She tilted her head. “What if I already have a…a family spirit?”
“I’m sure you do, but we don’t know where your pride is. Do you?”
She shook her head. No sadness showed on her face or altered her scent.
“Well, until we find them, you can join our pride. Think of it as an adoption. Would you like that?”
Her eyes lit up. “Adopt. Yes, I’d like that.” She scrunched her nose and gave him a questioning look. “But only if Uncle Josh can stay with me. I promised I’d watch out for him.”
Rafe grinned. Megan’s protective instincts were strong. It didn’t seem to matter to the preschooler that Josh was an adult who’d held his own against a three-hundred-year-old shifter. There’d be no changing her mind. Which meant he’d be spending a lot of time with Jasmine’s ex-lover.
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Josh can stay with you.”
“Okay then.” Megan sat up straighter. “I’ll be an Alexander.”
He grinned. “Well, now that we have that settled, how about you tell me who you were talking to.”
“My wolf.”
Rafe stared at her a moment, then cleared his throat. “You don’t carry a wolf, Megan. Once you get closer to maturity, you’re going to be able to shift into a white lioness.”
Single shifters didn’t shift until they hit their mid-twenties. It happened a little earlier for girls because they developed sooner, but it’d be years before Megan would even be able to distinguish between her soul and her cat’s, let alone shift. Royals didn’t get that buffer. Their animals were too strong not to make their presence known early on. Usually about the time they could crawl. Their animals would want to stretch their legs too.
Megan sighed. “I know I don’t carry one. My wolf is stuck out there.” She waved her arm to encompass the room. “He’s going to fade away if I don’t figure out how to get him in here.” She thumped her chest.
Every muscle in Rafe’s body tensed. Talking with Jasmine earlier about his family’s spirit had stirred stories to life he’d forgotten. Each of the gods’ warriors had gone on to father his own family, be it a pack if he’d been a wolf shifter, a pride if he’d carried a feline, or a clan if he’d housed a bear. The Royals had done the same.
In all the years shifters had existed, no pack, pride, or clan had ever died out. Their instinctual drive to reproduce prevented such a fate from occurring. There was also the option of an outside shifter taking over, not an ideal situation but it did happen from time to time. So, in all honesty, no spirit, the soul of the first alpha, should ever be without a host.
But if it was without a host, what would happen to it? Would it return to the gods or fade away without an anchor to the mortal world?
Or latch on to the closest shifter it could find, even if it was a little girl?
“Your…umm…wolf is a he?”
She nodded. “He’s the spy.”
Rafe’s heart raced. He slid off the bed and knelt on the floor.
“The spy, huh?” He knew of two wolf packs whose name could be loosely translated into spy. One of them had only a couple of members left the last time Rafe had heard. “Does he ever call himself an Ammon wolf?”
“No. He says he’s the spy, but he failed because they caught him.”
“Who are they?”
“The bears who ran the hospital where I lived before.”
Rafe fisted his hand to hide the sharp tips of his claws that had slipped free. The low growls of his cats added to the anger building within him. Not all bear shifters were corrupt, but some had decided shifter trafficking was an easy way to make money off those weaker than them. According to those select few bears, everyone fit into that category—humans and shifters alike—except bear shifters of course.
Rafe would bet every cent he owned that it had been an experimental center Megan had lived in, not a hospital.
“Can you tell me about this hospital? Did they hurt you there?”
She scrunched her nose. “No. We never saw anyone besides our nurse, and she loved us, but they hurt her. Sometimes, she came in to see us with black eyes and bruises, and I don’t think she was just clumsy like she always said.”
Curses whipped through his head. He cracked his jaw. “What was your nurse’s name?”
“Nurse Ryanne. R-Y-A-N-N-E. Not like Ryan, the boy’s name.”
He held up his hand. “Got it. Did Nurse Ryanne have a last name?”
“I guess.” She gave him a ‘well-duh’ look that brought a smile to his lips, despite the topic. “But she never told us it.”
“Who is ‘us’?”
“Me and my sister, Molly.” Megan twisted her fingers together. “When Nurse Ryanne took us out of the hospital, she gave us to different humans so we had a better chance of getting away from the bad men after us. I haven’t seen Molly since.” Megan glanced at him with tears in her eyes. “It’s been over a year. I miss her.”
Rafe opened his arms, and Megan threw herself against him. He held her while quiet sobs shook her body and blinked against the burn in his eyes. “You’re safe now, sweetie, and we’ll get Molly back. I promise you.”
“And Nurse Ryanne too?”
“Yes, and Nurse Ryanne.”
She tipped her head back. “And my wolf?”
Well, that wasn’t something he could promise. For one, female shifters couldn’t house a spirit animal. For another, the species difference wouldn’t allow it. Wolves and felines couldn’t share the same body. They’d tear their host apart.
He rested his head on hers. “Yes, we’ll get him home.”
He’d just have to find a wolf shifter willing to rebuild the Ammon pack.
Chapter 29
Rafe left Megan sleeping peacefully, her stuffed lion clutched to her chest, and made his way to the kitchen stairs. The door to Mira’s room stood open. He glanced inside. She sat on the floor by her bed, her knees pulled against her chest and her arms
