Page 17 of The Tiger's Secret Baby (Savage Shifters Special Ops 4)

Gage laughed. “Better. Where do you think Inspector Gadget got all of his inventions from?”

7

Ember

Later on that evening, I was sitting by myself on the porch swing watching the little kids play a game of kickball, while the older kids put the finishing touches on the barn. A couple of them were amazing artists, and wanted to paint murals on all of the sides. I thought that was a great idea.

They also designed the inside of the barn for efficiency, including the feeding troughs, grooming stations with different elevated stations, and a couple of other conveniences they thought would make things a bit easier for them. I had to say that I was exceedingly impressed.

I was deep in thought when Magnar sank down on the step next to me. “How are you doing, Mom?” he asked.

Sliding my arm around his shoulder, I said, “Okay, I guess. I’m glad that these guys are here to help us. I don’t think that I could have fought Duggers without them.”

He was quiet for a minute and then asked, “Can I ask you something without you getting mad?”

“Sure,” I said. “You know I never get mad at you.”

“This is different.” After a pause, he asked. “Is Mr. Damian Rose’s father?”

I was both shocked and not shocked at the same time. The question caught me off guard, yet I guessed that someone would figure it out before too much longer. After all, as far as I was concerned, the similarities between the two of them are remarkable. Of course, Magnar, having been a street child, was extremely observant.

“He is her father. Damian and I were engaged a long time ago.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“Lucian is his best friend. Lucian’s brother, Cedric, died in the war. Cedric was in special forces. Lucian was so overcome with grief, he enlisted, wanting revenge on those who had taken his brother. Damian went with him to protect him.”

“Why didn’t you guys get back together?” Magnar asked, his brows furrowed. “I’ve seen the way you look at him and how he looks at you. I think you guys still love each other.”

“I think we do too. But with special forces, Damian couldn’t always write to me. He would be off on missions for really long time periods. Then, I think that he just forgot, because things got really hectic where he was at. It wasn’t just him. Soon, I had you, Rose, and a passel of other kids, and I just never seemed to find the time. Time slipped away, and then I guess that I thought it was too late to reach out.”

He nodded as though he understood. That made him smarter than me, because I didn’t really understand anything except that I had been nursing a broken heart for the last eleven years. That was one of the many reasons why I never even looked at another man, let alone dated one. Damian was the only man I could ever love.

After a brief silence, Magnar asked, “Damian and Rose don’t know, do they?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t want Damian to come back to me because of a child. If he ever came back, I wanted it to be because he loved me. I also didn’t want us to be a burden.”

“He’s not going to like that answer,” Magnar said.

“For a young man, you are certainly intuitive,” I said.

“I just know that I would be angry about the situation. You did what you thought was right, which I respect. But looking from the other side, I’d want to know if I had a kid.”

“I know, Honey. You are right. I’ll tell him soon. Please don’t say anything to anyone else, including Rose,” I requested.

“You know I won’t,” he said. Standing up, he hugged me, and then went on his way. He had a great idea for the mural, and was going to talk to the kids about it. Everyone would have a part of painting it. They were brothers and sisters -- Not by blood, but by love, which is even stronger.

I was very surprised that Rose hadn’t figured it out yet. She was really intelligent. She knew, of course, that she was my biological child. It wouldn’t be too much of a leap to guess that Damian, a tiger shifter, was her father. The only kind of shifting I could do was moving from one spot to another. I had no great talents or abilities.

I had an idea that Damian might have some kind of suspicion about Rose. I had caught him watching her a few times, curiously, as though he was trying to figure something out. It really was only a matter of time before he connected the dots.

The four men stood by me and watched the kids for a few minutes. Gage asked, “Have they had any lessons about their heritage? As in how to control it, what strengths and weaknesses they have, and so on?”

“Not really,” I answered. “The older kids sometimes teach the younger kids what they had figured out. Magnar was my second child, so he is the oldest dragon shifter. I have two others. Magnar has a bit of a temper, so he needs to control that before he can teach the others how to control theirs. We don’t go into town much, because all I need is for someone to make them mad and for smoke to literally come rolling out their ears.” I laughed.

“That is true,” Lucian said.

“I’ve talked to them about the timing of their shifts. Rose was an early starter and shifted even when she was a baby and was just a few months old. She would just change in the middle of a store. I always had blankets handy.”

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