Part of Shifters Unbound
First published 2012
Spike has a reputation in Shiftertown: champion fighter, tracker, enforcer. He is not known as a father. Then Myka shows up with news that a dying woman has named him as the sire of a jaguar cub and wants Spike to raise the boy. Myka grew up with an abusive stepfather, so she is not ready to hand a small child over to a man whose main credential is winning fights. She stays in Shiftertown to watch him. What she finds is a Shifter who has buried most of his family and guards the ones he has left with everything he has. Spike sees something in Myka too. She trains horses for a living and does not flinch around large animals that can hurt her, including the wildcat standing in front of her. He asks her to help him figure out how to be a father, because she is the only one who seems to understand what he is up against. The longer she stays, the harder it gets for either of them to stay distant. Then Spike's duties as tracker pull him into danger that reaches the cub and Myka both, and he has to decide where his loyalty actually lives.
Genres: romance, adult, adult-fiction, fantasy-romance, paranormal-romance, contemporary-romance
Vibes: emotional, intimate, passionate, protective, suspenseful
Tropes: forced-proximity, found-family, protective-hero, second-chance, slow-burn
Setting: Shiftertown
169 pages · Kindle Edition · JA / AG Publishing
Content warnings: abuse, violence