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I get to eat.”
    Spike pressed his hand to his forehead. His temples were throbbing, not helped when the land line phone rang. Loudly.

Chapter Five
     
    Myka spent a sleepless night, grief at watching Jillian’s last breath and worry about Jordan keeping her restless.
    Jillian had been adamant about giving Jordan to Spike— who the hell named their kid Spike? Jillian had feared what would happen if humans got wind that she was raising a Shifter child, and Myka understood her fear. A system that was so fucked up it would make a little girl live with her abusive stepfather wasn’t going to be kind to a Shifter child.
    Even though Myka had never been a big Shifter fan, she was aware that they were treated like second-class citizens, and she thought that unfair. There was no guarantee that Sharon would be allowed to keep Jordan if it was discovered that he was half Shifter, or that Jordan wouldn’t be shipped off to some Shiftertown far away. Jillian had assured her that Shifters would have a way of keeping it quiet.
    But handing him over to that inked Shifter wasn’t what Myka had wanted either.
    She tossed and turned, imagining all kinds of dire scenarios—Spike locking the kid into a closet, maybe beating on him to relieve his feelings, or trying to figure out how to get rid of him as soon as he could. Sure, Spike had looked intensely proud when he’d realized that Jordan was his son, but that might wear off as soon as Jordan became his usual wild self. Jillian hadn’t known what to do with a kid with that much energy either.
    Myka spent the night with Sharon, not wanting to leave her alone, but while Sharon slept the sleep of the emotionally exhausted, Myka lay awake or got up and paced.
    In the morning, Sharon’s two sisters arrived with their husbands and kids. Myka, though she more or less had been living with Sharon and Jillian these last few months, decided to leave them alone. This was a time for family.
    She stopped at her small house to shower and change, then she went to the stables.
    Myka knew her friends and Sharon would think her crazy for wanting to work today, but at the stables she could seek peace in turmoil. Working with the horses—Myka trained Quarter Horses to be cutters, ropers, and barrel racers for their owners—usually erased all troubles from her mind.
    She’d been coming to these stables since age eleven, when a friend’s mother had brought her here after school. The friend’s riding instructor had let Myka get up on a horse and take a lesson too. Myka had never looked back.
    Myka nodded tightly to the two other trainers who’d come for early sessions but didn’t stop to talk. She took out Carlos, the cutting horse she was currently shaping into a champion for his owner.
    She warmed up Carlos with nothing more strenuous than a pleasant jog around the ring before she started the real work. Cutting horses had to respond to the slightest shift in weight or touch of the reins, in order to cut a calf from the herd or to chase it back in.
    Myka started the lessons of response and reward, but she realized after only a few minutes that neither her heart nor mind was in the training. She could only think of Jordan sleeping on Spike’s lap, Spike’s fierce eyes and his large hand on Jordan’s back.
    Damn it.
    She’d made a promise to Jillian to let Spike take Jordan and not interfere. Jillian had believed with all her heart that living with Spike was best for Jordan. Myka should let it alone—decision made, deed done, none of her business.
    But she couldn’t wash her hands of Jordan like that.
    Myka gave Carlos another jog around the ring, patting him and telling him what a good boy he was, then took him back to the barn. If she tried to train while her mind was elsewhere, she risked ruining the horse. His owner would be less than pleased, and other owners might decide to look for a more reliable trainer.
    Might be a moot point anyway, because the owner of the entire stables and training