Chapter 3
Hank flew away from Big Wolf Airport with a pang.
He knew, for sure this time, that he was leaving a part of himself behind.
He’d felt it before—more than two years ago, when he’d left Tracy the first time—but he hadn’t trusted the instinct that said the wolf woman was important to him. Now, he knew differently.
For a jaguar, he’d been very pigheaded, back then. Somehow, he hadn’t been able to accept the idea that his true mate might be a wolf, and not at least a big cat of some kind. Even his furry side had been in denial all this time, but the signs had been there.
Why else hadn’t he been with another woman in all that time?
Sure. Work. Blah. Blah. Blah. It was all just a big excuse, distracting him from the truth.
His mate was a werewolf. Suck it up, Hank.
She was a canine shifter, and he was a feline.
There had been stranger combinations, though he wasn’t sure when. Everyone knew cats and dogs didn’t mix.
Why, then, was his perfect woman a werewolf? The Mother of All had to be laughing Her ass off, watching him struggle with the concept. Hank banked the small jet he was flying onto the new course and felt physically ill at the separation from the woman and child he now knew were his.
The moment he’d seen Tracy, he’d felt like something had slammed into his heart—his very consciousness. He’d missed her. More than someone should miss a mere one-night stand. He’d missed her in his heart. In his soul.
He’d been dealing with that revelation when another had hit him out of left field. The little girl. Emma… His.
She’d shifted, and he’d known immediately. There were no resident jaguars in Big Wolf, Texas. He’d checked. He’d had some kind of misguided idea that, if he knew someone in the area, he could ask them—casually—how Tracy was doing.
Hank kicked himself mentally. That should have been a big red flag.
He’d never gone to that kind of trouble to track down an ex-girlfriend.
Not even Pamela, and they’d dated on-and-off for years.
The fact that he’d even thought to check up on Tracy should’ve given him a clue that she was more important to him than he realized, or was willing to admit.
He’d been an idiot. And because of his willful blindness, he’d missed out on the first two years of his precious daughter’s life.
He’d been angry at Tracy, at first, but then, his inner jaguar had stopped him.
It couldn’t be angry at Tracy over even something as huge as this—not when she’d given him the most perfect little child he’d ever seen.
The cat knew he couldn’t stay mad at Tracy.
Not ever. That’s just not the way he was built.
A shifter loved its mate without conditions.
Shifters didn’t hold grudges with their mates.
Neither did they stay angry with their mates.
They got the emotions out and dealt with them as a couple, then it was over and they went back to thinking their mate hung the moon and stars, and could do no wrong. The mate was paramount.
And Hank was starting to realize that Tracy was all of that to him.
He should’ve seen it those years ago—and in the empty years since their brief encounter.
How could he have been so blind? And how could he ever forgive himself for being that stupid and missing out on the first two years of his daughter’s life?
If he was going to stay angry at anyone, it was himself.
While he’d never really thought about himself as a father before, he found the role wasn’t alarming.
His inner cat wanted to play with the kitten and teach it how to be a jaguar.
His human side might’ve taken a little longer to accustom itself to the idea of fatherhood, but once he’d held the little girl in his arms—felt her tiny heartbeat under his hands—he was hooked.
Hank had been looking forward to his mission to Arizona, but now, he just wanted it over with. He had to get back to Texas and work on convincing a certain sexy werewolf lass that she should let him into her life…forever.
*
Tracy watched Hank’s plane fly away and felt a tugging in the region of her heart. She’d left work at the restaurant to go to the airport with Hank and see him off. Funny how she hadn’t wanted to let him out of her sight until the very last moment.
She’d thought she was over him. She’d thought she’d gotten all those dreams out of her system. Dreams where he asked her to fly away with him on his jet. Where he whisked her away from everything she’d ever known and into the mysterious world of the secretive jaguar Clan.
Not because she had any real interest in jaguars themselves. No, she’d only ever been interested in one particular jaguar. Sexy Hank, the pilot with the mysterious eyes as blue as the sky he roamed and the killer smile.
And now, of course, she had a vested interest in another little jaguar…
Emma. Tracy still couldn’t quite believe her baby was already shifting.
She’d been so cute in her kitten form. Just adorable, if a bit alien to a woman who’d been raised among werewolves…
who had pups, not kittens. This was definitely going to take some getting used to.
The rest of the Pack had better figure it out, too.
Tracy would brook no harassment of the area’s only big cat shifter.
She wouldn’t let the other kids hassle her daughter for being what she was.
Protective mama wolf instincts were clamoring for her to shield her daughter from any possible problems, but her human side knew she had to let her baby grow and survive in the human world, too.
And sometimes, humans—and shifters in human form—could be real jackasses.
“Hey, Trace. Hey, Em.” A familiar voice called out, finally drawing Tracy away from the window overlooking the runway and the far off speck that was Hank’s plane in the sky.
She turned to find her youngest brother, Kevin, walking closer.
He was crouching down to show Emma something in his hand, which turned out to be a little rubber super ball he must’ve had in his pocket.
Emma like to chase them around, and Kevin always seemed to have one on him, just for her.
He was a good-hearted soul for a stinky little brother.
“Hey, Kev. Doing deliveries?” Tracy returned her brother’s greeting. Kevin worked part-time for the restaurant delivering food in the local area during the busy lunch rush.
“Just finished. So, is it true? Our Em is a wildcat?” Kevin looked intrigued by the possibility.
“Who’d you hear it from?” Tracy asked, instead of answering.
“Does it matter?” Kevin gave her a long-suffering, grown-up look, despite the fact he was still very much a teenager. Still, he was growing wiser all the time, which was kind of scary to her. “It’s all over the Pack already. She turned into a leopard or something?”
“A jaguar, actually,” Tracy corrected her little brother, not realizing until she said it, how proud she was of her clever little girl.
Emma had managed her first shift to and from her beast form with casual aplomb.
She made it look easy. The teens attempting their first shift to wolf form didn’t always manage it so easily.
Every year, a few got stuck in battle form for a while, which could be excruciatingly painful.
And some made it to full wolf, but then couldn’t make it back to their human shape for a day or two.
First shifts were notoriously awkward for werewolves.
Not so for young jaguars, apparently. Maybe it had to do with them being so little when they started shifting. At Emma’s age, there wasn’t much life experience to interfere with her instincts yet.
“That’s pretty cool. I guess her dad is one of them, huh?” Kevin was trying and failing to sound nonchalant, but she didn’t mind. She knew anything she told Kevin would be kept in confidence. He wasn’t a gossip. He was asking because he cared.
“Yeah. A pilot. He just left.” She walked away from the window. Even with her sharp vision, she could no longer see Hank’s small private jet. He was well and truly gone. At least for a while.
“Jaguars are really cool. They’ve got their own secret lair and stuff, according to my friend, Josh,” Kevin offered. “And their Alpha is, like, a gazillionaire.”
“Mark Pepard.” Tracy nodded. Just about every shifter had heard of the man who was trying to lead the resurgence of the jaguar people. “Hank works for him. He’s on a mission for his Clan, right now, he said.”
“Cool.” Kevin fell into step beside her as Tracy picked up Emma and began walking through the small terminal toward the doors that led to the parking lot. “So, when’s he coming back? I assume he wants to get to know Em a bit, right?”
“Yeah.” Tracy grimaced. “I suppose he has a right to see her, now that he knows about her. He said he’ll be back in a few days or maybe a little longer, depending how his mission goes.”
“Would you have told him about Em, eventually?” Kevin asked, surprising her with the tough question.
Tracy sighed. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I suppose with Emma shifting now, I would’ve had to seek his advice sooner or later.”
Kevin held the door for his sister and niece as the three of them headed into the parking lot.
“I had no idea they started so early,” Kevin commented as he helped Tracy with the door to her vehicle while she put Emma in the child safety seat.
“Me either,” Tracy mumbled, fussing with the straps that would help protect her baby while in the car. Emma smiled at her, playing with the ball Kevin had given her. She rolled it down her little arm and flipped her hand up to catch it, demonstrating her cat-like reflexes.
“Are you afraid the other wolves will go nuts and attack her, being a cat and all?”
Out of the mouths of babes…
Suddenly, fear struck Tracy’s heart, followed swiftly by righteous anger.
“I’ll bite anyone who so much as looks at her funny.” She couldn’t help the growl in her voice, and both Em and Kevin looked at her with wary, wide eyes.