Kade opened his hands wide as if handing me something. “And there you have your Hunter. The hero of the story for humans, the villain for shifters.”
An image of Shadow’s face flashed across my mind. With that giant ax, she could definitely be an image of terror—especially to many of the shifter children I knew. I needed to find out more about what had changed her mind about shifters—especially shifters who weren’t Jeremiah.
But not right now.
“Anyway,” Kade said, running a hand over his short-cropped dark hair, “the matriarch of the hyena clan has requested a meeting with some of the Council members.” He looked as if he were about to say something else, but whatever it was, he kept it to himself.
“What do you think she’s going to ask?”
“It could be anything from a search party to a killing raid to an official request for unspecified aid.”
“Should I go?” I asked.
Kade look startled. “Oh. I don’t think so. We may call you in if she requests help from the Shields, but I can’t imagine you need to be there for any other reason.”
“You are headed out now, aren’t you?”
He sighed. “Yeah. Can we hold off talking about Serena until I get back?”
“We can, but I don’t think it’s going to be necessary, really—as long as you promise to keep being the supportive whatever you are.” I grinned at him, even as I poked at him a little.
He laughed aloud and pulled me in for a quick kiss. “I promise I will support whatever you decide to do with these children,” he said. Then he dropped another kiss on my forehead and turned me loose. “Just let me know what you need from me. Remember, I come from a huge family—I’m not at all worried about you taking this on.” He grabbed his keys and wallet from a stand beside the back door, then paused and shot me a level look. “As long as you’re absolutely certain that it’s what you want to do, I’m on board.”
Then he was out the door, leaving me in the kitchen to worry about what I was going to say to my houseguests when I got back home.
Chapter 16
AS IT TURNED OUT, I didn’t have to open up the conversation at all. Shadow was waiting inside the door, ready to pounce when I came in. “What have you learned?” she demanded.
“Things might be getting a little complicated,” I said.
She jerked away from me and turned, pacing back and forth in my small apartment’s living room. “It was complicated before,” she said. “What’s changed?”
From his spot reclining on my sofa, Jeremiah watched Shadow carefully, his eyes tracking her every movement.
“Your matriarch has apparently been informed that her hyena Shield was kidnapped by a Hunter.”
I waited for the explosion that I assumed would come after that statement. However, Shadow took the energy that was fueling her pacing and coiled it back in on herself. She became utterly still.
“So the wolves are turning all of the shifters against us.” Her eyes narrowed into a squint and her mouth tightened.
“We knew this would be difficult,” Jeremiah said. “There is nothing she can do, or that the werewolves can do, that makes our path any more difficult than it would be for any shifter and Hunter to follow.”
His words weren’t directed at me, but the sound of Jeremiah’s voice was soothing.
Hell, I could sit and listen to him read the phone book, and I suspected I would feel calmer.
Somehow that wasn’t what I had expected from a hyena shifter, given the unnerving sound of a full hyena’s laugh.
Shadow was nodding. “Okay, so what do we need to do?” She took all her contained energy and moved over to sit next to Jeremiah. She pulled her hair over one shoulder and began plaiting it into a long, blonde braid.
“I think we should wait until tomorrow, after she’s had time to put whatever she’s going to do into motion, and then we should reach out to her.”
“Why wait until after?” I asked the hyena shifter.
“Keeya will not want to be embarrassed by having her meeting interrupted. She’s a kind leader, but she’s a very proud woman. If we wait until the morning, we should be able to speak to her when she is alone. That will give her time to determine how she wants to present this to the Council.”
I nodded, though my inclination would be to get it over with as soon as possible.
“Sounds good,” I said. This meant that the hyena and Hunter problem would be off my desk by the time I picked up Serena. I was all for that.
I considered leaving a message for Kade to call me back when he got home. However, I couldn’t decide whether it would be better to confess everything now or wait until I had more information about what the matriarch was planning to do.
In the end, I opted to wait. It might’ve been cowardice on my part, but I preferred to think of it as continuing my counselor confidentiality for as long as necessary.
I would get Jeremiah and Shadow’s permission to tell Kade everything, I promised myself. But not until after they had planned out their next move.
I CREATED AN EMAIL account and logged Jeremiah into it the next morning.
“Use this to send me a message when you get everything sorted out. No one should be able to trace it,” I said. “I’ve taken this afternoon off from work, and I am picking up Serena, my...” I paused over what to call her, then decided to keep it simple. “My foster child, at 3:30. I should be available any time from noon to three if you want backup or moral support for whatever you end up doing.”
Jeremiah nodded. “Thank you. You’ve done so much for us already that I don’t know how we can ever repay you.”
“Pay it forward,” I said with a smile.
As I left the apartment, I finally allowed myself to show how relieved I was that the hyena and the Hunter were no longer going to be my problem. I still wasn’t certain I’d made the right move by allowing them to stay with me, and I was certain Kade would have some choice words about it when he learned the whole story. But in my defense, I hadn’t known anything about the Hunters before one showed up on my doorstep. So I hadn’t realized the potential danger I was putting myself in as a shifter. Yet, it seemed to be working out okay in the end.
On the drive to work, I routed my phone through my car stereo and called my father.
“Hey, Dad. I have a favor to ask. It’s kind of a big one, and it’s kind of immediate.”
“What do you need?” he asked. I pictured his sun-weathered face, eyes lined from squinting against the West Texas desert sky during his many outings as a herpetology professor.
“Serena’s doctor thinks that she’ll do better learning to shift between human and reptile if she spends some quality time with me. I’d like to bring her out to the ranch this weekend if I can.”
“Of course,” Dad said. “You know you’re always welcome, sweetie. And I look forward to spending more time with her.”
“Maybe we can even get her to shift so mom might want to spend more time with her, too,” I said, laughing. Mom wasn’t anti-serpent, by any means—I don’t think any mother ever loved a child more than she loved me. But I also knew that she was much more likely to bond to Serena’s human infant form than Serena as a juvenile serpent. Dad had already fallen in love with her, from visiting her at the hospital, so that was no problem. In any case, I knew it wouldn’t take long for those two to become doting grandparents to however many infant lamias I brought home.