Kenzie raised her head and looked down at him. Bowman saw the sorrow in her eyes, knowing she was searching for the bond and not feeling it either.
Instead of comforting her with words, which Kenzie wouldn't want-she never wanted to talk about it-Bowman stroked her hair. He loved the color of it-dark brown with golden streaks, like the sun on polished walnut.
"I need your report, Kenz," he said softly. Getting back to business would calm them both. "What did you find out this morning?"
Kenzie snuggled down to him again, which did nothing to help Bowman's continued hard-on. The last thing he wanted was to talk about the terror of last night, but they couldn't blow it off. A danger existed that they had to find and destroy.
His hardness deflated a bit, however, as she described the creature's disappearing scent and her and Jamie's conclusion that it had been shoved into a semitruck and hauled away.
"By other Shifters?" Bowman asked, still smoothing Kenzie's hair.
"We couldn't tell," she said.
"I know. I'm thinking out loud. Or by humans? And why?"
Kenzie pressed a warm kiss to his throat. "I was more interested in the how. What was that thing? Was it real?"
"It was real." Bowman flexed his toes and grimaced. "It tore up my leg, smashed Cade's truck, and laid out half the Shifters of Shiftertown."
"You know what I mean. I hear people can build some cool robotics, but it wasn't mechanical. We'd have scented that."
"That leaves something born and bred. Remember what happened to Tiger."
Tiger was a Shifter now living in the Austin Shiftertown. He'd been bred by humans using an experimental process Shifters still didn't understand. The experiments hadn't gone well, however-all the artificially inseminated Shifters had died except Tiger, who'd been the twenty-third attempt. The researchers had abandoned him, leaving him alone in a cage, barely fed, for years, and he'd pretty much gone insane.
But Tiger, while he was big and powerful and larger than most Felines, was still more or less normal size for a Shifter. After he'd been freed, he'd taken a human mate, a woman named Carly, and Carly so far had no complaints.
Shifters had originally been created by the Fae a couple thousand years ago. Genetic engineering had been invented in Faerie far sooner than humans had figured it out, but it had been blended with magic, as everything in Faerie was.
The Fae had merged humans with big, powerful animal predators-Bowman didn't really want to know the details of how they'd done it-and produced Shifters, creatures with human reason and pure animal instinct.
After Shifters had banded together and defeated their Fae masters, they'd walked away from Faerie, choosing to live-covertly-with their human counterparts. Fae had started abandoning the human world by then, hating its cold iron, which for some reason weakened their metabolisms and killed them. Fae loathing for the human world had been the point of Shifters staying in it. No Fae to worry about equaled good times. Peace. Cubs. Life.
Of course, neither the Fae nor the humans could leave them alone. Both were constantly doing something to get in the way of Shifter happiness, such as humans herding them into Shiftertowns and slapping shock Collars on them-the Collars had been invented by a half Fae.
Shifters now had figured out a way out of the Collars, but it was a deep, dark secret. Removing Collars and replacing them with fake ones took a special process and was slow going.
Bowman had tried to get Kenzie out of her Collar, but she was being stubborn about it. She'd argued that it was better to let the cubs and the weaker Shifters swap theirs out first. She could take the pain.
And she could. She was strong, his mate.
"What about this cop?" Bowman asked her.
Kenzie lifted her head, her eyes dark in the sunlight filtering through half-closed curtains. "He seems all right. He wants to talk to you. I told him he could come over this afternoon."
"This afternoon?" Bowman half sat up, then ground his teeth as his leg throbbed. "Shit, Kenzie . . ."
"I think he can help us. Cops have resources that we don't."
"I don't want humans in Shiftertown until I heal." He couldn't protect his mate, his cub, and his Shifters from cops with guns while his leg was in a splint.
"No humans except cute veterinarians?" Kenzie asked with a sly look.
"Give it a rest, Kenz."
Kenzie broke into a big, beautiful smile. "I can't. I'm never letting you off the hook for anything, Bowman O'Donnell. The privilege of a mate."
"What is? Being a serious pain in my ass?"
"Hell, yeah," Kenzie said lightly. "I do it better than anyone."
"Not going to argue with you about that."
She looked seriously good too, sitting up and smiling at him, the clinging sheet falling from her. Kenzie had borne a cub, and her breasts were full and mature, her belly marked where it had stretched to carry his son. Bowman traced one of the stretch marks to where it disappeared on her side, then cupped her heavy breast in his hand.
He'd gone through the mating ceremonies with her to keep her unruly clan from battling with his, but he'd have gone to her anyway, no matter what. Bowman couldn't imagine having any mate but her.
The ends of her silky hair brushed his fingers as he cupped her, Kenzie's breath lifting her breast into his palm. Her eyes were half closed, gleaming gold beneath her dark lashes. Her nipple tightened, responding to Bowman's thumb as he rubbed the smooth point.
A knock on the door made Kenzie jump. Bowman slowly let her go and tucked his hand behind his head. "What?" he called.
The door remained closed, but they both knew who it was. Ryan's scent came to them, wrapping them both, completing them.
Ryan was impatient, not distressed, so they waited to see what he needed. Being a Shifter cub, he'd never open the door without their invitation, knowing exactly what his parents were getting up to in the bedroom. He also had zero interest. The fact that his parents-and all adult Shifters-loved sex was to Ryan a character flaw he would put off acquiring as long as he could.
"Dad," he called through the door. "Can I go with my friends to Cade's? He's got the zip line done, and he says we can start riding it today."
CHAPTER TEN
Zip line? Goddess give him strength.
Bowman started out of bed, was brought up short by his splint, let out a frustrated groan, and said loudly, "No!"
"Aw, come on. Everyone's going. Cade's careful. He wouldn't do anything to hurt us little cubs."
No, he wouldn't. Cade was good with cubs, and all Shifters knew it. Bowman also knew that Ryan was playing up the cute cub angle to get his way. At age twelve, he was a master manipulator.
"You're leader's son," Bowman said, dropping back to the mattress. "No one will think less of you if you don't go. They'll think you're smart for not doing something stupidly dangerous."
"No, they won't." Ryan's voice came firmly through the door. "They'll say I'm a coward. Leader's son should be the first one on."
"Leader's son shouldn't be pushed around by a bunch of cubs," Bowman called back.
Kenzie was up, her naked body touched by winter sunshine. Bowman fell silent as he watched her lean over to sweep up her clothes. A stretch of her arms, and her shirt skimmed down her body, Kenzie glancing at him as she settled it over her breasts. Another bend, and her jeans slid up her thighs, over her smooth ass, hiding herself from him.
"I'll walk him over," she said. "He's right-leader's son shouldn't hold back from new things."
"Leader's son shouldn't break his bloody neck on a stupid idea of Cade's."
"You'll be all right by yourself, won't you?" Kenzie asked. She was good at ignoring him. "I can have my grandmother look in on you."
Kenzie's grandmother, Afina, was a clan matriarch, and didn't have a high opinion of Bowman. She let her disapproval of everything he did, said, wore, and thought come loudly out of her mouth. Afina could insult him in Romanian and also Russian, or in English with a heavy accent, every word barbed.
"No." Bowman growled. "I'll be fine."
Kenzie winked at him as she opened the door. Bowman was grateful the sheet had settled back over him, because that wink had him harder than the headboard behind him.
"Of course you will," she said. "Besides, I want to try the zip line too."
Another smile, and she and Ryan were gone, leaving the room empty, Bowman alone and feeling it.
* * *
Kenzie and Ryan walked through Shiftertown, which was a widespread neighborhood of small houses. The roads that wound through it were narrow, climbing up and down hills. Clusters of houses, families of clans clumped together, were scattered throughout, with woods and space between the clusters.