Authors: Anya Nowlan
“
A
drian
!” Layla shrieked as she watched the small, dusty-blond haired boy teeter on the edge of the couch, his expression cross and thoughtful, about to fall off.
She practically dove to catch the child, nimble and fast as he was for his age of just a year and some on top of that, but she wasn’t quick enough. The boy was almost always faster than she was when he was getting into trouble.
Instead of falling on the rug and hurting himself, he simply rolled backward as if nothing had happened at all, giggling like the little fiend that he was. Layla fell on her knees next to him, a relieved smile on her lips. One thing she would never get used to was the way these shifter babies bounced back from everything. Like they were invincible!
“Listen here, mister! You can’t go around scaring Mommy like that,” she chided with a soft voice, picking him up and standing up along with him.
He had the stormiest, most interesting eyes.
Just like his daddy,
she thought with a pang of regret, biting down on her lip for a moment as the memory of the big, warm, wicked man came back to her from the depths of her memories.
He smiled at her like she was the only woman he ever wished to see, while a glint burned in his eyes that seemed to tell her that he wished to make it so. She could never forget those eyes, especially now, when her own son would look at her with the same gray and gold eyes, flecks of yellow littered in them like stars in the sky.
She scruffed his head with a sigh, standing up in her small two-room apartment in Seattle, pushing Adrian on her hip as she made her way to the kitchen. It was almost dinner time and if Layla knew anything about her sister, it was that she was punctual. Any minute now, the mother of three with laughing eyes and a wild disposition would come flying in through the front door, probably dragging all of her podlings along with her for a happy, loud, Sunday night dinner.
Layla had just made it to the kitchen and deposited the little boy in the high chair, one that he was swiftly growing out of and barely fit into at this point, when the door slammed in the hallway. Layla smiled, kissing Adrian on the forehead as she picked up his stuffed dinosaur from the kitchen table and handed it to him.
“Right on time. Auntie Lily is never late!” she said in a sing-song voice, and walked to the kitchen door to greet her sister.
“Oh my God, I thought I’d never get here!” Lily said, thrusting a bottle of white wine into Layla’s hands and pushing past her in a flurry of motion.
It always seemed like the older Nash sister was in a rush, tumbling from one important thing to the next, never making it seem like she was going to make it but always succeeding perfectly. It was something Layla had never picked up. She was far too driven by her whims to have everything on lockdown like Lily did. But it was good to have someone in the family who knew what they were doing all the time!
“No kids today, Lill? Adrian was looking forward to running around with Teddy, I think,” Layla said, considering the bottle that had found its way into her arms.
Understanding dawned on her. Of course!
“So Thaddeus is babysitting tonight, I understand?” Layla asked with a grin, finding Lily taking a casserole and some freshly made buns out of the bag she had been carrying.
“Exactly! So uncork that baby and let’s kick our feet up! You know I don’t get a lot of opportunities for this so I fully intend to enjoy it,” Lily said, scooping food on plates like there was someone chasing after her.
Layla knew what that meant. It meant Lily was going to stuff them all full of food, sing Adrian to sleep like she sometimes did, and then they were going to gossip.
Yay!
she thought with a lot of glee.
I
t was
an hour and a half later that Layla found herself sprawled out on her dark blue couch in the living room, nursing her third glass of wine while Lily was on her fourth. They’d just gotten Adrian down and were enjoying a moment of pure quiet, something so rare for young mothers. Layla’s eyes were closed and even when Lily started talking, she wouldn’t open them for a few moments. Not until it dawned on her what the topic of conversation was about.
“You know that guy you can’t shut up about?” Lily asked.
“Hmm?” Layla replied noncommittally, head resting on the cushions and her hand slowly stirring the glass with lazy motions, making the wine roll.
“I’ve been looking for him,” Lily said, her voice sounding sly.
“Looking for who?” Layla asked, a faint frown crossing her brows.
“Your Prince Charming! The man in the plaid! Storm-Eyes! You know!”
“Atlas?” Layla asked, suddenly fully awake, her eyes snapping open.
“That’s the one,” Lily said smugly, grinning. “Atlas. Do you know how hard it is to find a guy who you only know by his first name and a description from a lovesick sister? I can tell you, it’s damn hard!”
Layla’s mouth fell open in shock, the wine forgotten.
Atlas? How could she find him?
When she got pregnant, Layla had done her best to seek out the man, all the way to driving to Idaho and going through the little town she remembered, asking about him. A few people remembered him but no one knew his last name, or where he had moved other than “East,” which really could have meant anything. Layla got the feeling that it had been how Atlas had wanted it.
She’d even tracked down the house they’d stayed in, but Atlas had been renting it and had left behind nothing to identify him to the owners. It had been paid in cash, and in a place like that, no one asked too many questions if the person seemed trustworthy enough. Atlas definitely ticked off those boxes, even if he was a big mountain of a man.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been trying to stalk my babydaddy,” Layla said, trying to make it sound like a joke, but her voice was shivering too much for it.
She took a hefty gulp of her wine, leaning forward with her cheeks lit with a blush. When she’d gone looking for him, she hadn’t wanted anything from him. The goal had always been to tell him about Adrian, show him that she didn’t expect anything from him because it had been her decision to keep the boy, but also to make it clear that if he wanted to be in the boy’s life, she’d be glad for it. Every kid needed their father. Especially a shifter boy.
“I have. Now, do you want to know if I found him?” Lily asked, quirking a brow up and giving Layla a clever smile.
“If you had, wouldn’t you have been crowing about it the moment you walked in here?” Layla queried, feeling her shoulders droop a little.
Of course she would have. You’re just getting your hopes up. Even if you did find him, you only know him from one night. One hot, sexy night that gave you the light of your life, but it doesn’t mean that you know him at all. No way!
“Maybe,” Lily said with a smirk, looking at Layla over the rim of her glass. “Or maybe I want to see you stew a little. How about that?”
Layla remained quiet, not dignifying that with an answer. Well, it was that and also the fact that she couldn’t really make herself talk much, her blue eyes wide and staring at her sister like she’d grown three heads all of a sudden.
With a sigh, Lily grabbed her phone, pulling it out of her pocket and thumbing it to open on SassyDate. Layla recognized the app as she fumbled to catch the phone being sent flying toward her, managing to spill a tiny bit of wine on her knee.
“Shit,” she muttered, gulping down the rest and putting the glass on the coffee table as she got a surer grip on the cell phone. “What am I looking at here?”
“Go to Favorite Matches. I’ve saved a bunch of lucky contestants. Maybe one of them is your man,” Lily said, reaching for the bottle to pour them both another glass.
She’d given Layla one bottle when she’d walked in, but there’d been two more in the bag and Layla was getting the feeling she was going to need all of them that evening! Still, despite her brow furrowing and her nose scrunching, she couldn’t help herself. She flicked through the screens, coming to the Favorite Matches screen. She let out a sigh of relief.
The first guy she saw wasn’t him, and for a moment Layla had realized that she’d been scared stiff that it would be. What would she say to him? How could she explain that he now had a baby, one he didn’t know anything about? Would he even remember her?!
“It’s not him,” Layla said.
“Well keep going, genius!” Lily snorted.
“Oh,” Layla said, suddenly realizing that she probably wasn’t at her sharpest in that moment.
Or maybe it was the wine? Either or, she started flicking through the matches with a little scowl on her face, her heart bursting and aching every time she saw a guy who was close, and yet definitely wasn’t Atlas. She was reaching the end of the matches, the count only showing two more, when she went to automatically move to the next one. Her hand stopped, her thumb hovering in the air.
Her mouth dropped as she stared at the picture. A wide, warm smile, gleaming eyes of gray and gold, and a mop of hair that could have been well-groomed, but she had to assume never was. He had some slight stubble and even in the profile pic, she could catch a hint of his wide chest and broad shoulders.
Holy shit.
“It’s… it’s him,” Layla said, looking up at Lily, who almost spat out her wine.
“Seriously?!” she shrieked, scooting up to her on the couch, nuzzling really close so she could look at the picture. “Oh my God, he’s the cutest one out of the bunch! I was looking at him yesterday and thinking if I didn’t have Thad… hell, what am I saying? Thad’s perfect. But you know what I mean.”
Lily practically beamed, while Layla had completely lost the color in her cheeks and looked like she’d seen a ghost. It was Lily who tapped on his profile, scrolling down. He’d listed his hometown. Shifter Grove, Idaho. So he had moved east. Just not too far.
The phone fell out of Layla’s hands as she let her body collapse against the cushions, utter disbelief on her features.
“How… I mean… when? Gah! Lily! What am I going to do now?!” she asked, exasperated, throwing her hands up like that was going to change anything.
“What do you mean?” Lily asked, having put down her glass and who was now typing something on her phone. “You’ll message him, of course! Tell him that you
looove
him and want to meet him and you have a surprise, and then you’ll get a house in the suburbs and I can be an auntie two times over. You know Mom will love it!” Lily said with a giggle, finally looking up at Layla.
“Hell no I won’t! I can’t just drop in on his life like that,” she protested.
“Too late. Sent the message,” Lily said, turning the phone to face Layla.
Of course she did.
But things never worked out that well, did they? What Layla didn’t know was that she hadn’t been completely without Atlas since the day she’d met him. Someone had been keeping an eye on her the whole time. Someone who could be far more dangerous than she was prepared for.
A
tlas had been
in a daze for days now. Ever since that little light blinked on his phone, telling him he’d gotten a message on SassyDate, everything had changed.
The shifter-human dating app had been on his phone for ages, but he’d never really used it. What was the point? It wasn’t like Shifter Grove was teeming with women, and it was so far out in the boondocks of Idaho that getting there was no small feat. But those were just convenient excuses, Atlas knew that much.
It was because of Layla that he hadn’t used it. Because he couldn’t get her out of his head.
And now, suddenly, she’d reappeared. Out of nowhere. Messaging him on her sister’s account like a blast from the past, one that he’d feared he’d never hear from again.
“I’m not sure what I’m gonna do,” Atlas said, nursing his beer as he had for most of the evening as he sat at the bar at Austin’s Texas, the one and only proper bar in Shifter Grove.
Not that they needed any more of them. One was good enough for the rough and tumble shifter kind living in the valley, most of whom were young, fit shifters at the prime of their lives, living with their mates and oftentimes their kids, or working toward one or the other. Most of the drinking was a nightly round of beers or shots after work, before everyone happily went home to their families.
Everyone, that was, aside from Atlas and the others who hadn’t yet found their mates congregated in the open, accepting community in Shifter Grove, one that didn’t judge or question.
“Seems easy enough to me,” Slate commented, shrugging his shoulders. “You fly her out here and you meet her again, see what happens.”
“She said she has a surprise for me,” Atlas mumbled, his chin squaring. “I don’t know what that’s about.”
“You’ll never find out unless you make it happen,” Slate said, taking a swig of his own beer. “It’ll be no problem. I’ll fly out there, pick her up wherever she is and bring her to the airport. You come and drive her to Shifter Grove. If you get the vibe that things won’t work out, we’ll put her back on the plane again. Problem solved.”
“It’s not like that! I’d never send her back,” Atlas said, mortified by what the resident pilot was saying.
How could he? She was… Layla.
“Ahhh, so a more interesting problem!” Slate said with a grin, looking at Atlas while he was trying to do his best to avoid any eye contact lest it completely expose his bleeding heart. “Tell me, Atlas, you’ve had your heat, right? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Slade asked, his tone getting more serious now.
That made Atlas look up and meet the imploring gaze of the other tiger shifter in town. Tigers were not like other shifters. They did not get a choice in the matter of their own heirs and how love was to play out with them. Upon reaching the right age, every male tiger Alpha would go through a short phase of intense hormonal activity, during which he would bond to a mate and she would be the only one he could have children with.
Usually, this was a highly regulated, carefully controlled thing in tiger societies. The leading Alpha would pick the mate for each strong warrior, and it had nothing to do with whether or not they were compatible, simply about how strong the heirs would be and whether it would make for fortuitous ties between different streaks—the term for a group of tigers.
It was exactly that which Atlas had been running from. Andreyi ‘Atlas’ Novikov, the firstborn son Sergeyi Novikov, one of the fiercest Siberian tiger shifter Alphas in the country. Since he was eighteen, it had grated at Atlas that his fate was so clearly cut and written out for him.
It took many more years for him to realize that he would rather be without a mate and an heir than to continue with that archaic custom. So the moment he realized his heat was near, he had left.
He was a rarity in that, though. His younger brother Grayve had never understood his desire to choose things like that for himself. Before he had left, Atlas and Grayve had a big, explosive fight, hurtling insults at one another and even getting into a physical altercation. It was an unpleasant memory. Especially because he had been so close with his little brother.
Another sacrifice he’d had to make.
And here he was now, in Shifter Grove, knowing full well that he had found his mate during the heat, and that he’d taken her and then he’d let her go like a fool. But now she was coming back and he didn’t know what the hell to do with that. Sing from the tops of the buildings? Rush off and work three times as hard at the gold mines set up near Shifter Grove so he could buy a bigger house?
Or, you know, calm down and actually meet this woman he was so madly in love with already and hope that she’d give him the time of day. While Atlas and his tiger had no doubt that they were completely in love, Layla didn’t have that luxury.
I hope it’s her real name
, he thought with a hint of trepidation.
“I have,” he replied sourly, looking at his beer glass again like it would give him all the answers in the world.
The damn thing was holding out on him. Where was the supreme wisdom he was supposed to find in the bottom of a glass, huh?
“And tell me, what happened during that heat?” Slate asked, a sly grin forming on his lips.
Atlas didn’t need to look at the other shifter—a married, happy father of two with a mate he chose for himself—to know that he was understanding far too much about the situation already.
“I found her,” he said, his voice breaking a little.
“The girl who tracked you down now?”
“Yup,” Atlas said, picking up the beer and drinking long and hard before putting it down again. “And I let her get away.”
“Well, she’s coming here now, right? There it is, your shot at happiness.”
“My only shot at happiness,” Atlas commented glumly.
He’d wanted a family, always. It was what kept him with his previous streak for so long—his inability to choose a possibly loveless future with children over none at all. There was so much he could teach and share with his young, to show them that tradition didn’t have to rule their lives as much as their heritage might tell them. But ultimately, he had chosen the option to run instead of giving in to a lifetime of misery.
It was blind, dumb fate that had brought him Layla together at the right time. But wasn’t that how fate always worked?
“It doesn’t have to be so dire. But if that’s what makes you move, sure, why not? It’s your only shot. What are you going to do about it?” Slate asked, cocking a brow at him.
“Probably gonna finish this beer,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, earning him a grin from his friend.
“And then?”
“Probably gonna go call my girl. You straight about doing the trips for me, if I ask?” Atlas queried, lifting his eyes from the glass rather painfully and slowly.
Lately it had felt like everything in his life was a damn struggle. Even coming to Shifter Grove and finding people like him, droves of them, refugees from the lives they had led before, from what their packs, clans, and streaks had forced on them, hadn’t made it much better. He now understood that all the while, he had had a burning twitch in his heart, something gnawing away at him. He’d let Layla go. And if he had to do it again, it just might kill him.
“Of course,” Slate said, clapping Atlas on the shoulder. “Anyone will tell you that I’m a sucker for a good love story around here. And Shifter Grove thankfully has plenty enough of those.”
Slate gave him a beaming smile, one that Atlas was sure was supposed to incite confidence in him. It didn’t quite do the trick, though Atlas appreciated the effort. He thrust out his hand to Slate and they shook on it, a deal made between men of equal standing, no matter how much money one or the other of them made, or how big of a streak they’d come from before Shifter Grove. Here, they were men like any other and past achievements meant very little. Only what a man could do with his future would be the measuring stick he could live and die by.
Atlas hoped that he could one day look back at his and feel that everything he’d done had been worth it. Including living without Layla for a year and a half.