Jordan sprang to his feet and ran for the back door, but Ella slammed it shut. The cub hit the screen, which creaked but held, then he pushed off it and dashed back through the kitchen. The little jaguar leapt onto and across the counters, scattering everything in his way. Pans, dishes, and silverware clattered to the floor, and a coffee cup exploded into fragments and hot liquid.
Spike, still his wildcat, grabbed Jordan when he jumped down again, getting a paw on him as Jordan scrambled for his footing on the vinyl floor.
No! Spike’s growl held weight. Jordan stopped squirming and looked up at Spike with fear in his eyes.
Spike eased the pressure without losing the firmness. Jordan subsided, his little body quivering.
“Spike,” Ella said, arms folded as she stood in the center of the kitchen. “I ask you again: What the hell?”
Under Spike’s paw, Jordan shifted slowly back into the form a four-year-old boy, his tattered clothes a pool of fabric on the floor.
Spike shifted to human, his big body folded in on itself, his hand still on Jordan. “This is Jordan. He’s my son.”
“Your what?”
“Son. Cub. My kid.”
Ella didn’t argue. No debating whether Jordan was really Spike’s son. She’d seen the markings too. “Who is the mother? What clan? You didn’t make a mate-claim—I’d know that.”
“She was a human. A groupie—or at least she might have been. She’s gone.”
Ella understood what he meant, because her eyes took on a look of sorrow. “I’m sorry, Spike.”
“I didn’t know her. Only for the night.”
Jordan looked from Spike to Ella, his shoulder engulfed by Spike’s big hand. “I don’t like it here,” he said. “Where’s my mom?”
“In the Summerland,” Spike said, as gently as he could.
“Where’s that? I want to go too.”
Spike turned his grip into a caress. “Not yet. Someday.” Not for a long, long time if Spike had anything to say about it.
“I don’t want to stay here.”
Jordan’s brows drew together in belligerent male-Shifter fashion. The kid wasn’t about to cry. He was ready to growl and storm, relieving his bewilderment by lashing out those nearest him.
“You have to,” Spike said. “I’m your dad. That’s your great-grandma.”
“I don’t have a great-grandma.” He looked up at Ella, whose dark hair and unlined face was natural in a Shifter of two-hundred years with a hundred-year-old grandson. “What’s a great-grandma?”
“Your dad’s grandma,” Ella explained.
The scowl deepened as Jordan wrestled with this new concept.
Ella’s eyes held a spark of hope, which Spike had seen in other Shifters when offspring entered the pride. Their family would carry on. They’d survive another day.
“Can you fix him something to eat?” Spike asked her.
Ella surveyed the mess of the kitchen and made an impatient noise. “Take him out of here. I’ll see what I can do.”
Spike rose and scooped up Jordan. He held the lad in the crook of his arm, Jordan still glaring at him. “He needs clothes,” Spike said.
“I see that. I’ll call around, see what I can find.”
Spike walked out of the kitchen without thanking her. Ella would know he appreciated what she did, always had. They’d moved beyond human words and phrases, body language having taken over long ago.
Spike carried Jordan upstairs to his own room and planted him on the bed. “Stay there.”
Jordan didn’t. By the time Spike had pulled on clean sweat pants and a shirt, Jordan had opened all the drawers of the dresser and was pawing through Spike’s T-shirts. “Wanna wear one.”
“They’re too big for you. We’ll get you some your size.”
“Why do you have that all over your body?” Jordan pointed to the jaguars that chased each other up Spike’s arms and over his chest to evolve into the giant spread of dragon across his back.
“They’re tattoos.” Spike held out one arm so Jordan could examine the body art. “Ink traced into the skin.”
“My mom has a tattoo,” Jordan announced. “Right above her butt.”
Spike remembered that, the pretty trace of ink on Jillian’s body. He suddenly wondered whether Myka had any tattoos, somewhere under the low-slung jeans and lacey tank top.
His encounter with Jillian five years ago had been brief and fiery, but Spike hadn’t fallen in love. Neither had Jillian fallen in love with him. Passing time had made it pretty clear that she’d meant it to be a one-night stand, nothing more. Spike doubted she’d meant to get pregnant with Jordan, but he would be ever grateful to her for calling him in tonight instead of letting him remain ignorant.
Sean was at the back door when Spike went back down. Ella had cleaned up the kitchen and was making sandwiches, and she answered the door. Jordan took one look at Sean and wrapped his little arms tightly around Spike’s leg.
“Your clothes,” Sean said to Spike as Ella took the pile of jeans, shirt, and boots. “And something for the cub the cub to wear, from my neighbor. Her cub’s about the same age.”
“Thanks, Sean.”
The hilt of the Sword of the Guardian stuck up behind Sean’s back, a bleak silhouette in the moonlight. “You’re going to have to name him,” Sean said. “And I had to tell Liam.”
Name him meant that Spike had to reveal his cub in a naming ceremony, which would announce to the Shifters and the world that he had a cub. A male cub, a son. The ceremony meant that the cub was taking his place in the Shifter hierarchy, where he’d be acknowledged as belonging not only to Spike and his pride, but to his clan and Shiftertown as a whole.
The rituals were supposed to ensure the cub’s acceptance into the community, but Spike sometimes wished the rituals and ceremonies would go to hell. They were supposed to strengthen the Shifters, but Spike long ago had decided that Shifters were just bad at minding their own business.
Sean left them alone, wise man, when he could have insisted on dragging Spike and Jordan over to see Liam right away. Spike would have to thank Sean with a beer later.
Jordan wouldn’t put on the clothes. Ella got him into the small pair of drawstring jeans by telling him he couldn’t eat unless he put something on. Alarmed, Jordan grabbed those and hoisted them over his bare legs.
Ella turned the sandwiches out on a plate, each sandwich piled high with beef, turkey, chicken, tuna, or a combination. Spike didn’t know what cubs ate—did they need milk? Or was that only when they were first born? Jordan announced he was hungry and proceeded to down four sandwiches before he sat back on the kitchen floor and burped.