4. Clyde
CLYDE
I hadn’t been that scared since the night I claimed Posy as my daughter, after her parents, my best friends, were bled to death because of some asshole’s challenge.
Arriving at the library and seeing her missing was the kind of terror I never wanted to experience again.
Ever. If I hadn’t remembered her comment about Micah’s brother, I probably would be still looking around the library trying to pick up her scent, instead of being here, holding her tight.
The library shouldn’t have let her go with him. But, also, she should’ve stayed there and waited for me. All of that was a conversation for another time. Because right now, we were watching a stranger drive away, and I was trying to piece together who he was and how he got involved.
Being home alone wasn’t good. Being home alone with some random guy watching the house after admittedly having tracked her down by unsavory means? That was a whole different level of not good. At least on the surface.
Posy had said she phoned him when she couldn’t find me. She tried Miss Caitlin first, but she wasn’t answering. That still left a whole lot of questions including how she called him? Who was he? Was he someone from school? That didn’t feel right. She’d have mentioned him before.
What I should’ve done was thanked him properly and found out all of the information from his point of view before he left. Instead, I treated him like a threat, which he still might be, and watched him leave.
Posy was pretty good about sensing danger, not that I would rely on a young girl to be responsible for her own safety.
The two times she told me there was something not right about an adult, she’d been proven right later on.
I wish she hadn’t been. It meant that they were horrible people she’d crossed paths with, but it also told me that she could sense when people were a danger, and there was some comfort in that extra layer of protection
And as the man left, he waved, and she waved, and more importantly, she smiled. That wasn’t Posy fearing him. If anything, it was a sign I should’ve been less forceful with him.
The car began to pull away, and the air shifted. And for the first time, I got a taste of his scent. I froze, inhaling again, making sure I was right about what I was experiencing.
My wolf pushed hard. I was no longer looking through my own eyes. I was looking through his.
Stephen didn’t just smell good. He scented as mine. Stephen was my mate. It was the unmistakable scent that could only belong to my mate. My wolf sensed it in an instant, pounding at me, begging to be set free.
Mine.
Go.
Claim him.
Mark him.
And what was I doing? None of that. I stood here, staring at his car as his taillights disappeared around the corner.
I’d always assumed that raising Posy as a single father was what fate had in store for me, that there was no mate waiting around the bend. I’d remain alone. I’d long since come to terms with it.
Today that all changed. Not only did I have a mate, but he showed up at my home. And because I was sucking at life today, what did I do? I shoved him away and let him know very clearly that I didn’t want him here.
My wolf pounded at me, pleading with me to put Posy down, take my fur, and chase after the car to hunt down my mate.
Even if I wanted to do that and was willing to leave Posy alone, a wolf and a car were not the same when it came to speed.
It would be useless and getting shot by someone thinking a rando wild animal was where they shouldn’t be was a very real possibility.
Besides, Posy was holding on to me for dear life. I couldn’t leave her now. She was frightened and rightfully so. Because of me, the mistakes I’d made, she was suffering.
Things with Stephen would have to wait.
“Hey, sweetie. Can you tell me why you’re on the porch in your nightgown?”
“Because,” she sniffled. “Stephen said he was coming. And when I saw his car lights, I came out. But then the door closed behind me, and I couldn’t get back inside.”
Our door automatically locked. It was supposed to be a safety feature, but in this case, it was an anti-safety feature. She had a key in her backpack, but that wasn’t going to do her any good when she was out here in her pajamas.
“Good thing I have a key.” Only it was still in the car thanks to the way things went down. “I need to go to get my bag, though. Do you wanna stay here or do you wanna—”
She held on tighter.
“Why don’t you come with me?”
As I climbed off the porch with her still in my arms, the scent of Stephen became stronger, and my wolf grew more insistent.
I repeatedly told him no and to stop, promising him we’d get in contact with Stephen asap.
Right now, our daughter needed us. Stephen was an adult, safe in a car.
Posy was a small child who’d had a scare.
She needed me first. And if Stephen couldn’t accept that, he didn’t belong in my life.
Had he scented me and left anyway? Was this his way of telling me he didn’t want a premade family? If so, getting my wolf to come to terms with that was going to suck.
Heck, coming to terms with that was going to suck, full stop.
Bag acquired, I got us inside and put her down. This time when my wolf pushed to be set free, I allowed it. My beast was insisting that he make sure the house didn’t have any strangers in it. There was no reason there would be, but this was something I could indulge him on.
She’d come home and gone inside on her own, sure, but she’d have seen someone coming in with her and the door auto locked. But logic wasn’t working with him and I didn’t push it. I might not be able to give him his mate now, but I could allow him this comfort.
He knew our daughter had been by herself and scared.
He needed to verify her safety before he could relax.
Had we been outside, I’d never give him his fur for fear he’d run off and try to track down the car my mate was driving.
But here, he was stuck unless he shifted back.
It was a safe way to give him his freedom.
I barely had my clothes off when he took his fur.
My wolf went from room to room to room, sniffing every possible entrance, including those far too small for anything but a draft.
He did that twice before deciding the house was safe.
Posy grabbed onto his fur the way she used to when she was a toddler and went with him.
It was then that I realized my wolf was doing this because Posy required it to settle and not only for himself.
Some parents’ beasts were able to communicate with their child’s best long before the parent could sense them. If it hadn’t been the lack of shared DNA between us, I’d have assumed that was what was happening here.
I shifted back. “Hey. What if we have those pancakes now?” Breakfast. Dinner. Same difference.
“Really?” Her face lit up. Posy did love her pancakes.
“Really. And you can tell me all about your adventures today.”
“How come you were late?” she demanded and rightfully so.
“I hit a pothole and got a flat tire. I tried to call the library so they knew, but my phone wasn’t working. And then when I got to the library, the lights were out.”
“They have a fundraiser tonight. They were in a hurry.” She grabbed the chocolate chips out of the cupboard and handed them to me. Chocolate chip pancakes it was.
“They didn’t even notice when I went with Micah’s brother.”
Neither one of us knew the guy’s name, and here she was getting in the car with him and no adults thinking to ask about it. Big yikes.
“It was a bad day, Daddy.”
Understatement of the year.
“I’m so sorry. How about I put whipped cream on your chocolate chip pancakes? Would that make it a little better?”
She nodded. “Can you make them shaped like bunnies and the whipped cream can be the tails?”
“I can try.”
She stood there watching me attempt to make delicious-looking pancakes. My bunnies looked more like blobs, but that brought its own set of smiles. As we ate, we talked about safety plans and what to do if something like this ever happened again. Not that I’d allow that to happen.
It wasn’t until I was tucking her into bed with not one but four of her teddy bears, and finished reading her story, that she brought up Stephen again.
“We need to thank Stephan.” She was right. He’d done so much to try and help a random child who asked for help, and he hardly got the reception he deserved for it. “Maybe I can call him tomorrow or make him something.”
“Maybe. Speaking of calling him, how did you know his number?”
“I was trying to call you, and I made a mistake.” Fate really did have their hands in this.
“It was very clever of you to call for help.”
“And he’s nice, Daddy. He praised me for calling to get help.
He told me he would make sure that I had somebody on the phone the whole time so I wasn’t completely alone.
He got his friend to help him find me. I was so scared.
I know our address, but I couldn’t… I couldn’t remember it.
I can say it now, but when I was scared… ”
“You did really well, honey. We all forget things when we’re scared. I forgot my last name when I broke my foot.”
It was less forgetting and more not knowing what they were asking me, the stupid thing hurt so bad. But same thing. That was a case of needing to suffer like a human because it happened at a work event. Had I been surrounded by shifters, I could’ve taken my fur and been done with it.
From there, Posy went into her normal chatty, tell-Daddy-everything infodump.
She told me all the little details of their conversation, like how he collected buttons and talked about her teddy bears with her.
The fox shifter had dropped everything because a frightened child misdialed.
And then when I got here and he didn’t know who I was, he was ready to take care of business to protect her.
“Are you mad at Stephen?”
“No. Absolutely not. A lot of mistakes were made tonight, but none by him.”
After she was asleep and in bed, I looked at the outgoing calls. The number was still there. I wrote it down. I’d call him, not this second, but soon. I had things to say. So many things. I just didn’t know where to begin.