CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

Jackson woke up in a hospital bed. His eyes didn’t seem to want to come open and for a minute, he didn’t think they were going to. That was fine. But then, when he tried to shift, he realized that one of his hands was stuck to the side of his bed.

Handcuffed, he realized with ice in his gut. He’d known, as he’d flashed in and out of consciousness in the back of the ambulance, that he’d been outed as a shifter. He’d also known that he was headed straight to a hospital chock full of mandatory reporters. The odds of walking out of that hospital as a free man were slim to none.

He tested the bonds of his handcuffs and they tightened around his wrist, feathering gently over his skin.

Wait a second, handcuffs didn’t do that.

He forced his eyes open only to be greeted by a pair of tropical blue eyes that had been staring right at him as he slept.

He grunted in surprise and looked down at the hand of his that she held as tightly as a pair of handcuffs.

“I’m not handcuffed,” he said in confusion.

“No,” she agreed. “Ben made them take them off.”

“They’re not arresting me?”

“No.”

“But… why?”

Kaya’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, it’s a mess, Jackson, but you’ll never believe what’s going on.”

“What?”

“Do you hear that? Outside?”

He strained his ears and sure enough, in the distance, there was the sound of people chanting something. Lots of people. “What is it?”

“People have come from all across the country to make sure that you and your brothers don’t get interned at a camp.”

“What?”

“You’ve been out for three days, baby. You hit your head on the way down after you got shot. But it’s been a busy three days.”

His head spun. He couldn’t, in his concussed state, possibly conceive of a world that could have changed so much in three days.

“Explain.” It was the best he could do.

And so she did. She told him about the news reporters who’d interviewed her over and over again. How she’d explained how in love they were. How he’d jumped in front of a shotgun for her. She’d explained everything she knew to be true about the shifters in her life. That they were kind and loving and scared of being forced out of the lives they’d worked so hard to live.

“They believed you?” He couldn’t believe that the media, so shifter-hating, wouldn’t have altered the story to whatever bullshit Race was claiming to be true.

“Race corroborated the story.”

“What?” He winced as his emphatic question tightened the muscles in his midsection and a screaming wave of pain overtook him.

And so Kaya explained the rest. That Race came clean only after the moment that Shelly had shifted back into her human form and he’d realized that she was the beloved Michelle he’d thought he’d lost so many years ago. Apparently Michelle’s mother had taken Michelle from Race when she’d realized she’d passed the lynx shifter gene to her daughter. Things had been bad in their marriage and Race had never been able to make her believe that he wouldn’t turn them in someday. She’d fled instead, taking her daughter with her and leaving Race a twisted shell of himself with a hell of a vendetta against shifters of all kinds.

“When he realized that his daughter was still alive and right in front of him, he swore he’d do anything to get her back in his life.”

“She asked him to confess. To clear our names.”

“Bingo.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why I’m not arrested and recuperating in some shifter camp somewhere.”

Kaya sighed. “Another shifter camp burned down on the full moon. Forty shifters are presumed dead. There’s an immediate federal investigation into the conditions there at the camp. Ex-employees at the camps have been coming forward with their stories on how deplorable the conditions are. How inhumane they believe the whole thing to be. And now, people are really gravitating toward our love story. It seems like the court of public opinion is being swayed fairly quickly.”

“So. What, I get to walk out of her?”

She winced. “It’s not going to be that simple. But, Jacks, I don’t think you’re going to be interned.”

His mind whirled. He couldn’t help but let it settle in one place. “You said love.”

“Hmm?” she asked, stroking at his hair.

“You said our love story.”

“Right.” Her brow furrowed.

“Because you love me,” he said, searching for confirmation.

She laughed softly and leaned forward to kiss his lips. “Because I’m in love with you, my sweet, ridiculous, overbearing mate.”

He found he couldn’t respond. His head hurt, her hands in his hair were heaven, and everything in the world was just too complicated. Everything but Kaya.

 

 

***

 

 

Four Years Later

 

“Happy Jackson Durant day, everybody!” Raphael called to the family as they sat in the sunshine on Elizabeth’s back porch.

The family laughed and toasted with their champagne, but Jackson winced. “Can we not call it that, please?”

“Aw, my brother-in-law is modest,” Nat said, leaning over to pinch his cheek.

“It’s not that. It’s just that a lot of people worked hard for this day and calling it Jackson Durant Day completely minimizes—”

“Baby,” Kaya said, her eyes sparkling as she pressed up on her bare toes to kiss his lips. “Learn to take a compliment.”

He sighed. For her, he’d do anything. Especially when she looked like this. Radiant, sleepy, gorgeous, with her baby bump starting to really pop. He sat down and gently tugged her into his lap, smiling to himself when he felt just how warm the skin on her calves was. It tickled him to no end that pretty much as soon as he’d gotten her pregnant, she’d gone from being the coldest woman in the world to constantly overheating.

“I’m just saying, let’s call a spade a spade,” he said to the group, lifting his glass again. “Happy Shifter Liberation Day, everyone.”

They couldn’t help but toast again.

It was two years since the actual Shifter Liberation Day, and the family continued to celebrate the anniversary. It was the day that had changed their lives forever. The day that the very last shifter camp had been shut down and discrimination, of any kind, against shifters officially became illegal.

Raphael joked and called it Jackson Durant Day simply because Jackson had worked tirelessly, for the two years after he was shot, to see that come to pass.

So many people had been mobilized by that particularly eventful full moon. And more people than he’d ever thought possible had come out of the woodwork to support shifters. Friends, families, lovers—it seemed that over half of America had known and loved a shifter in secret, terrified of losing them to the government.

To the Durants’ palpable surprise, one of the people who’d been changed by the events of that day had been Race himself. He was still serving his time, but his impassioned letters to his daughter that she then read during press conferences had inspired their own kind of cultural change. Race used his regrets and his experiences to talk to other men like him. People who were scared of shifters and were motivated to use violence against them. He encouraged them to consider their motives, to get to know their neighbors, not to live their lives in fear and ignorance.

Jackson wasn’t sure that he’d ever forgive Race for holding a shotgun to his wife, but as Kaya was here, living and breathing in his arms, it didn’t keep him up at night anymore.

His life was so different than it had been four years ago. He’d never, in his wildest dreams, thought that he’d be out to the entire nation about being a shifter. That, with Kaya as his wife, he’d be speaking in front of congress, at colleges around the country, in front of foreign diplomats, about the rights of shifters.

He also hadn’t expected to go back to school. But now that it was no longer illegal to study shifter medicine, he was putting his veterinary degree to work and adding a medical degree to his list of accomplishments. He and Kaya were on track to open the nation’s very first Shifter Health Clinic. Where shifters in either form could come for medical care.

“Daddy? Why is it Jackson Durant day? Is it Uncle Jacks’s birthday?”

“No, dummy. That was last month, remember?”

That was Elias and Melanie, Sarah and Seth’s adopted twin children. Their adoption had only become final a year ago, though they’d lived with Seth and Sarah as foster children for a year before that. The pair was five years old and just starting to grapple with the fact that they were elk shifters in a world that was only marginally friendly to shifters. Things were better than ever before, but the world had a long way to go.

“It’s Jackson Durant day because Uncle Jacks worked really hard for a lot of years to make sure that the world was safe for people like us. For shifters.” Seth kissed Elias’s forehead and smoothed his messy hair down. “And don’t call your brother a dummy.” He smoothed Melanie’s hair down, too.              

“Melly! Play!” Ace shouted from where he sat in Bauer’s arms. The two-year-old son of Raphael and Natalie adored his grandfather, but nobody held a candle to Melanie in Ace’s eyes.

Melanie grinned and held her hand out to help Ace down the stairs and into the backyard where toys were slung all over the place. “Come on, Acey.”

“Wait for me!” Elias insisted, bolting after them.

Natalie, sitting in the chair next to Jackson and Kaya, contentedly rubbed her pregnant belly as she watched her son play with his cousins. “Can’t believe there’s about to be three more kids added to the mix.”

She reached out for her sister’s hand and they squeezed. So far, they’d loved being pregnant at the same time.

“Yeah, I know,” Raph said, gazing at the kids. “It’s crazy—hold on. Did you just say three more?” He swung around in his seat to stare at his wife.

Natalie managed to bite her lip and grin at the same time. “Didn’t I mention that I found out this afternoon that we’re having twins?”

Raphael whooped and jumped out of his seat, diving across the porch to soundly kiss his wife.

Jackson and Kaya kissed one another as well, just because they could. And Jackson grinned around at Seth and Elizabeth, tears welling in their eyes, Sarah calling for another toast, Bauer covering his smile unsuccessfully.

He was grateful for the good news for Raphael, not only because now the spotlight was off of him, but because he was excited that the Durant family would be expanding even more. He couldn’t believe how much had changed since they were younger.

This feeling, here, with Kaya in his lap and his baby in her belly, his family laughing and joking and loving one another, this was the opposite of being a lone wolf.

 

 

The End