A Generation of Vipers (Shifter Shield Book 2) by Margo Bond Collins

Chapter 1
    "Looks like quadruplets."
    My eyes widened.
    Quadruplets. Four shapeshifter babies?
    Three months ago, I didn't know there were any other shapeshifters in the world. For all I knew, I was some aberration, a weird-science experiment gone wrong and abandoned in the West Texas desert, where I was found by a herpetologist on a research trip.
    He thought he'd found a new breed of snake, something akin to a cobra, but like nothing he'd seen before.
    That he was willing to take me in and make me part of his family once he realized that I was a snake-shifter is, I think, a testament to how kind he and my mother are. The fact that they were able to train me up into a decent human being (at least, I think so) is, as far as I'm concerned, proof that nurture can overcome nature.
    That's what I was trying to remind myself of as I stared at the sonogram as the technician hovered it over Sally Vanderhorn's belly, circling around and around.
    "Are you sure?" I asked the technician, a young woman named Jamie who was also, I had recently learned, some sort of werecat.
    "Absolutely positive." Jamie pointed at the screen. "Look right there, and there. You can see the two human babies' heartbeats. But look over here"—her finger traced what I had been fairly sure was a streak on the screen, not part of the image at all—"and you can see the lamia vertebrae."
    We had learned early on not to say "snake" or "serpent" or any word like it with this particular group of pregnant women. They were all traumatized—victims of kidnap and rape who had decided, for one reason or another, to carry their pregnancies to term.
    They had been victimized and impregnated by the human-form son of another weresnake—a lamia, like me in form, if not in character—who had been trying to re-create her race after they had been all but wiped out by the shifter community.
    That community had decided to accept me, but only conditionally, and only because some of their most prominent members had spoken up on my behalf.
    Dr. Kade Nevala, one of those prominent members, a weremongoose, and the man I was currently dating, walked into the room and spoke to Sally. "How are you feeling today?"
    Like most women, Sally all but melted in the face of Kade's charm. "I'm doing okay, Dr. Nevala."
    Jamie showed him what she had seen on the sonogram, and he nodded, following along and discussing things like diet and exercise with Sally. I tried not to be distracted by his presence, but the sheer heat rolling off of him, spiced as it was with that slightly dangerous scent he carried, could turn my knees weak if I let it. The memory of the way he had held me that morning before we got out of bed to start our day was almost enough to wipe out my anxiety over the information Jamie had shared.
    Quadruplets.
    And Sally was one of five women who had opted not to terminate her pregnancy, some for health reasons, others for reasons of personal belief.
    None of them wanted to keep the babies.
    If they are all carrying multiples, we could end up with …
    I did some quick math.
    At the very least, there were going to be eight babies with lamia heritage.
    I was in so much trouble.
    Thank goodness Marta, the furthest along in her pregnancy, was carrying only one. We would have a little time after she delivered to get used to having a baby around—and maybe even a baby shifter.
     
    * * *
     
    "Don't panic," Kade said that evening as he stirred a pot of his homemade spaghetti sauce. "It's not like you're bringing them home to live in your house. We're going to set up a group home for them, with a live-in staff. You're their counselor, Lindi, not their mother."
    I poured a glass of Chianti and settled in on a barstool at the island in the middle of his large kitchen. "That's the thing. I'm not sure a group home is the right way to go with these kids."
    "You signed off on it when we came up with the idea." He narrowed his eyes at me and tasted the sauce, then added something to it. "Janice