Bastien didn’t need the detective to spell it out to realize the time span of that memory loss had included the landlord’s meeting with a small lynx family. Luck had not been on the side of his little cat that long-ago day in Georgia, he thought, holding her tighter as her hand flexed and fisted convulsively against his back, her arm wrapped around him.
“Far as we could figure,” the detective continued, eyes on Kirby, “you must’ve squeezed outside through a pet door your parents probably didn’t expect you to fit through.” Shaking her head, she said, “Your palms were burned, too, soot and tears on your face.”
“Were you able to recover anything?” Bastien smoothed his hand down Kirby’s spine, able to feel the fine tremors shaking her frame. “The smallest piece could help Kirby trace her family.”
“I found a photo that looked like it was taken in a maternity suite of two adults with a baby,” the detective said. “Posted it everywhere I could think of, used it to search through missing persons files for years, but I made a mistake.” Her shoulders slumped. “I searched only through the missing tagged human, figured it had to be right since you were human.”
Kirby, his strong Kirby with her courageous heart, shook her head. “You had no way of knowing.” Taking a deep breath, she said, “The photo . . . do you still have it? Even a copy in a database?”
Shona Bay blew out a breath. “We had a major server meltdown ten years back that affected a lot of systems, so I can’t promise. I’m sorry.” The other woman tapped a finger on her desk. “I’m going to hunt for the physical file and the original photograph, but given the time that’s passed, there’s a good chance it’s already been destroyed.”
Kirby nodded, holding it together until the detective signed off. Then she screamed, thumping her fists against Bastien’s chest. “It’s not fair! I just want to know who I am! I just want to know!”
Aware she couldn’t hear him right now, Bastien simply kept her safe while she worked out her rage and sorrow, then held her skin to skin all night, his own fury a wild thing inside him. He wanted to fix this for her, make it better, but there was nothing he could do but be with her as she built a new life for herself out of the ashes of the old.
IN the three days that followed, Bastien grew even prouder of Kirby’s strength. She came back fighting, determined not to let the dead end of the records search stop her from living her life. “I made it this far alone,” she said, then touched her fingers shyly to his jaw. “Now I have you. No excuses for not going forward.”
Owned utterly, he took her to meet Lucas so she’d know she had the DarkRiver alpha’s sanction to join the pack. She handled the meeting with a sweet self-assurance that had Lucas giving her an approving look and a gentle kiss that was more than simple acceptance; it was the welcome of a predatory changeling alpha pleased with this new member of his pack.
Smug and happy because she was his, Bastien showed Kirby more about being changeling, watched over her during another session with Dorian, taught her about pack life, and introduced her to a lynx family that lived in the territory. The Bakers were a mature couple, with a grown son and a younger daughter, but Enid and Kirby clicked at once.
As a result, she felt comfortable enough to go off on exploratory trips in the forest with the older woman, Bastien and Kirby both aware Enid had much to teach her about her unique lynx senses. Bastien remained violently proud of his mate for her courage, but he had to fight his protectiveness each time she disappeared into the trees. He refused, however, to stifle her confidence or damage her new friendship by insisting on accompanying the women.
Instead, he spent the time working via a comm link to the office . . . and worrying, conscious of how new Kirby was to her animal form, her reaction times slow. The forest was their home, but it had its dangers, and she didn’t yet know them all.
Now, late afternoon on the third day, she tugged him down with her hands gripping his hair and nipped at his lower lip. “Go to dinner with your brothers.” It was a passionate order, her brow dark. “Otherwise you’ll pace a hole in the floor, and I won’t be able to concentrate for thinking about you.”
Seeing the truth of the latter in the pale gold of eyes gone lynx and hating that he was causing her anxiety, he forced himself to do as she asked. Somehow, he even managed to fool Sage and Grey into thinking he was on an even keel as the three of them unanimously decided to invite themselves to dinner at Mercy and Riley’s, the couple having returned from Arizona the previous night.
“We’ll take upside-down pineapple cake as a bribe,” Grey said with mischievous feline cunning. “Mercy can’t resist it.”
Bastien wasn’t the least surprised to discover his sister already knew he was seeing someone—though Sage had apparently kept quiet till then. The normality of his siblings’ ensuing ribbing helped the time pass, soothed the ragged edges inside him. He especially got a kick out of telling Mercy to do her worst; his lynx, he thought with snarling confidence, could handle it.
Back at the aerie just after nine thirty, he didn’t panic when he found it empty, despite the fact the plan had been for the two women to return by nine. Following Kirby’s scent—as vivid to him as if it was his own—he found her a short distance away, having a grand old time playing a game with three non-changeling lynx.
Bounding up to him the instant he appeared, she looked at him in wild welcome. And since Bastien had no resistance where Kirby was concerned, he stripped and shifted . . . to find himself pounced on, his mate in a playful mood that translated into her human form when they shifted back twenty minutes later.
Purring in his arms in bed, her skin flushed, Kirby kissed him with luscious slowness. “Why are we torturing ourselves again?”
“I have no fucking idea.” His chest heaved up and down, his leopard’s fur brushing against the inside of his skin.
Kirby ran her fingers over his kiss-wet lips. “I want you.”
At that instant, he couldn’t think of any rational reason not to take her, brand her. So when the comm panel chimed, he ignored it—until he realized it was his alpha’s code. Groaning, he left the erotic warmth of Kirby’s arms to answer the call, audio only.
What Lucas had to say changed the tenor of the entire night. “We’ve had word from a lynx pack in Calgary that’s been searching for a small family unit that disappeared twenty-three years ago.”
Kirby began to tremble, hope a tremulous whisper inside her.
Striding over to cradle her in his lap, Bastien asked the question she couldn’t form. “What did they say?”
“One of their members decided on a largely solitary existence when he turned eighteen,” Lucas replied. “He stayed in erratic touch with the pack—sometimes nothing more than a scribbled postcard after a year.”
His lynx nature, Kirby understood, must’ve been very strong.
“A year and a half after they’d last heard from him,” Lucas continued, “he contacted them to say he’d fallen for and mated with a human woman, had a baby girl, and intended to head home with his mate and cub in a month. No one ever arrived, and neither did the photos he’d promised of his new family.”
Blood cold, Kirby found her voice. “Why was I . . .” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t ask why the pack hadn’t come for her.
“They couldn’t find you.”
“What?” Bastien growled. “They lost a child?”
“The last message just said the family was on the road, roaming their way home.” Lucas’s voice held taut frustration. “It meant the pack had no idea where to look when Kirby and her parents didn’t arrive. They dispatched trackers, sent out requests to countless local and international agencies, asking for news on a family composed of an adult male lynx, a human female, and a female lynx cub.”