Page 10

Mulder

I wasn’t sure what Kenny had in mind when he asked us out on a family date, but during his meetings, he must have asked for some local suggestions. Because when he picked us up, his GPS was already set to the local children’s museum. By local, I meant about forty-five minutes away, but that’s as local as it came to those kinds of things.

I explained to Madeline we were meeting someone special and that we were going to hang out for the afternoon. She was a pretty quick kid and asked if I meant mate when I said special, and I told her, “Maybe.” It was the best answer I could give.

This parenting thing was hard. I wasn’t sure how much to say or how much to explain. Thankfully, she just rolled with it. She even put on her glittery tutu as we waited for him to come, saying that she needed to be fancy for our fun.

Madeline took an instant shining to him, talking his ear off as we walked to his car. I offered to take mine so we didn’t have to transfer the car seat, but when I got to his vehicle, he already had one there, and it was installed correctly. At my look, he said, “Safety matters.” He’d gone out of his way to get one just for her. Beta Swale must have helped him with it, since car seat choices had to do with height and weight along with age.

On the way to the children’s museum, we sang along to the radio. The satellite channels had one that played a lot of favorite children’s songs. Not one of us could carry a tune, but Kenny and Madeline had the ability to sing loud and proud and with enthusiasm. We had a blast.

The children’s museum was great, as always. It wasn’t super crowded—the youngest kids, the ones who were home during the day, were already leaving, and most of the school- age kids didn’t come midweek. We wandered from room to room, making huge bubbles, playing store, and using pulleys to lift heavy objects. She’d been there plenty of times and took advantage of that experience to give Kenny the full tour.

But, soon enough, they were closing for the day, and it was time to go.

“Do you want to get dinner next?” Kenny asked Madeline.

“No. I want to see you guys shift. You smell like a wolf, but I can’t tell what kind.”

He gave me a look.

“We’ve been working on her scenting skills,” I explained.

“Well then, I guess I’ll have to show you what kind of wolf I am sooner rather than later. But little girls need to eat if they’re going to grow big and strong and stay healthy. So, why don’t we stop by the store and grab some things for a picnic?”

She seemed to think that was a good idea, and we went to the grocery store that had a full deli and made sandwiches. Unlike most kids, she didn’t want a plain one—instead asking for pretty much every vegetable there was to go along with her roast beef.

I was the opposite. My roll had turkey and nothing else.

And Kenny was in between.

It amused me and reminded me of The Three Bears , even though none of us here were actually bears.

I typed the location of my favorite shifting spot into the GPS, and off we went. Along the way, we took turns talking about our favorite exhibits at the museum—the bubbles being the overwhelming winner.

Once, I would’ve been worried about Madeline seeing a wolf and being scared, but there were a lot of different kinds of shifters at Wolfe Enterprises—everyone from fox to shark to dragon—and she’d seen it all at company gatherings. A wolf wouldn’t intimidate her, not in the slightest. If anything, she would call him a “puppy” or “cute doggy,” which was understandable, even if it wasn’t totally ideal.

After we ate our sandwiches, she worked on the ginormous cookie she’d picked out at the grocery store’s bakery and, the two of us shifted.

Madeline had seen my cat a million times in her short life. I was one of the fortunate shifters who could take my fur at home, no problem. Well…there was the one problem way back when, but if it hadn’t been for that pain-in-the-ass neighbor, I wouldn’t have Madeline, and I wouldn’t have had those years with Jason. So, it had all been worth it.

When Kenny took his fur, she set the cookie down and came over. “You’re beautiful.”

She hugged him around his furry neck. “Next time, I’m bringing a tutu for you. I think your wolf could use one.”

I’d need to talk to her about that. Putting a tutu on a pack alpha was far from proper etiquette.

She asked us to run races, and we did. Then she asked us to lie down so she could see which of us was better for snuggling—and we did. She picked Kenny. And, finally, she asked us to switch back because she had something “really, really funny” to tell us.

Well, that really, really funny thing was all about the fact that I was a cat and Kenny was a dog.

“My second most favoritest book,” she explained, “is about a cat and a dog, and they are best friends. Like best, best friends. Not like the kind that are mean, where you say, ‘Oh, you’re my best friend’ because you want the other person to know they’re not.”

Gods, sometimes I hated school. Kids could be so mean. The best friend thing had been a big issue at the beginning of the year—not with her particularly but with the entire class—and we spent an entire parents’ meeting listening to the principal and teacher telling all the parents how to handle it at home. Apparently, it was still fresh on Madeline’s mind, and I filed it away as something to ask the teacher about next time I saw her.

“Anyway, they get into so much trouble—not because they’re naughty though—they just are in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s hilarious.”

“And what’s your favorite book about?” Kenny asked.

“Oh, that’s about when Father broke Daddy out of jail.”

Kenny’s eyes snapped to me.

“It wasn’t jail.”

Kenny broke out laughing, already knowing the story.

“Is that your only book about Daddy?”

She shook her head. “No, Daddy made me lots of books so I don’t forget my father.”

“Maybe you can read them to me one day?”

She bobbed her head up and down. “I can try. I’m not good at reading yet, but I can pick out a, the, and cat. And Madeline. I can tell you the stories, though.”

“That sounds great. I’d love to hear them.” Kenny wasn’t threatened by my past. He wanted to know all about it.

“Are you going to be my papa?”

Kenny looked at me as if I had all the answers. This was just as much new territory for me as it was for him.

“Papa?”

“Yeah. I have a daddy, and my father is with the Goddess. So that leaves papa. Is that gonna be you?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yeah. I really want a papa. And Daddy gets lonely. He needs a dog to get into mischief with.”

I…wasn’t gonna argue with that, not if that “dog” was Kenny.