Page 44 of Bad Blood Panther

Cindi.

Memories flashed into Xander’s mind, blood and rage and flat-out homicidal insanity.

Attack! Hurt, bite, claw…

Fuck.

Xander growled louder, and the world whirled like a kaleidoscope. His hands flexed, claws coming out and receding over and over. A snarl ripped out of him.

“Xander.” Flynn’s voice wasn’t loud, but his alpha dominance rolled out over the clearing. “Don’t Change.”

It helped. Xander forced his cat back, swallowing hard. Don’t kill her. Don’t kill her. Jenny would be upset.

He focused on the guy getting out of the driver’s side. Big. Panther-y looking. Somebody Xander had met, but his brain was too fragmented to pull out a name, assuming he’d ever cared enough to learn it.

Cindi’s new fuck-toy? Or just some muscle?

Cindi shook her hair back and took in the clearing. Her gaze lingered on the cabin. “Well, now,” she said. “This isn’t quite as low-rent as I thought it would be.”

“Nobody here gives a kangaroo’s ass what you think, Cindi.” Xander’s voice was still gravelly, one step from panther, but at least he could make words.

She gazed around at the hostile faces of his crew. “Then why are they looking at me like that?”

“I told them all about you,” Xander said. “Probably they’re deciding whether to rip you into little tiny pieces, or if they should let me do it.”

Cindi’s eyes narrowed. The muscle shifted his weight, his hand sneaking to the small of his back. Probably kept a piece back there.

As if that would save him, if the Bad Bloods decided to take him down.

Xander sighed. “What the fuck do you want?”

She looked around, then drawled in that sweet-as-honey voice of hers, “I’m looking for Jenny, of course.”

Oh, hell no. If she thought she and this goon were enough firepower to take Jenny back if she didn’t want to go, she had another think coming. “Leave Jenny alone.”

“Happy to,” Cindi said, her voice hard. “But she left something important behind when she ran away from Broken Hill, and I just thought I’d bring it along.”

Xander frowned. Broken Hill was over a day’s drive from Nashville. No way she was just stopping by on her way somewhere.

“What is it?” But his hackles were rising again, prickles running up and down his spine.

He somehow knew what was in that truck was going to change everything.

The muscle opened the back door of the truck and reached inside. After a moment, he lifted out a small boy, maybe two years old, with unruly dark hair and a smudge of something brown and sticky next to his mouth. He set him on the ground.

The boy scowled, clutching a little stuffed animal in his arms. “Don’t like twuck. Want mama.”

Xander felt like his mind was turning inside-out. “That’s—Jenny has a son?”

“Oh, she didn’t tell you? Well, isn’t she a secretive little bitch.” Cindi tapped her finger on her cheek, as if thinking. “Or maybe she was just planning on shacking up here and never coming back for him.”

“That’s not true.” Jenny’s voice rang out from behind Xander.

“Oh, there you are,” Cindi said. “How is everything here in trailer park heaven? Did we wake you from your drunken stupor?”

“Mama!” The kid’s face lit up, and he made a beeline for Jenny. Cindi grabbed the strap of his little overalls, and hauled him back. The stuffed duck fell in the mud.

Jenny strode forward, shouldering past Xander. “Get your hands off my son,” she snarled.