Bear My Baby (Shifter Squad Six 1) by Anya Nowlan Page A

herself, rolling her eyes at the melodrama of it all.
    This wasn’t exactly how she wanted it to play out. Her original plan had included not saddling Connor with the responsibility of knowing he had a child somewhere at all. But when he found out regardless, Cassie was ashamed of herself for blowing up in his face like that. He had to be as surprised to find out as she was shocked to ever see him again in the first place.
    “Monroe McLaughlin,” Cassie said to herself quietly.
    It had a ring to it.
    She smiled slightly, shaking her head. Simply put, everything altogether was a bit too much to handle. She had just gotten used to the thought of being alone with her baby, and had stopped constantly looking over her shoulder. Seeing Connor had brought it all back tenfold. While he made her lust for him desperately, he also made her remember everything about that night she’d tried desperately to forget. Not the part in the cabin, but the rest of it.
    Now, when she looked at the plush cream carpet in her living room, she was immediately reminded of how blood pooled on the one at Jonah’s place. How his last words turned into nothing but gargles and how the life left his eyes, leaving nothing but glassy depths behind. And how that man who had slumped down right in front of her on the rooftop had died much the same way.
    It was almost morbidly funny how everybody died the same way. Whether they were on their own or surrounded by other people, they always died alone. It never looked any different.
    Her attention snapped back to the box in a flash in an effort to put the darkness out of her thoughts. She picked at the taped ends, casually checking for a return address. Cassie was used to receiving most of her stuff through the mail and couriers, though she had started moving away from it more and more in favor of actually going out of her house and her yard with Monroe. There was still that discomfort of being out of her sanctuary that kept her at bay, though. A bit of fear, a bit of worry… it all melded together at one point.
    She’d managed to pull loose one end of the taped edge when there was a heavy knock on her door. Whoever it was, he didn’t go for the doorbell, but chose to pound his fist against her thick wooden door, making the whole damn house shake. Cassie only knew one person who could make the world rumble like that. Standing up, she wasn’t entirely certain if she desperately wanted it to be him, or anyone but him.
    “Door!” Monroe announced, not looking up from his picture book.
    She could already imagine how he was going to be when he hit his teens, buried in a book or lost in his infatuation for a girl. If Monroe was really interested in something, he already got very deep into it even at his age. Cassie figured that he had to have gotten that from his daddy too.
    Cassie rose up on her tiptoes and looked out of the peep hole. She could see the rough sweep of Connor’s collarbone and the metallic chain of his dog tags and her pulse picked up immediately. She put her hand on the lock and then hesitated, thinking for a moment.
    What the hell can I say to him? she wondered.
    “Cass, let me in! I need to talk to you,” Connor bellowed. “I know you’re at the door, honey.”
    Cassie groaned. Damn that werebear hearing. Or was it his sense of smell that gave her away? She had no idea, honestly. All she knew about werebears and shifters so far had come from a few online searches, trying to figure out how to raise a shifter baby without having the first inkling of what he would be like as a grownup. Another thing she would have loved to pick Connor’s brain about.
    Resigning herself to another possible bout of verbal diarrhea, but promising herself that she would at least try to control her emotions and her temper, Cassie undid the locks on the doors. One by one they clicked until each one was released and she could pull the door open. She knew the locks were mostly for her own peace of mind and they