Addie’s gasp was sharp. “Holy shit. Why?”
“Because a male doesn’t want the offspring of another male to challenge him when that offspring grows up. He wants his own cubs to take over. My mother fought him tooth and nail—literally—to protect me. The male was a wolf, and though my mother wasn’t as dominant, she was a tiger, the last of her line. I helped fight him off, already pretty strong. We couldn’t get rid of him completely, though. It wasn’t as acceptable for a female to deny a mate-claim then as it is now, and he was dominant to her.” Kendrick let out a resigned breath. “I know now that if he hadn’t forced the mate-claim, another Shifter would have. The Lupine got a few cubs on my mother, but they all turned wolf, not tiger. The offspring of two different Shifter species can go either way. My mom had no other tigers. Just me.”
Addie pictured him, a small cub like Brett or Zane, scared and bewildered after his beloved father died. He’d have hated and feared his mother’s new mate but stayed with his mom to make sure she was all right.
Kendrick went on. “I learned then that I couldn’t do everything all by myself. I tried to fight my stepfather, tried to kill him, but I was one-third his size, so did little damage.” His lips twitched as though he were amused at his foolish, younger self. “He did plenty of damage to me, though. My mother couldn’t stop him anymore—she was usually pregnant, and each time she carried a cub it made her weaker. So I learned to form groups around me—we could pool our strengths to make things happen.” He paused. “I finally did kill him.”
Addie’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
“With some help. Dimitri’s father had come from Russia and his mother was a red wolf from the North American wilderness. Dimitri was pretty formidable, even before his Transition. He helped me, as did a few others, who are gone now. We cornered my stepfather, fought him, killed him. My clan leader didn’t punish me for it, because it was a legitimate kill—a son challenging his father’s place in the hierarchy. In those days, fights for dominance were to the death. I was sixteen.”
His look was empty, not defiant, not triumphant. He should not have had to face something like that so young. Addie squeezed his thigh. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It was necessary.” Kendrick’s rumble was low, and he rested his hand on hers, firm strength. “My mother, worn out, passed bringing in my youngest half brother. I took care of him, as I did the others.”
Addie tried to imagine Kendrick with brothers and sisters and couldn’t. He seemed so alone. “Where are they now?” she said.
“Two were killed by hunters,” Kendrick said, staring into the darkness beyond the porch. “The other three were rounded up and Collared years ago. They live in a Shiftertown in Oregon. Trying to contact them would be dangerous—for them more than for me—so I let them go. They weren’t too fond of me anyway. Apparently, I can be a hard-ass.”
“No,” Addie said with a straight face. “Never.”
Kendrick glanced at her, his lips relaxing into a half smile. “Tigers are supposed to be loners. But I found out early on that I never could be.”
And so he’d formed his own version of Shiftertown, outside the law, where he could gather everyone he cared about and protect them. Addie recognized that he wasn’t simply a man reaching out to friends—he had a fanatic need to protect them, to keep the world from harming them.
Addie touched his face with light fingertips, as his eyes burned dark in the shadows. “You are an amazing man,” she whispered, then rose against him and kissed his lips.