Kirby ran her fingers over his kiss-wet lips. “I want you.”
At that instant, he couldn’t think of any rational reason not to take her, brand her. So when the comm panel chimed, he ignored it—until he realized it was his alpha’s code. Groaning, he left the erotic warmth of Kirby’s arms to answer the call, audio only.
What Lucas had to say changed the tenor of the entire night. “We’ve had word from a lynx pack in Calgary that’s been searching for a small family unit that disappeared twenty-three years ago.”
Kirby began to tremble, hope a tremulous whisper inside her.
Striding over to cradle her in his lap, Bastien asked the question she couldn’t form. “What did they say?”
“One of their members decided on a largely solitary existence when he turned eighteen,” Lucas replied. “He stayed in erratic touch with the pack—sometimes nothing more than a scribbled postcard after a year.”
His lynx nature, Kirby understood, must’ve been very strong.
“A year and a half after they’d last heard from him,” Lucas continued, “he contacted them to say he’d fallen for and mated with a human woman, had a baby girl, and intended to head home with his mate and cub in a month. No one ever arrived, and neither did the photos he’d promised of his new family.”
Blood cold, Kirby found her voice. “Why was I . . .” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t ask why the pack hadn’t come for her.
“They couldn’t find you.”
“What?” Bastien growled. “They lost a child?”
“The last message just said the family was on the road, roaming their way home.” Lucas’s voice held taut frustration. “It meant the pack had no idea where to look when Kirby and her parents didn’t arrive. They dispatched trackers, sent out requests to countless local and international agencies, asking for news on a family composed of an adult male lynx, a human female, and a female lynx cub.”
“But I never shifted.” Kirby ran a shaking hand through her hair, her thoughts in splinters. “W-what happens now?”
“You look very much like the elder who contacted me,” Lucas told her, “so there’s not much doubt in my mind about the familial relationship. Still, I’d suggest a DNA test to confirm it, and quickly. Your grandma doesn’t strike me as a patient lady. She’s ready to claim her cub and your grandpa is willing to fight us all for you.”
Kirby’s lower lip quivered as Lucas signed off, her throat thick. “I have a grandma and a grandpa.”
Bastien wrapped her in the solid safety of his arms. “Yeah, and they sound just as tough as their grandchild.”
Kirby began to cry in earnest. She had a family, and they hadn’t thrown her away. They wanted her, had searched for her all these years. It altered the foundations of her existence.
THE DNA test was done by Dorian’s scientist mate, and a mere twenty-four hours following Lucas’s call, Kirby walked into the living room of DarkRiver’s healer. To come face-to-face with an older woman who had eyes of pale lynx-gold set in a face that echoed Kirby’s as strongly as Bastien’s echoed his brothers. She took one look at Kirby and enclosed her in an embrace so fierce, Kirby could barely breathe.
But it was all right, Kirby holding on just as hard. Then she was being hugged by a man of medium height with snow-white hair who had tears in his eyes and called her “my cub’s cub,” a hundred, a thousand words spoken over one another as they tried to catch up on a lifetime.
“My son,” her grandmother said an hour later, the three of them walking alone in the woods behind the healer’s home, “he was a strong, wild one, and he loved you.” Her hands touched Kirby’s cheeks. “Don’t ever doubt that.”
Throat scraped raw from the emotional storm that had passed, Kirby nodded, asked, “My mother’s name, can you tell me?”
“No, kitten, I’m so sorry,” her grandmother said, squeezing her hand. “The silly boy, he was so possessive—called her his mate in the message he sent.” Old sorrow in her gaze, before the pale gold filled with determination. “But now that we have your name, we should be able to use it in concert with our son’s to trace your mother.”
It might take time, Kirby realized on a crashing wave of hope, but it was very, very doable. Kirby’s birth must’ve been registered somewhere. Those records would exist. Even if not, there had to be travel records, or a rental agreement, a co-signed loan . . . Taking a shaky breath she hugged both her grandparents in turn. “Thank you for searching for me.”
“We will always be there for you.” Her grandfather held her close with one arm around her shoulders, while his mate stroked Kirby’s hair back with gentle hands and said, “We have something for you.”
It was a gift beyond price.