But maybe she didn’t need to be. Carlos, after all, wasn’t a snow leopard. In fact, he and Ken and Nate were all different types of shifters—Ken was a lion and Nate was a panther, and they were both mated to lynxes.
Maybe there was room for a bird of prey in there, too.
“Cal’s on his way,” Carlos told them. “In fact—” He turned toward the door, and a second later, there was a knock.
Cal came in alone, though when his eyes lit on Mavis, he said, “Lillian’s home with the baby. Sh
e’ll be sorry she missed a group get-together, though. Pauline, hello.”
She shook his hand. “Thank you for coming.”
“What’s this about, then?” Cal asked, businesslike.
Pauline looked over at Drew, who’d shrunk back a little at the sudden influx of adults. He looked especially wary of Cal and the Colonel; Pauline was reminded that he’d never had anything in the way of a good male role model. Marsha’s boyfriends had never stuck around for very long.
“That wolf pack we tangled with last month is causing trouble for Drew and his kid brother and sister,” Carlos said bluntly.
“That’s not true,” Drew spoke up, causing Carlos to look back in surprise. “I got into trouble my own self. I went to them.”
“Well, they could’ve done something other than take advantage of a kid with no parents and other kids to take care of.” Pauline hadn’t intended to speak up, but she couldn’t stand hearing him put himself down. “Did you wake up and think, I want to be a gang member when I grow up?”
“No!” Drew stood up. “We didn’t have any money. My job wasn’t enough to provide for the kids. I had to do something.”
You could’ve come to me. Pauline bit her lip. She was going to sit down with Drew, just the two of them, as soon as she could, and see if she could understand what had driven him to the dangerous choice, rather than the safe one of accepting her help.
“What sort of trouble are you in, son?” Colonel Hanes asked. His voice was friendly, nonthreatening.
Drew looked at Pauline, then back at Troy’s sleeping form, and then he took a breath and explained.
“My mom always...liked being a wolf more.” He bit his lip. “She’d shift and stay shifted for a long time. Days, sometimes. She’d sleep like that, she did that for years. But it started getting worse. And then one day, earlier this summer, she left us a note. She said she couldn’t handle this anymore. It was too much. She said she was leaving me the car and the house and all of her things and going into the woods forever, and she left us a little money. But not enough.”
He blinked quickly and went on. “I have a job at Safeway. I make enough to get us food and clothes at Goodwill and stuff like that. But I can’t—Mom used to stay home with the kids. And I’ll never get a better job and make more money to take better care of them if I can’t go back to school. So I thought...I needed enough money to pay someone to look after them until I graduated, and then...I’d figure something out. It was just going to be for a little while.”
Colonel Hanes sighed, a big, gusty sound. “That’s a shame, son. That’s all just a shame. You were in a tight spot. Are you eighteen yet?”
He shook his head. “This fall.”
The colonel’s lips tightened. “Even tougher.”
“It was still wrong.” Drew lifted his chin. “I know that. I went to them and I asked what I could do—I’m a wolf like they are, so I thought they’d give me something. And they did. But I—I realized, after, that they aren’t going to just let me...work for them for a few months and stop. Ryan’s already threatening the kids, and that’s gonna work forever, no matter what I do. Unless I pick up and move to Miami or something, but I’d need a lot of money for that, and what do I do when I get there?”
His shoulders slumped. “It was dumb. I knew it was dumb when I did it, but I didn’t realize how dumb until now.”
“We’re going to fix it,” Pauline said fiercely.
His eyes were dull when he looked at her. “You can’t just fix it. I need to take responsibility. I knew this was going to be something illegal, and I did it anyway.”
Carlos looked at Cal. “That’s where you come in,” he said seriously. “You’ve lived here long enough, you must have a sense of the sheriff’s probable take on this.” He looked over at the colonel. “And I imagine you do, too, sir.”
Both men nodded. “There’s a new sheriff, this last year,” Cal said.
“You met her, last time you were in town,” the colonel put in. “She’s new blood. Eager to whip the place into shape. Not amused by shifter politics at all.”
“Is she a shifter?” Carlos asked.
“Oh, yes. But she’s firmly against packs standing together,” Cal said. “Especially packs standing together against each other.”
“But she’s not vindictive,” the colonel said thoughtfully. “And she has her eye on the ball. She’s not likely to shoot the messenger, not if the messenger can get her to someone more important.”