“What the...?” His voice trailed off.
I tried to interpose myself between him and Serena, but he was already peering down into the terrarium.
Serena’s shift was almost complete.
And Dad’s grad student had seen it.
I didn’t want to leave an infant human in the snake enclosure for any longer than I had to. I needed to get her into the house and check all her vitals—and all of that machinery was in the house.
For the first time, I realized how ridiculous it had been to assume that she wouldn’t shift while we were out in the snake house.
I shouldered Shane out of the way, and he stumbled a little, still too shocked to have any real response.
“You realize, of course,” I said, as I clutched the tiny baby to my chest, “that no one will believe you.”
I made eye contact with him and let my vision go gray, a sure sign that my eyes had shifted to serpent form.
A protective adrenaline rushed through me, and I let my fangs snap into place—a move I’d never actually made but had often fantasized about. “If you expose her to danger, I will come for you.” The S’s hissed with my most snake-like sibilance.
I let my eyes shift back to human, retracted my fangs, and gave him a sunny smile. “If you tell anyone what happened here, they’ll think you’re insane.”
Without another word, I turned on my heel and marched into the house, where I attached the miniature electrodes to Serena’s tiny, naked body.
She was perfectly fine.
I was trembling.
I STOOD IN MY OLD BEDROOM over the bed, where I spread out a small baby blanket and used it to swaddle the now-human Serena exactly as the doctor had showed me at the hospital. I was breathing hard, unable to calm down after the interaction with Shane.
The thumping of masculine footsteps up the stairs didn’t help my mood at all. I scooped Serena up in my arms and held her protectively. Turning to face the door, I narrowed my eyes, preparing to respond to either my father or Shane.
But who came through the door was actually Kade. An inarticulate cry escaped me, and I all but flew to him—at least as much as an arm full of human baby Serena would allow. He wrapped us both up into his arms, creating a protective cage that held us safe, at least for the moment.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I didn’t answer immediately, instead standing up on my tiptoes to press my lips to his. Everything about him seemed perfect in that moment. The fact that I didn’t have to stretch too much to kiss him. The amazing sense of presence he always projected into any space. The way his eyes swirled with hot, golden sparks after I’d kissed him. The fact that even as I stood there holding an infant, I felt his body’s reaction to mine as it pressed hard against me.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” he said, his voice crawling low in his throat. He pulled me tighter against him for a moment then put both his hands on my shoulders and took a slight step back away from me. His beautiful, brown-gold eyes examined me carefully. Then he reached out to take Serena from me.
He gazed down at her in his arms as he moved to the bed and sat down. Glancing up at me, he asked, “How long has it been since she shifted?”
I checked my watch. “Maybe ten or twelve minutes?”
“I’m a little surprised she’s not crying yet. That’s hungry work.” With a sure touch, he shifted her from one arm to his shoulder and balanced her there with one hand as he used the other to dig through the small black diaper bag Dr. Jimson had sent with me.
He pulled out a bottle of baby formula, already prepackaged, and a separate nipple from another section of the bag.
“Put these together for me?” He held out the items. I took them, a little bemusedly, and began figuring out how they all fit together.
When I had the bottle ready, I handed it to him. He had spent the intervening few minutes talking to Serena, his voice sweet and quiet.
“Is this what ‘supportive whatever’ looks like?” I asked as I handed him the bottle. He slipped it into Serena’s mouth, and once she was suckling happily, he grinned up at me.
“This is exactly what supportive whatever looks like.”
I dropped onto the bed next to him, sitting as heavily and suddenly as if my knees had actually given out. In actuality, they only felt like they had. “I think I might love you more right now than I ever have before,” I said, leaning my head over to rest it on his shoulder.
“Now,” he said, “tell me what you were so angry about when I came in.”
So I did. Everything, from my dad inviting Shane the grad student to come hang out, apparently in the actual hopes that he would see Serena changing, to the moment when I had shoved past Shane and out of the herpetarium entirely.
By the time I finished talking, I was furious all over again. “And it’s like he has completely betrayed everything he ever knew about me. We spent my entire childhood keeping what I was a secret—and from what I’ve learned about the shifter world, that might have been what kept me alive. If people had known—if shifters had known—that I was a survivor of whatever extermination program y’all had put in place, I probably would’ve been assassinated. I do not want for these children to face something that terrible.”
“And absolute secrecy is the only model you have for dealing with a dangerous situation like this?”
I glared at him. “Don’t try to use counselor-speak on me. I know what you’re doing.”
Kade moved Serena to his other arm, and I forced myself not to melt at the sight of him handling her so competently, so calmly.
“I did go to medical school, you know,” he said. “We had a pretty substantial psychiatric series. I did a rotation in psych.”
Shaking my head, I reached out and took Serena from him, holding her up onto my shoulder and patting her back. “No. It’s not the only possibility. But yes, it is my childhood model for dealing with a potentially dangerous situation that involves children who are also shifters.”
“Have you considered possibly giving your father’s idea a try?” Kade’s gaze was a little too direct, a little too innocent.
“You’re in on this, aren’t you?” I asked.
He stretched out on his side on the bed, cupping his head in the hand on his propped-up elbow so that his biceps bulged.
“Don’t try to distract me by posing like some pinup boy,” I said, trying hard not to laugh.
Kade snorted and began trying other poses for me. “What about this one? Is this distracting enough?”
“Scoot over, you smartass.” I slid Serena onto the bed between us and stretched out beside Kade. I put my head down along my arm and looked up at him. “Do you really think it’s a good idea?”
His mouth twisted a little as he considered. “I’m just not sure it’s a bad idea. It may be an impossible idea, at this point. Now that he’s seen a shift, he may run screaming in the other direction.”
“About that...”
“What did you leave out?” Kade’s voice was flat.
“When I told him that no one would believe him? I might have shifted my eyes and teeth a little.”
Kade shook his head, but he didn’t actually seem bothered by it.