Page 9 of Sobek’s Joy

Rudy felt his cheeks heat. Trust Jack to notice. “I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Nothing important. Come on, bath time.”

He herded the kids upstairs, running the water and adding bubbles while they stripped down. Rose immediately cannonballed in, sending water everywhere. Jack climbed in more carefully, and Timothy slipped in last, silent as always.

Rudy sat on the closed toilet lid, supervising, his mind finally settling.

Maybe Sobek was just a guy. A quiet, intense, unfairly attractive guy who’d been nice enough to return Timothy twice and hadn’t run screaming when faced with Rudy’s chaotic household. That was probably all there was to it.

And maybe - just maybe - Rudy would see him again. The man was renting next door for a few more weeks, after all. Surely Timothy would find his way back to that pond at least once more.

Not that you want him to wander off, Rudy reminded himself. You want him to stay in the yard like you’ve asked him to seventeen thousand times.

But if Timothy did wander...well, at least Rudy knew his current, and very temporary, neighbor would bring him back.

Chapter Five

“What do you know about shifter children who have been orphaned?”

Sobek barely made it through his cabin door before yanking out his phone and stabbing at the Paulie app icon. The screen flared to life with its usual cheerful graphic that seemed to change every week. This time, it was a cartoon lightning bolt wearing sunglasses. Paulie’s voice emerged, respectful as always, but Sobek always got the impression the app was laughing at him.

“Greetings, Sobek, Lord of the Crocodiles and the Mighty Waters. Many hundreds of shifter children have been orphaned over the ages. Were you thinking of any one specific?”

“I’m in a rural area in Louisiana in the United States. I have come across three children in a shared household. A wolf pup, male, approximately five years old, a panther cub, female, approximately four to five years old, and a crocodile hatchling, male, also around four.”

Sobek paced the length of the cabin’s small living room, his free hand clenching and unclenching. “All three children are displaying early manifestations of their shifter traits despite being far too young for such abilities to present, and there is no sign of any shifter parents in the area.”

“Early manifestation of abilities is generally only found in shifter children who have been experimented on in some way or subject to the interference of someone like the dark elves, for example. The Cloverleah pack took in a large group of those children a few years ago, however, they had been found in the Underworld. Finding children with similar abilities in rural America is definitely unusual and unlikely to be a coincidence. Give me a moment to check out records relating to that specific area.”

The phone screen shifted to show a loading animation. Sobek continued pacing, his crocodile side churning beneath his skin. His mate had three orphaned shifter children, and Rudy had absolutely no idea what they were. The man had no concept of the paranormal world at all, which meant he’d been raising them completely blind to their needs, their natures, their…

“It appears there are some gaps in our knowledge banks, which will be addressed. The only pack the wolf pup could’ve originated from is the Cascade Mountain Pack in Oregon. That pack was attacked a few years ago, leaving only three survivors. However they were all older wolves who relocated to Canada, so I can’t see how your wolf child could have come from there. The only other alternative is that the parents were lone wolves, not part of a pack, and that somehow the parents were killed by hunters in their animal form. But that would require further study. I can pass on your request to Coda if you want more information there. A full name and date of birth would help make the search more specific.”

Sobek’s jaw tightened. Jack told Rudy he saw something happen to his parents. So no matter what, he was looking at having witnessed his parents being shot as wolves, or he’d managed to escape from a massacre…or was carted off…The possibilities were horribly endless, and none of them spoke well of Jack’s short life history.

“The panther cub - this one’s even trickier because panthers are more solitary, but I’ve got a female black panther shifter, who was killed three years ago in a car accident outside of Baton Rouge. She was a single mother, with no known relatives but a child’s body was never recovered from the scene, and it was assumed by the authorities that the child had been left with relatives sometime prior to the accident.”

Or Rose had been in the car and somehow crawled out. Either way, she’d ended up behind a gas station dumpster where a human with a good heart found her.

“As for the crocodile hatchling - I can understand why you’d be interested in this one, because of the rarity of them as a shifter type. The only known crocodile shifter family was one that lived in Florida quite some years ago. All four adult members of the small group were killed by hunters thirteen months ago, near the Florida-Alabama border. There was no mention of a hatchling, but crocodile shifters guard their young obsessively, so if there was a child, he would have been hidden immediately when danger appeared.”

“Obviously they hid him well.” Too well. But that still didn’t explain how Timothy made it to Louisiana, found that pond, and…Was he abducted, too, and then what? Just dumped when scales appeared because someone was afraid of having to pay doctor’s bills, or someone thought he was possessed by the devil or something?

Sobek stopped pacing. He’d rented this cabin specifically because of that pond. It was deep enough for a full-grown crocodile to submerge comfortably, surrounded by enough vegetation to provide privacy. He’d chosen it for that reason, and somehow Timothy had found it. That was too much of a coincidence to actually be one.

“So here’s the summary: three orphaned shifter children, all from families that were completely wiped out. No living relatives on record, no packs or prides looking for them. These kids have no one.”

“They have a Rudy,” Sobek said, still distracted, trying to work out the logistics.

“Sorry, they have a who?” It wasn’t often that Sobek had heard Paulie sound surprised, but he clearly was now.

“Rudy. My mate.” The words came out rougher than Sobek intended. “The human who found all three of those children I saw, and who has been raising them ever since.”

A long pause. Then Paulie’s voice came back, now openly delighted.

“Congratulations. You found your mate. I need to update our records…”