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“This is Angela we are talking about. Do you doubt she would move heaven and earth or break down every wall in her place to get to her cub? Or to make sure he was well taken care of?”
I laughed. “Are you saying she didn’t think we’d do a good enough job?”
“I think she knew us well.”
“And do you also believe she sent Livvy to us?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. But I do know that I can’t keep her out of my mind. So…”
“So I don’t know.”
Soft strains of a lullaby wafted through the door. A very familiar song… We looked at each other. “Probably lots of people sing that to their little ones,” I protested against words we hadn’t even said.
“Very likely.” Justice peeked inside the room. “But it is the one Angela sang to him every day until she died.”
A few minutes later, Livvy came out into the hallway. “He’s asleep,” she whispered. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like to lose his mama like he did.” She laid a hand on each of our arms. “And the loss for both of you as well. I can’t ever replace her, but please tell me anything I can do to make your lives a little easier or better.”
And then she was off down the hallway, her clean scent lingering behind.
“Not in name only,” he muttered.
“Yeah, but it’s up to her.” And the words she’d said about anything she could do were sending far too many images to my mind.
Chapter Sixteen
Livvy
Koby had one hand on my ankle and was playing with his blocks with the other. He had been like this for days. Clingy. Almost whiny. Stuck to me like glue.
“Are you ready for a snack?” I asked.
He nodded and started the clean-up song. I sang along with him but, as I moved around the room, picking up blocks and other toys, his gaze followed me, never leaving my form. He and I had bonded. I bonded to the tyke the moment I met him. My panther knew he and I were kindred spirits. Koby was our cub whether he came from my body or not. Whether we were even the same species or not.
“Wanna learn how to pounce after your snack?” I asked. Yesterday, he and I had a long conversation about why I was different from him and his daddies, and he requested to see my panther. I obliged and may or may not have given him a ride around the backyard. Thank the goddess, the privacy fence was eight foot tall.
“What’s pounce?” he asked and meticulously put the block in its place.
“Pouncing is when you creep up on someone…” I tiptoed toward him and made my hands into claws. “And then you pop out and surprise!”
“Why?” His favorite question, by far.
“For fun. For playing. For hunting.”
He thought it over for a second. “I can pounce on my daddies. Like this…rawr!”
I giggled and scooped him up. “Yes, you can. Scare the poopie out of them.”
He got a kick out of that and giggled all the way through his beef jerky-and-apple snack. The kid could eat his weight in food.
We went to the backyard and practiced our moves under the sun. Before long, he was tuckered out but cried, kicking and screaming, when I tried to take him to bed. He ended up sleeping on my lap, his arms around my neck. My panther purred. This was her young. Period.
He was still asleep when Justice and Sloan got home, at the same time, which was rare. I was sweating from having the leech of a cutie on me and had somehow managed some lunch for myself while still holding him.
“Why isn’t he in his bed?” Justice said after greeting me.
“He won’t leave my side. Not for a second. We were playing today, and he was holding my toe in his grip. He’s been on me like a shadow for days.”
Justice sat next to me and rubbed Koby’s back. “You think he’s going through something?”
