Chapter One
Lori was passed out on the couch. Again.
Jasmine sighed as she tucked an afghan around her sister’s feet, then brushed back Lori’s hair to check that her coloring was good and her breathing steady. She was resting peacefully, well past the time when she might choke on her own vomit. If only there was a way to stop her from getting so plastered drunk like this…
“Oh, Lor.” Jasmine sighed. “What you need is a hobby. Or someone to take care of you.”
Lori had called Jasmine to come get her from the club she had been partying at well past midnight. As if being woken up so abruptly wasn’t bad enough, Lori hadn’t even told her where she was clubbing. So, Jasmine had spent two hours driving around the city, trying to find her little sister. Although there was no way she was leaving Lori out in the city too drunk to stand, she did wish her sister would show a little more decorum.
Unfortunately, if Jasmine scolded her about it, Lori might stop calling. And then what would she do?
With a sigh, Jasmine shook her head. Lori didn’t act out like this terribly often. It hadn’t happened for a while, but still. That it happened at all was enough to make her so mad she wanted to shake Lori and yell at her for being so irresponsible.
But she couldn’t just hang around waiting for her sister to wake up. Jasmine checked the time. She needed to be leaving and she hadn’t done anything with her hair. Oh, well. She stifled a yawn as she pulled her long black hair into a ponytail.
What she wouldn’t give to be able to scarf down an extra-large coffee to wake herself up. But as she was a shifter capable of turning into a jaguar, coffee didn’t have any more of an effect than clicking her heels together. Her metabolism was just too fast. In order for it to start affecting her, she’d have to drink so much that she’d spend the whole day rushing to the bathroom. And as it was the first day on a new job, she couldn’t do that.
But there wasn’t anything she could do right now. Jasmine grabbed her keys and headed out of the apartment. This job was important to keep. Dr. Eneko Alava wasn’t as wealthy as the clients she usually nannied for, but she had just lost most of her other jobs and needed the work.
Up until recently, she had been caring for the kids in three families. Then two of them had found out she was a shifter and dropped her.
That left her with only one client, Adela and her daughter Luci. Luci herself was a shifter and Adela had been thrilled to find out about Jasmine’s heritage. However, shortly after Jasmine came to work for her Adela had been reunited with Luci’s father, Marcus. It was wonderful for them, but not so much for Jasmine, as Marcus was able to stay at home with Luci while Adela worked. Marcus worked for the bear clan’s matriarch, and as such had very flexible job hours.
Fortunately for Jasmine, Marcus was good friends with Dr. Eneko Alava, the local doctor who treated all the shifters in the area. He was a bear shifter himself, and needed someone to look after his two children.
“This is it, Jazz,” she told herself as she wove her way through early morning traffic. “Let’s not mess this up.”
Her jaguar, buried deep in her chest, growled an agreement.
Soon she was pulling into the parking lot of Dr. Alava’s clinic. It was a tidy little building, although it was in need of some repairs. Still, the grounds were clean and the sign that hung in the window looked new.
Jasmine took a moment to check herself in the mirror, suddenly nervous. Even though she knew it was silly, she couldn’t stop herself. She was experienced, but meeting new clients was already nerve-wracking. Especially when the new client was as attractive as—
“Stop it, Jasmine! This is a job, not a date.” She took a deep breath and glanced at the clock.
Five minutes early. Dang it. She’d meant to be ten minutes early, so there was plenty of time to get through everything. Oh well.
She put a smile on her face as she headed into the clinic. Eneko waited inside. He grinned at her, his smile making his round face beam. Jasmine’s heart skipped a beat as her own tense muscles relaxed.
He was in every way the epitome of a bear shifter. Huge. Not just due to the muscle upon muscle that made up his rippling frame, but he was also a good head taller than she was and just had a big personality. His hands were so big that in another life he could have been a blacksmith.
Two children stood beside him. Maite, five and Luken, eight, Jasmine reminded herself. Maite, her long braids swinging behind her, burst into a grin and ran to her, throwing her arms around Jasmine’s middle.
“Are you our nanny?” the little girl asked.
“I am.”
Luken viewed her with interest as he twisted his hands together. “Da says you can change into a jaguar.”
Jasmine’s smile slipped a little but she nodded. “Yes, I can. And both of you can turn into bears, right?”
“Yep.” Maite nodded. “But Da doesn’t like it when we shift in the house, we make everything messy.”
Eneko chuckled as he swooped in and seized his daughter. He tossed her into the air, earning shrieking laughter, then smiled at Jasmine. “Sorry about the rushed call. Normally I’d have you come to my house, but I had an emergency this morning and had to get here early.”
“That just shows you care about your patients.” Jasmine’s smile widened again. She reached to tug the ends of her hair but stopped herself.
Eneko smiled back. “So, we didn’t really have a chance to talk since… we met. Did you have any questions?”
Jasmine shook her head. “Just give me the rundown. Emergency contacts, schedule, dietary requirements.”
“Right. Numbers.”
He handed her a piece of paper that held all the numbers she needed, and a few she’d never use. He then gave her a rundown on when meals were and what their favorite foods were. Apparently Maite had shifted that morning and ripped up the carpet in her room, so she wasn’t allowed any dessert. He didn’t want to discourage them from embracing their bears, however, so there was a half-hour after supper when they could shift and hang out in the backyard.
“I’m working on finding a patch of forest where we can shift, but with… the things going on…”
Jasmine’s expression darkened as she nodded. Recently it had been discovered that a bear had been pushing drugs through the town, and anti-shifter sentiments had flared up as a result.
“And when is bedtime?” she asked, pulling her mind back to the present.
“Seven for Maite, seven-thirty for Luken. I hope most nights I’ll be home before then, though.” Eneko’s smile faltered a little as he gazed at his children. It was the familiar look of a parent who wasn’t certain about leaving their child alone. “The other doctor that worked with me just quit, so I’m trying to juggle an increased workload. I’m the only clinic that a lot of people around here can go to.”
And by people he meant shifters.
Lots of businesses, hospitals included, still turned away shifters. Because they healed so rapidly on their own, they were considered to ‘waste resources’. Jasmine herself, before she had been adopted onto a farm, had been in the foster system. She’d been tossed from foster home to foster home; nobody wanted her because of what she was, even when she buried her jaguar so deep she couldn’t even feel her anymore.
“You’re doing great work,” she blurted, trying desperately to pull herself from those bleak thoughts. “I know that the matriarch of your clan is trying to get you more funding.”
“Yeah. I—"
The door burst open. Jasmine jumped as a woman came running in. Mousy brown hair fell about her shoulders and there was a sneer on her face. Eneko tensed and placed Maite down on the floor. Jasmine acted on instinct as she maneuvered herself to stand between the children and this new woman. She ushered the children back a little way. Luken’s eyes widened and Maite stuck her thumb in her mouth.
“Jana,” Eneko started.
“Don’t you dare say my name, you beast!”
The tone was enough for Jasmine to seize the hands of both children and start tugging them towards the back. How often had she heard that tone when a potential foster parent had learned she could turn into a jaguar? Never mind that she had only shifted a handful of times from when she was three to when she turned eighteen. The fact that she could shift at all was enough to earn their scorn and fury.
Eneko held his hands up. “Miss Adler. I have already given you your tax forms for the year and as you quit, there is nothing more for us to say to one another.”
“There is plenty to say!” Adler stuck a finger in his face. “I saw that grant request that you sent to city hall. It’s not bad enough that you’re already stealing equipment from hospitals, now you have to steal money, too? You damned animals don’t need any of this—”
Eneko growled in his throat. “You are trespassing. Please leave before I am forced to call the police.”
“Don’t you dare threaten me!”
Jasmine had heard enough. Moving quickly, she led the children down the hallway and into a bathroom. There, she closed the door and turned on the tap to block out the woman’s shouting. When that didn’t work, she held the toilet handle down to continue to make noise.
Maite wrapped her arms around Jasmine’s waist and buried her face in her stomach as she started to cry softly. Luken, watching Jasmine, waved a hand under the air dryer to start it making noise, too. His lip trembled and he looked over at her with far more knowledge than an eight-year-old ought to have. How many of these tirades had he heard in his young life? As many as she had by the time she was his age?
Sometime later, Eneko knocked on the bathroom door and told them it was safe to come out. His expression was a mix of angry and sad, and he hugged his children tightly. “There are some things that I have to get done. Maybe Jasmine can take you home.”
“Of course,” she said quickly. After that sort of confrontation, it was always a good idea to comfort children in familiar surroundings. “Do you want to move their booster seats to my car, or…”
Eneko handed her a set of keys. “This one is for the car, this is for the house. I’d rather they not watch TV, but you can play the Wii.”
Jasmine nodded. They left the clinic in a solemn mood, and though she tried to get the children excited about playing games once they got home, neither one spoke much. It wasn’t until they had arrived at Eneko’s home, a nice, one-story house that looked a little shabby but clean, that Luken spoke.
“I hate being a shifter,” he mumbled.
Jasmine wished she could tell him that it wasn’t a bad thing, but she couldn’t–because half the time, she agreed. Things had gotten better in the last few years, but there were still plenty of times when she wished that she was ‘normal’. Not different. Not something that the majority of the world seemed determined to hate her for.
“I don’t!” Maite slapped her brother hard. “I love being a shifter! You’re just dumb!”
“No hitting.” Jasmine quickly inserted her arm between them to stop Luken from retaliating. “Maite, we don’t tell people they’re dumb. Now say sorry to your brother.”
Matie stared at her. “My da lets me say he’s dumb.”
“He does not!” Luken reached around Jasmine’s arm to pinch his sister.
She let out a high-pitched wail and started to sob dramatically.
“Luken,” Jasmine chided.
“She hit me fi—”
Maite punched him in the arm.
Jasmine sighed as she got out of the car and moved around to get them out, too. She wasn’t used to watching kids this old. Babies and toddlers were her specialty. But it seemed as though she was going to have to learn how to adapt her techniques for older children, and fast.
Her mind flashed to Lori. Ever since Jasmine had been living on her own, she’d been taking care of Lori half the time as well. Trying to look after her stubborn sister was different than two children, though. As soon as she had them in the house she put them in time outs. Not the way she wanted to start this relationship, but they had to know that she wasn’t going to tolerate them beating up on each other.
This was shaping up to be a rough first day. But then, Jasmine mused, it could only get better from here.