Protect and Serve Don't Need A Hero by Lena Austin

 
     
     
    Chapter One
     
    I buckled my niece into the back seat booster chair with all the care I’d used to do the same for my baby nephew Mikey. They were the loves of my life, and I could hardly wait to take them to the beach for the day. Oh, yeah.
    Angelina clutched her new teddy bear and grinned up at me. “Auntie Pete, where we going? Are we going to get French fries?”
    “Fen fies! Fen fies!” Little Mikey squealed, beating his new camo-colored teddy bear on the “driving wheel” of his safety seat. Well, at least he liked the new toy I’d made him. I smiled fondly down at my adopted sister’s unruly pair. I’d been their slave since Marissa had first allowed me to hold them in the hospital after their births. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll stop by and grab up some grub before heading to the beach, okay?”
    Both kids managed to hit ear-piercing levels of cheers, and I winced internally when my feline-sensitive ears protested the assault. What else was I going to do on my day off, anyway, but give Bean’s sister Marissa a break and take the munchkins to the beach? Hanging around Dustin’s big-assed mansion was hard on my heart.
    I had started out life in a mansion like the one I currently called home, but when the family abandoned the city for safer digs in the country, they’d kind of forgotten to take their fur-friends. I and an old dog named Beau had been heartbroken. Beau had sat on the drive day after day, waiting and starving to death. As far as I know, his bones are still there in that driveway, a testament to undeserved loyalty.
    I, then known as Champion Petra of White Oaks, had just won my honors at cat shows and was looking forward to a few years of litters of kittens before retiring gracefully to a pillowed window seat. I’d been two years old, dammit. What had I known except luxury and pampering? At first, learning to hunt up my own dinner had been rough, but I’d lucked into meeting up with other abandoned shifters.
    Tigs and his pals had taken me into their little pride and had shown an abandoned Himalayan barely out of kitten-hood the ropes, saws, and tools of the construction trade. I abandoned my old name and past, and upon Rat’s suggestion had become “Pete.”
    So to circle back on the prey, I’m now a master carpenter with a specialty in interior finishing work, and I take care of the guys who’d taken care of me. Well, sorta.
    Now that Tigs had married the wealthy Dustin Hardesty, I wasn’t much needed anymore. I didn’t dare invade the cook’s kitchen, and the rest of the staff saw to the cleaning of the huge mansion we all shared. The most the guys needed me for was the occasional sewing and mending.
    Dammit, I was getting depressed again. I got in, buckled my own seatbelt, and drove down Stockton to where I could pick up the highway onramp heading to the beach. Marissa’s little bungalow in the north of Riverside near I-10 faded off into the distance. We’d be back not long after two, when the sun got too fierce, giving Marissa a chance to sleep in for once. Being a single mom is a bitch.
    The guys still wanted me around, despite their changed lives. Beans, the Amigos Construction accountant, had become Dustin’s bookkeeper out of sheer boredom. When a Rottweiler shifter got bored, you gave him something to do or he started tearing up the furniture. I thought Dustin had practically thrown the unholy mess he’d inherited at Beans, and Beans had gleefully set about making Dustin not just rich but filthy fucking rich.
    Rat, the rat terrier shifter and my best bud, had done what he always did -- took over when Tigs was busy. Boy, was Tigs busy since he’d married Dustin. Tigs had gone to college and become a big-time architect, specializing in restoration and renovation of old buildings. He joyously redesigned the old structures then handed the actual work over to Rat and me.
    Rat was in his element. He’d take the designs and make them into beautiful reality. We had six