Free Bad Cat Baby Blues (Shifter Squad Six 3) by Anya Nowlan Page A

then, an impressionable youth who rightfully idolized his father. His mother had died a few years prior due to breast cancer.
    They made an odd pair, Carter and Dutch. Neither one of them had anyone else in their lives, and both of them were struggling to find a reason to keep going. Whenever he could, Dutch would go to see Carter, who was set to live with his aunt and uncle after Syke’s death. It was when he hit eighteen that Carter had seemingly made up his mind about the world and wanted to enlist in the Marines in order to follow in his father’s footsteps.
    It had taken far too much tequila and long conversations to get him to reconsider, and frankly, Dutch wasn’t sure if keeping him from it was even a good idea. But when he’d moved to Detroit of his own volition and sent Dutch a text about it instead of calling, he’d known something had to be up.
    The fact that he’d stopped taking Dutch’s calls only confirmed that. And sitting in that rundown little room in the middle of one of the worst parts of Detroit, Dutch knew something was wrong.
    He stood up, his hands rolling into fists without any conscious effort. Something was fucked up, and for once it wasn’t Dutch that was the cause of it.
    I’ve got to find him.
    Miraculously enough, Dutch had found the one thing that could make him stop obsessing about Ari for more than an hour or so. But he hated the fact that it had to be something like this.
 

CHAPTER TEN
    Ariadne
     
    Ari paused at the door, her ears pricked up, listening for any noise in the house. It was eerily quiet, and with a toddler that was never good news.
    “Roman, where are you?” she called, half-expecting the boy to sneak up on her and try and scare her.
    That didn’t sound like something a six-month-old should be able to do, but when it was a kid with both parents who were jaguar shifters, a lot of the conventional wisdom went flying out of the window. Roman could do a whole lot of things a normal kid his age shouldn’t be able to do. And Ari loved every second of it.
    “I’m not kidding, Ro. Mommy doesn’t have time to play hide and seek right now,” Ari said, tiptoeing into the living room, her steps light and soundless.
    She tried to sound serious, but there was a smile perched squarely on her lips, and her chest was bursting with pride at how damn clever her baby boy already was. He’d started half-shifting a few days ago and along with that, all of the shifter qualities started seeping into his personality. He’d gone from liking to play with blocks all day to stalking around, pouncing on things, and then cuddling them to a happy sort of submission.
    It was adorable, and just as silly as it sounded. As such, it didn’t surprise Ari at all when she stepped past the couch and suddenly a very ferocious little jaguar cub came tumbling out, still perfectly human, but his eyes glowing yellow and his nose and mouth slightly elongated in that big cat way.
    Ari screeched, making to jump out of the way, playing along with her ferocious little predator. She scooped him up from the floor, bouncing him into her lap as she tickled his tummy, making the boy giggle and the gold slither out of his eyes. He looked up at her, hands reached out, beaming a wide smile that looked nothing like hers and everything like his father’s.
    “Did you get me? Did you catch me like you planned?” she asked, laughing as she put him on one hip and carried him toward the kitchen.
    “Yes!” he announced with obvious satisfaction, his vocabulary consisting of a few words, but all of them uttered with the same kind of iron certainty in them.
    Not like his daddy tended to say much. Maybe he needs about fifty more words and then he’s done for the rest of his life, Ari thought wryly, stepping into her small kitchen and settling Roman into the highchair.
    “What do you think, is it lunch time?” she asked, making sure he was secured in the seat before twirling around to face the fridge.
    “Yes!