his head for a second as pride and fear warred within him. He was less than a decade older than his twin brothers, but in many ways, being the oldest man of the house, he felt as if he’d raised them. Hearing Raph instantly decide that he’d want to fight for the health and safety of other shifters made a roaring pride catch fire in Jackson’s chest. They were good men, his brothers. But it was also freaking terrifying. Because if his brothers were helping, then they were throwing themselves into the line of fire, just like he had.

When he lifted his eyes, Kaya was staring him down and her telepathic message was sent very clearly. Don’t be Old Jackson.

Don’t tell people what they can or can’t do just because you love them and the world is scary.

Don’t make decisions for the people you love.

Instead, be brave enough to trust them to make their own decisions.

Stop falling on swords, dummy.

He almost laughed at the Kaya in his head who was so clear and so smart. She narrowed her eyes at him, demanding that he be better. That he be the man who deserved to hold her in his arms every night. The man who’d just started building a life with her. New Jackson.

He took a deep breath.

“Yes. They always need help. It’s just the two of them running everything and Ben obviously has a day job. That means that Shelly is often left running all the repairs in the guesthouses and the animal containment areas. She’s in charge of getting everyone fed and watered. She’s also in charge of security on their land, which is a hell of a task because it’s a lot of land. Every time I’ve been there, she’s been scrambling from one thing to the next.”

“Would they trust us?” Seth asked. “If we went with you and you vouched for us, would Ben and Shelly trust us? Because repairs, security measures, those are things that Raph and I could do in a heartbeat.”

“They’d be over the fucking moon,” Jackson said in a hoarse voice, forcing himself to tell the truth even though Old Jackson was trying to beat down the door of the basement, demanding that New Jackson get back down there and lock his own ass up. “They also need people constantly on the lookout for shifters who are in the area who need help. Obviously they can’t advertise. Even though plenty of shifters find their way there, it keeps Shelly up at night how many of them probably pass right by.”

The group was quiet for a second, no bright ideas emerging around that particular quandary until…

“I could probably help with that,” Bauer said in a gruff voice. “I’ve been known to track a shifter or two in my day.” He took a deep breath. “It wouldn’t kill me to patrol the area for lost shifters every few days.”

That more than anything was what made Jackson’s throat squeeze down with emotions. If any of them had questioned Bauer’s devotion to their family, to Elizabeth, he’d just shot those doubts to the heavens. This was a man who’d run for the hills last year at even the suggestion of standing their ground. And now he was volunteering to work secretly for a shifter safehouse. If that wasn’t a declaration of love for their family, Jackson didn’t know what was.

“All right,” Jackson said gruffly. “I’ll call Shelly tomorrow and tell her that she’s got some more volunteers. Maybe we could go over in the evening—”

“Jackson!” Sarah said, her eyes widening. “Tomorrow is the full moon.”

They all stared at him, dumbstruck. He’d never, ever forgotten a full moon before. Typically, he spent the entire month dreading them, so for him to have just casually forgotten about it spoke volumes.

“Whatever the heck is loosening you up these days, I hope it gets even looser,” Raph said, his eyebrows high on his face. “Cuz this looks good on you, bro.”

Jackson didn’t bother trying to stop the grin that was growing on his face.