“A request that should never come from an eleven-year-old anything. And it better not come from you again.”
Kyle sighed dramatically, as he liked to do, and reminded Toni, yet again, that, “I’m an artist, Antonella.” And what always annoyed Toni about these conversations with Kyle was his tone. Since he’d been four, he always sounded like a fifty-year-old snob explaining the difference between the rich and the poor to a struggling street vendor. A lot of people wondered how such a young boy could sound so mature and intelligently rude. They often assumed he was just mimicking his parents. But the truth was . . . he’d developed that tone all on his own. Like his skills as a sculptor, his rude, condescending attitude seemed to be God-given. “I don’t have time for these ridiculous rules that average people like you have about what you can and cannot ask.”
“So much rudeness in only a couple of sentences,” Toni observed.
“It’s not my fault you don’t understand my world.”
“I don’t understand?”
Was Kyle kidding? Antonella Jean-Louis Parker didn’t understand the artistic mind? The brilliant mind? Toni’s entire life was about understanding the brilliant mind. And not for some PhD paper she was writing or for an important article in Scientific American. Toni had to understand the brilliant mind because that was her life. That had been her life for more years than she was willing to count.
Because this was her family. Not just these four kids. Toni had six other siblings, ten all together. Her parents just kept breeding. Like rabbits. Or, actually, like the jackals they were. Because jackals paired for life and weren’t distracted by pack issues, they bred whenever they wanted to. And Toni’s parents had done just that, their latest offspring being Zia and her twin sister, both born when their mother was nearly fifty.
And although their father, Paul Parker, was, as Kyle so eloquently put it, “average,” their mother, Jackie, was not. In fact, Jacqueline Jean-Louis was a world-renowned violinist. She’d performed on some of the largest stages in the world to sold-out audiences, performed in front of royalty, and had several best-selling CDs and DVDs that showed the world her skill. Yet Jackie was not only a great violinist, she’d been a prodigy. A child so talented at such a young age that she was considered brilliant.
Now to have one prodigy in a family is amazing. Most families would never, no matter how long their bloodline stretched, have a prodigy. And yet . . . somehow Toni’s parents had managed to have ten prodigies out of their eleven children. Ten. In one family. True, a family of jackal shifters; but shifters were no different from full-humans when it came to how many prodigies would normally occur in one family line.
The thing about prodigies, though, was that they weren’t simply brilliant. There were lots of smart, super smart, even geniuses in the world. What set prodigies apart from everyone else was their commitment. Her mother’s skill with a violin would have meant nothing if she didn’t spend several hours every day, since the age of three, practicing her instrument. Her sister Oriana’s genetics would have meant nothing if she didn’t routinely go to her ballet classes every morning and evening, six days a week, while practicing on her own, seven days a week. All real prodigies had the drive.
Lord, the drive. Toni could imagine how some people would get sick of all the family support needed to get one prodigy wherever they wanted to go. But Toni? Well, Toni had to deal with ten. Now, true, the twins Zia and Zoe didn’t really have that drive yet. At this stage they were just naturally gifted. But little Denny, who was trying to work his way onto her lap with Zia, although only five, had already found his drive. He worked for hours before kindergarten and hours after on his paintings. Paintings that resembled actual photographs they were so painstakingly accurate. Kyle, of course, didn’t call that “art.” Instead he said, “Denny is still in the discovery stage where he copies everything. Although I’m confident if he gets out of that stage in the next year or two . . . he has quite the potential.” For Kyle that was like calling his brother Leonardo da Vinci. Of course asking a five-year-old to quickly move through his “discovery stage” didn’t seem odd to the Jean-Louis Parker kids. If you wanted to hang with them, you had to have the drive and the talent.
Tragically, Toni, the eldest, didn’t have either. More than once, she’d told her mother, “I’m not really your child, am I? Just admit it.” To which her mother would always respond, “You have my eyes.”
“But maybe Dad isn’t—”
“You have his nose, his feet, and his mother’s curly hair. Just suck it up already, baby. You’re a Jean-Louis Parker whether you want to be or not.”
So Toni had finally resigned herself to being the “average one” among a family of prodigies. But they were also jackals, and older siblings often helped their parents raise the younger ones. It was also true, though, that most siblings Toni’s age would have moved on to their own families by now. Had their own pups. But with her mother still breeding up until the twins—when finally the wonder that is flippin’ menopause kicked in—and the rest of the kids being focused on their own careers—Toni just didn’t feel right about going off on her own. Her family needed her. As the only one without any real skill, she was the only one who could manage all of them at one time. She had no other goal but to ensure that the rest of them reached their potential—and the age of eighteen—without going to prison.
So Toni put up with Kyle’s snobbishness, Oriana’s brattiness, Cherise’s borderline agoraphobia, Freddy’s debilitating panic attacks and issues with setting things on fire and his thievery . . . on and on it went. Her siblings all had issues, and Toni took it upon herself to keep them as reasonably human as possible. It wasn’t easy. Although her siblings would never lower themselves by bumping off their competition—since they didn’t consider anyone better than they were or a real threat—Toni did worry that some of them would bump someone off who got in their way. Who held them back. Once, some kid thought it would be funny to give nine-year-old Troy, the mathematician, the wrong time for an important math competition. He thought it was even funnier when a hysterically crying Troy tracked him down the next day to confront him. Sure. The crying . . . real funny. Except Troy hadn’t been crying out of sadness or because he’d been hurt by the kid’s actions. He’d been crying out of frustration. The emotion few in Toni’s family knew how to deal with in a normal, rational way. So, those tears were no longer funny when Troy battered that kid into the ground with his backpack filled to nearly overflowing with all his hardcover math books.
Even worse for Toni, because Troy was an important prodigy, he was barely given a slap on the wrist. Not even a recommendation to go into therapy, probably because at the time, he’d been working on some important equation that his school wanted him to solve so they could brag about it in the media, and they didn’t want therapy appointments getting in the way of his busy schedule. So making sure he understood beating someone out of frustration was not a good option was down to Toni. And that responsibility was something she took very seriously when it came to her siblings. Someone had to. God knew, if she didn’t take it seriously, Kyle would wander around the streets asking random strangers for naked sketch time.
“I just don’t see the problem, Toni. So what if I asked Novikov—”
“Shut up, Kyle.”
“Yes, but—”
“Shut. It.”
“This is about my art!” Kyle raged. “Don’t you understand—”
Toni, not wanting to hear this particular speech again—Kyle had lots of speeches for such a young boy—reached for the back of Kyle’s neck, but he scrambled over Oriana and into the seat on the other side of her.
“I’ll let it go,” he quickly promised. “I’ll let it go.”
Releasing a breath, Toni focused on the bobcat receptionist. “Could you let Mr. Van Holtz know the Jean-Louis Parkers are here?”
“Do you have an appointment?” the cat asked, not even looking away from his computer to give her eye contact.
??
?Yes. Remember? I was just here twenty minutes ago? Having the same conversation with you?”
The bobcat looked at her, shrugged. “And?”
Biting back an annoyed yip, Toni snapped, “As I said, we have an appointment.”
“And your name?”
This was why she hated the smaller cats. Lions and tigers could be annoying but nothing like the little ones. “Antonella Jean-Louis Parker.”
“Don’t you have anything shorter?”
“Just my fist,” she shot back. That’s when Oriana lowered her cell phone and said, “Dude, just get Ulrich before my sister rips your face off.”
The bobcat sighed and picked up the phone to call the wolf they’d come to see.
Oriana re-focused on her cell phone but said to Toni, “That wolf was cute.”
Toni blinked, confused. “What wolf? Ulrich?”
Rolling her eyes, Oriana replied, “No. The one you were talking to outside the skating rink. With the baseball cap.”
“Oh. Him. Yeah. He was cute.” But just a wolf. It wasn’t like wolves were something special or unusual. Their mother was best friends with fellow former-prodigy Irene Conridge Van Holtz. A brilliant scientist and full-human, Aunt Irene was mated to Niles Van Holtz. Alpha Male of the Van Holtz Pack. And because the Jean-Louis Parkers were as close to family as Irene had, that meant that they spent a lot of time around the wolves. A lot of time. Not that Toni minded. Uncle Van and his Pack were fun and most of the direct bloodline Van Holtzes were amazing chefs, which meant the Jean-Louis Parkers always ate well. But bringing more wolves into her existence was not something Toni felt was necessary at this stage in her life.
“Tall,” Oriana continued. “Nice shoulders.”
He’d been unnaturally wide in Toni’s estimation. Shoulders that wide with hips that narrow just didn’t seem right.
“Nice smile.”
All those teeth. Bright white teeth that he kept showing when he constantly smiled at her. Personally, she found his smile oddly threatening. As if every person he met was a potential meal.
Still, although Toni might not be susceptible to most males, she wasn’t blind, either. He was a handsome wolf, but not like the Van Holtz wolves, who always reminded her of European cover models. He was too big. Too wide. Too . . . American. All those muscles and dark brown hair that just reached his massive shoulders. Amber eyes and a flat, wide nose that only barely helped to make the constant smirk on his face a little less annoying.
“Plus,” Oriana went on, “he seemed to not mind your average looks and that uncontrollable mane of yours.”
Slowly Toni looked at her sister. “Thanks, Oriana.”
Her sister smiled without looking up from her phone. “You’re welcome.”
Toni seriously considered ripping that phone out of Oriana’s hand since she had yet to learn the meaning of sarcasm, but Ric Van Holtz walked into the lobby before she could bother.
“Hey, guys. Sorry I couldn’t really meet with you earlier. Last-minute meeting with investors.”
“No problem,” Toni assured him, handing Zia over to him as soon as he stretched out his arms. Ric was great with kids, no matter the breed or species, and he adored the Jean-Louis Parker pups.
“How did it go at the rink?” Ric asked, gently brushing his free hand over Zia’s hair as her head rested on his shoulder.
“Fine.”
“Except for that fight,” Oriana muttered.
Ric’s nose flared. It was a rather narrow nose, but it could flare quite dramatically when he was angry enough. “Did Novikov hurt you? Should I have him killed?”
“That seems extreme.” Toni cut a warning glare at her sister, but with the brat’s attention focused on her phone, there was no guarantee that she’d seen anything. “Mr. Novikov was just fine.”
“He wasn’t fighting with us,” Kyle clarified.
“Oh.” Ric quickly calmed down. “That was probably Reece Reed he was fighting then, since it’s the middle of the day and Reece seems to be the only one who continues to fight that idiot.”
“Novikov signed my shirt, just like you said he would.” Kyle held up the shirt for Ric to see.
“Good. I’m glad he did as I told him to.”
“Yeah,” Oriana said, “it went great until Kyle here asked to see him naked.”
Ric briefly closed his eyes. “Again, Kyle? Again?”
Horrified, Toni demanded, “Oh, my God, Kyle! Did you ask Ric to—”
“I will not be held back by society’s mores!”
“It’s not society’s mores we’re concerned with, Kyle,” Ric kindly explained. “It’s society’s creeps.”
“So you’re saying that Bo Novikov is—”
“No,” Ric said quickly and firmly. “That’s not what I mean. And although you might be safe with Novikov or with me, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is a safe bet. You have to be careful.”
Kyle motioned to Toni. “But that’s what I have her for. To protect me from society’s creeps.”
“Really? Is that what I’ve been reduced to?” Toni asked. “Your bodyguard? Is that my life? Is that going to be my life?”
“I wouldn’t worry about you having that job for long,” Oriana told her.
“Why?”
“How good could you be at protecting him with those stick legs of yours?”
Toni looked down at her legs, then quickly realized she was involved in a ridiculous conversation. Again.
“You know what,” Toni said, getting to her tiny stick legs. “As fascinating as this is, we have to go. We’ve got to make that flight.”
Ric blinked. “Make your flight?”
“Yeah. Nothing worse than trying to get this group on the same flight once we’ve missed our original flight. We’re going standard air.” Toni’s term for flights that catered to full-humans.
Yet when Toni looked up at Ric, she saw that he was watching her with a mix of humor and pity. “You haven’t talked to your mother, have you?” he asked.
Toni immediately began rubbing her forehead. “No. Why?”
“I think there might have been a change of plan.”
“No,” Toni said, shaking her head. “No. No change of plan. No wacky, last-minute ideas. No.” She was adamant about it. No!
Toni pulled her cell phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and took a quick look. No calls. From anyone. Her parents would have texted her, right? Called her? Something?
Unless . . .
Slowly Toni looked over at Oriana.
The younger female lowered her cell phone, gave one of her annoying smirks. “Oh. That’s right,” the brat said carefully. “I forgot I have a message for you from Mom.”
“Really? You forgot?”
“Don’t make this into a big deal,” her sister warned, sounding bored. “You know how Mom is.”
“Mom’s not really the issue here at the moment.”
“Look, it’s not my job to get messages back and forth between you and our mother.”
“If that’s true, then I guess you won’t be needing this.”
Toni snatched Oriana’s cell phone from her hand and threw it down the hall and into the wall. She took great satisfaction at the sound of something on the device breaking from the impact.
“Now go fetch, bitch!” Toni screamed at her sister.
“You are such a ridiculous child!” Oriana screamed back.
“And you’re a spoiled twat!”
Ric quickly stepped between them, facing Toni. “My car can take you to your mother.”
Panting, her fangs burrowing into her bottom lip as they grew from her gums, Toni nodded. “Fine.”
“Great. Great.” He turned and took Oriana’s arm, Zia still asleep on his shoulder. Fights between her siblings never really bothered her or her twin. “Let’s go get what’s left of your phone and I’ll call my driver.”
He led Oriana down the hall, giving Toni a few seconds to calm down.
“Wow,” the bobcat mutt
ered from his desk. “Your sister’s right. Your legs really are skinny.”
Toni briefly thought about swiping all the cat’s crap off his desk, but that wasn’t something she’d do to anyone who wasn’t one of her siblings. But that was the beauty of being one of the Jean-Louis Parker clan . . . sometimes you didn’t have to do anything at all, because there was a sibling there to take care of it for you.
“It must be hard,” Kyle mused to the bobcat. “One of the superior cats. Revered and adored throughout history as far back as the ancient Egyptians. And yet here you sit. At a desk. A common drone. Taking orders from lowly canines and bears. Do your ancestors call to you from the great beyond, hissing their disappointment to you? Do they cry out in despair at where you’ve ended up despite such a lofty bloodline? Or does your hatred spring from the feline misery of always being alone? Skulking along, wishing you had a mate or a pack or pride to call your own? But all you have is you . . . and your pathetic job as a drone? Does it break your feline heart to be so . . . average? So common? So . . . human?”
Toni cringed, which helped her not laugh.
And although she’d normally stop one of her brother’s ego-destroying rants long before he got to the “so human” part, this time, with this particular bobcat . . . she just couldn’t. Yet what she could do was get her baby brother out of here before he had to witness a bobcat male sobbing softly into his Starbucks coffee and egg salad sandwich lunch.
Because that’s what was coming. Her brother might have the hands of a true artist, but his brain . . . his brain was like that of a sadistic psychiatrist who liked to see if he could force his patients to gouge out their own eyes during therapy appointments.
Lifting Denny into her arms, Toni grabbed Kyle’s hand and pulled him out of the office. She’d wait for her sister and Ric down the hall.
“You going to yell at me?” Kyle asked her once they were away from the office and the bobcat’s sniffling was the only thing that could be heard by their keen jackal ears.
She smiled at her brother.