Free Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Halfway through, he segued disturbingly smoothly into a number from Rent .
    The music soothed me as much as it did the baby, and I turned my attention back to Kaitlin, who now appeared to be very conscientiously stalking my shoelaces. I smiled half a smile at her puppy antics, wondering what it would be like to be able to join her, to shed my human skin and the confines that went with it and just live in the moment as a wolf. What would I look like with four legs and fur—would I be light-colored like Katie, or a darker timber, like Dev?
    I wondered if I’d be velvety black with ice-blue eyes, like Chase.
    And then, I was there again, in that moment, watching his muscles tense and pull and send electric pulses through my body as he Changed. With equally little warning, I was elsewhere and another set of blue eyes glistened yellow as a large, gray wolf with a white star on his forehead leapt for the throat of a human man whose features had long been replaced by Callum’s in my memory.
    Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end .…
    A hand on my shoulder made me jump.
    You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself , Callum told me with his eyes, but out loud, he didn’t say anything to me at all—he just squeezed my shoulder once and turned his attention to Kaitlin.
    “Ach, Katie-girl, what are we going to do with you?” His brown eyes soft and his mouth set with mock sternness, Callum scooped puppy-Kaitlin up in his arms. She lapped at his face and he bit back an indulgent smile. “If your mama sees you like this, she’ll not be pleased,” Callum said, before puffing out a breath that had my little sister sniffing like crazy.
    Even without being a Were, I knew what Callum would smell like to her: safe and strong and home. He was the alpha, and in our world, that made him as close and important to Kaitlin as her own parents. As important as I hoped that I would be to her someday.
    Eventually, Katie tired of the confines of Callum’s loving hold, and she began to whine and wiggle, angling for the floor.
    “I know exactly how you feel,” I said under my breath.
    Callum didn’t bat an eye at my complaint. “You,” he said to Katie, “need to change back to human form, and you”—he fixed his gaze on me—“my dearest, darling, and not-quite-grown little girl, need to trust that I have and have always had your best interest at heart.”
    My future mini-me and I were equally incapable of resisting Callum’s orders. If Callum said to Change, Katie had to Change, whether she wanted to or not. For me, Callum had a different kind of pull. Years of shielding myself psychically from my bond with the pack may have dulled Callum’s supernatural influence over me, but he still had a human one, and I couldn’t deny the truth in his words. Callum didn’t want tosee me hurt, and he had no qualms about acting to ensure my safety. He cared for me.
    Callum reached out and ran a hand over my hair, the same way Devon had stroked Katie’s. Meanwhile, the little princess settled into her baby body enough to thrash her little baby arms, and she let out a shriek worthy of an opera-singing banshee. I had to give it to her, the kid knew how to scream with the best of them. I could almost hear the howl behind her unhappy cries.
    Kaitlin—or Kate now, clearly—did not like being caged, not by orders she had to follow or by limbs that wouldn’t do what they were told and skin that stubbornly refused to feel even the least bit like fur.
    “Her Royal Highness is displeased,” I told Callum, translating Baby Kate’s wails into words.
    He shifted her in his arms and crooned and patted her bottom, speaking to her in a mix of languages I didn’t know and couldn’t understand beyond the fact that once upon a time, he’d probably said the same thing to me. Kate resisted being consoled, but soon the wails died to whimpers