Page 49 of Bad Blood Panther

“And suddenly now I’m a dad. I have a fucking son. And he’s just like me.” It was still hard to breathe. “I have a kid, and I can never be that dad I always wanted to be. I can never give him this.” He waved his hand at the scene in front of them.

“I still want to,” he said quietly. “I want it so bad I—” He shook his head. How could he describe the burning, shredding feeling of knowing how badly he was going to fuck this up?

Tank took another sip of his beer. Xander could feel his friend’s bear, calm and steady. It almost helped.

Tank finally spoke, his voice a low rumble. “I wasn’t born human, like you were,” he said. “But I had a normal life, once.” He toyed with the beer in his hand, running his fingers over the sweating glass, sending droplets running down onto his jeans.

“Angie—my first mate—and I didn’t live with a shifter group. We had that little cabin in the Georgia mountains, all on our own.”

Xander nodded; he’d been there with Tank and Lissa right after they got together, to help Tank close it up and pack up some stuff.

“I went to work every day, and came home to Angie making dinner with vegetables from her garden. She loved that garden,” he said, the warmth of happy memories coming into his voice.

“I fucking loved that life, almost as much as I loved her.” He paused, swallowing. “We’re Bad Bloods because we’ve all lost everything,” he said. “Most of us more than once.”

Xander nodded. The losers and the misfits.

Tank went on, “The last thing—the hardest thing—I had to do to be happy with Lissa wasn’t giving up the memory of Angie. I’ll always have that.” His hand tightened around the bottle. “It was giving up the life I should have had.”

Tank finished his beer in two big swallows. “You okay here?”

Xander nodded.

Tank pushed himself off the truck and rested his hand on Xander’s shoulder for a second. Then he walked off to his truck, started it up, and drove away.

Xander sat on the hood of his truck while the sun sank. The games ended; the families packed up and headed for home or ice cream or dinner at Denny’s.

The playing fields emptied, and still he sat, rolling his empty beer bottle between his hands, until the darkness covered them.

He drove slowly back to the territory, not thinking, feeling like a hollow shell. The sea of dark emotions had receded, and there was nothing but emptiness to replace it.

When he got back to the compound, everyone was sitting around the fire pit. Dinner was over—he could smell it in the air—but he wasn’t hungry. Sloan was playing his guitar and singing softly, with Caitlyn sitting on the patio next to his chair, leaning against his legs.

The conversation was soft, muted. No drinking games, not much banter. Flynn sat a little apart from the others, half in shadow, slouched low in his chair with his long legs splayed out in front of him. Only Jaz and Brody were missing—working at the restaurant.

Jenny sat on the retaining wall, playing with Brandon. He was in panther form, chasing a moth, leaping at it and batting it with his little paws. Xander could see Jenny watching him, feel her wanting him to come over, to say something sweet and forgiving and loving.

She was hurting, and it tugged at him like a physical pain. But he just…couldn’t. He felt like if anyone spoke to him or touched him, he’d shatter into a million fucking pieces.

He climbed his favorite oak tree on the other side of the clearing. He and his cat both loved it—its strong, level, comfortable branches, some of them over a foot thick. The feeling of permanence, like it had stood forever and always would. The sense of safety it gave him. A place to hide, and think, a place to be with the others but not too close.

Never too close.

He leaned against the trunk and stretched his legs out along his favorite branch. The conversation over at the fire pit had gotten louder, happier. As if knowing he was here, and okay, had lifted some of the tension. Somewhere, beneath the emptiness and bone-deep fatigue, he appreciated that.

He leaned his head back against the tree and closed his eyes, listening to Sloan’s music, to the rise and fall of noise that meant family and home to him now. This new, accidental life he’d fallen into, filled with people he loved.

Who somehow were stupid enough to love him back.

He didn’t know how long he sat there before he heard the scrabbling of claws in the tree below him.

“Brandon, no,” Jenny called, but it was too late. He opened his eyes to see a pair of tiny greenish yellow eyes coming determinedly up the tree.

Brandon scrambled up onto his branch and dropped something in his lap. It was a dead mouse, freshly killed.

His first gift from his son.

Brandon looked up at Xander, his little black ears pricked, his eyes hopeful.

Fuck. His eyes burned. He picked up the mouse, cradling it in his hand. “I love it, buddy,” he said. “It’s the best. And you’re a fucking awesome hunter.”

He pulled the little cat into his lap, his son’s baby panther scent filling his nostrils and making his chest ache. Brandon put his front paws on Xander’s chest and snuggled his furry head into the crook of his neck. He felt the rasp of a tiny tongue on his skin, and heard the beginnings of a baby purr.

A lithe black shape leaped from the ground below onto another branch, to his right. Jenny silently climbed up and draped herself over a diagonal branch just behind him, the warmth of her fur seeming to reach across and envelop Xander, even though they weren’t touching.

The panther family at home.

Holding his dead mouse, he rested his cheek on his son’s head and stroked his fur, letting the tears fall.