Grr!
First he'd hunted me down with a wolf and not seen any problem with it; now he'd used me to terrify a rabbit shifter. What was next, tying a crow's wings back to "get his attention?" Maybe shoving wolf puppies' noses into pee so they'd get potty trained faster?
Yes, he was ignorant — but he shouldn't be! He had too much power for ignorance to be excusable. If he couldn't learn, then he'd better stay out of all shifter affairs.
#
I was in the stacks, working hard, angry and seriously considering quitting the precinct over this debacle, when Jon's soft steps alerted me to his presence.
"Hey," he said, leaning in the doorway. I stopped shelving and looked him up and down, my tall cool drink of water. My hot boyfriend and the man I often worked with.
"Hey." An involuntary smile twitched my lips. My, but he looked good.
"You okay?" he asked.
"No!" I exploded, and almost threw down the files. "You should've seen what happened!"
He eased into the room and put his arms around my waist, drawing me to him loosely, looking down into my face. "There was some kind of issue with a rabbit shifter. I heard that much. Why don't you tell me about it? I'll listen."
I told him — all of it. The rabbit's terror, my outrage, the captain's ignorance, the smell of urine. The sick feeling of being used to hurt someone without my permission or wish to ever do so.
"That was completely avoidable," I added at the end, wiping at my eyes, which were burning. Even though the rage was working its way off, I was not over it. "I didn't like making him feel that way."
"He was being questioned about drugs," said my boyfriend. "They've let him go completely now. I guess they didn't think they'd get any more answers from him, or else your warnings convinced the captain to give up on that angle." He sighed. "We've had a lot of drug-related deaths from the rabbit shifter communities near here. It's bad. And it's been really tough to get any leads."
"Yeah." I sighed softly. Rabbits, for whatever biological or social reason, seemed to be vulnerable to drug problems. It was a shame, since they didn't seem to have a lot going for them in the modern world most of the time. Their sensitive natures left them with vulnerabilities. The world is not often kind to sensitive people.
"I need to make sure he's okay, but there's no way I can check on him myself. Is there some way…?"
Jon hesitated for an instant, then kissed me. "Sure. I'll ask the captain for the address, then go by to check up on him. I'll be really low-key about it."
"That would be good." I nestled against him, sighing, letting him hold me and letting my muscles loosen with trust. "But, uh, maybe you should change your outfit first." I rubbed my face on his shirt, and then grinned up at him. "You smell kinda foxy."
He gave me a roguish wink. "Whatever you say, fox boy."
It sounded an awful lot likefuckboyto me, so I gave him a hard, squinting look, trying to figure out if he meant it that way. Say what you liked about him, he loved his rude little digs — especially if I didn't get them. I was determined not to let him get to me most of the time, but sometimes I really wondered where he was getting this stuff.
He didn't really think I was a fuckboy, did he?
He gave me a quick kiss, a flirtatious wink, and breezed out of there. I watched him go. There was no denying the man I'd chosen to love (or liked to tell myself I'd chosen, so I didn't have to believe it was all down to hormones or fate or something else outside my control), had changed his walk recently. He held his head higher, his shoulders straighter. He no longer seemed to be in a bad mood constantly. In fact, he seemed to be in a pretty darn good mood most of the time.
I liked that. I liked his good moods, and it made me feel really warm inside to think at least some part of his current happiness had to do with me. Really, nothing else major in his life had changed except for me. He'd been a single father for a while before I came along. Not that I'd known it, because apparently I'm not as abreast of precinct happenings as I had liked to believe. Yes, I filed and read a lot of paperwork, but I'd missed out on a lot of other things. It was embarrassing.
Well, I knew now. And I was even going to be meeting his kid soon. They'd been talking about it, and he'd been going slowly; he thought Eli was finally ready.
Sometimes, I wasn't sure that I was. At the beginning it had felt like no big deal to me. I'm pretty good with kids, and I figured it would be low-key, "Nice to meet you," maybe go to the park together just the three of us sometime. I'd listen to him tell me his action figures' names (because that was what little kids did, right?), and maybe spoil him by buying him too much ice cream or something. Easy.
Instead, Jon had gotten me nearly as nervous as he was about the whole thing. He worried about Eli a lot — not without reason. Eli's drug-addicted mother hadn't taken very good care of him, and had had a lot of different boyfriends during her time caring for Eli. Often, a different boyfriend meant a different way of being neglected for Eli.
The boy had developmental and emotional issues. He'd been malnourished and undersized when Jon got custody, and was just barely starting to get up to speed in good eating and sleeping habits. He still didn't always manage to sleep through the night, according to Jon.
I could empathize with their concerns, but I didn't want to be cast in the role of wicked step-something, either. It made me uneasy — like I had to be punished for other people's problems.
I like kids. I get along fine with kids. You just talk to them like they're adults, but don't use too many big words, and let them change the subject when they're bored. Also, listen a lot. You can't go wrong — or so I'd thought. But now I had two strikes against me before I'd even gotten up to bat, and I didn't like it. Jon thought Eli was finally ready, but I wasn't sure if I was.
Jon hadn't won custody. He and Eli's mother had had a breakup before he knew she was pregnant, and she'd neglected to tell him, for whatever reason. Whether just angry with him and wanting to punish him, or thinking he'd be a worse father than none, I didn't know. I knew Jon could be very angry sometimes. But missing out on his son's early years, and knowing Eli had suffered for it considerably? That wasn't a wound that looked like it was healing any time soon — not deep, real healing.
Maybe it had scabbed over. But he still had some pretty bitter things to say about women, and one in particular. For the most part, I tried to ignore it, because I could see he was hurting. It did sometimes get on my nerves when he said unpleasant things about women, though. Some of the nicest people in the world happen to be female. Even though I didn't happen to be attracted to them, I didn't like the bashing.
