by Haley Ryan
The first time, he had me pinned and helpless within four seconds flat. He growled at me a little and told me to try again.
I was better prepared the second time and lasted almost thirty seconds before he simulated biting me in half, which I figured was probably going to leave an impressive set of bruises.
It was the third time that everything went sideways.
I’d been doing pretty well when Ryker’s tail caught me in midair and smacked me to the ground. Instead of letting me up, he pounced, pinning me between his claws and a rock and bearing down. He was heavy and strong, and though he was being careful, I let out a squeal of panic as he more or less squeezed the breath right out of me.
Until suddenly, he wasn’t on top of me anymore. He was all the way across the clearing, struggling to his feet, facing a terrifying apparition I’d neither seen nor imagined before.
It was man-height and wreathed in lightning. Power crackled off its wings, leaping towards the sky and back again as it let out a scream that echoed off the mountains.
Between the flares of crackling electrical energy, I could make out the shape of a man—or rather a manlike creature who stood upright on the powerful hind legs of a lion. Sheathed in black fur, it stood at least eight feet tall, and its head seemed nearly human. Pale, hard-edged features stood out from beneath a mane-like crest of raven-dark feathers, while its eyes shone like exploding stars—so brightly I almost couldn’t look. Curved claws like silver scimitars tipped its fingers, each claw nearly six inches long, needle-sharp, and razor-edged.
And it seemed ready to murder my brother.
Fear slammed into me—fear for Ryker. Whatever this thing was, power radiated off him so brightly, so clearly, it could have been a beacon shouting for every magical creature within a hundred miles to stand up and take notice.
Ryker’s wings flared, and he roared in fury, but the roar cut off almost as soon as it began. Without warning, he dropped to the ground and bent his head, his eyes flaring wide with shock.
“Kira!”
“Do you want me to go for help?”
“Damn it, Kira, what kind of shifter is he?”
I blinked a few times. Who?
I drew in a deep lungful of air, and it brought with it the unmistakable scent of chocolate, cedar, and storm.
Draven.
The creature was Draven.
He hadn’t been there when we started training, but he must have arrived midway through.
“He’s half gryphon shifter,” I told Ryker, careful to keep my mental voice calm and level, unwilling to risk a repeat of the previous incident. “But he’s never done anything like this before. What’s wrong with him?”
“I need you to shift. Dress as fast as you can. Talk to him. Make sure he knows you’re okay.”
My hands shaking, I did as Ryker asked, while the terrifying meld of gryphon and human stalked my brother around the clearing, lightning continuing to flare wildly as clouds began to gather overhead.
The moment I scrambled into my jacket, I raced across the intervening space and threw myself in Draven’s path, directly between him and Ryker.
I almost couldn’t see Draven in his face—the eyes were strange and slit-pupilled, with eagle-like intensity, while his silvery skin screamed fae.
“Draven. Please don’t do this. I don’t know what’s wrong, but you don’t want to hurt Ryker. Or me. Whatever happened, we can fix it.”
Those unnerving eyes fixed on me, and as they locked in on mine, the storm itself seemed to relocate and take up residence inside my head.
Thunder reverberated through my skull, setting up a pounding that threatened to split my head in two.
One enormous hand raised towards my face.
I willed myself to stillness as Draven turned his hand and stroked my cheek with the backs of his deadly silver claws.
“Kira,” he whispered, and the sound rasped against my nerves, sending a shiver down my spine. That voice could never have come from a human chest.
“I’m fine,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “I’m not hurt. Ryker would never hurt me. We were training, and you know I have to train.”
His hand turned to cup my cheek, so gently, I never felt the scrape of his claws.
“I can’t…”
I felt him falter, so I wrapped my hand around his wrist.
“Can’t let… anyone… hurt you.”
“I’m safe, Draven.”
His eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed.
Thirteen
The moment he collapsed, the fur and the feathers melted away. His wings receded into his shoulders, leaving a naked and unconscious Draven lying on the cold, muddy ground.
Face flaming, I yanked off my coat and threw it over him.
Ryker crept up beside me and lowered his massive head over my shoulder.
“Kira, you should stay back. I don’t know what he’ll remember when he wakes up, but I don’t want you within reach.”
“Just cut it out, would you?” I snapped, adrenaline still coursing through me as I knelt next to Draven. “He’s not going to hurt me. We need to get him out of here.”
“I can’t carry him until he wakes up and agrees to let me.”
“What if he doesn’t wake up?”
“He will. He’s suffering from magic depletion. He was radiating like a supernova just now, so it’ll take a few minutes for him to recover.”
I’d never imagined Draven had that much magic. I’d seen him fight, but never in that form, and never with so much power.
“Why didn’t you warn us he was a gryphon?”
“What was there to warn you about?” I reached out and picked up Draven’s hand—it was cold, but his pulse seemed strong. “I’ve never seen this form before. As far as I knew, his wings were the only thing he got from his mother.”
I’d wondered, certainly, but he’d never said anything, and I’d never been bold enough to ask.
“Kira, he’s obviously attached to you.”
If only it were true. “You don’t know that,” I argued, as my blush intensified. “We’re friends, but he’s never said anything about feelings beyond that.”
“Maybe not in words, but he just showed exactly how he feels. At least for anyone who knows what he is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Kira, gryphons don’t do casual attachments. They mate for life, and they are fiercely protective of their mates. Draven knows me. He knows I wasn’t going to hurt you, which means this was an instinctual response. One that he had only the barest control over. He may not have a full gryphon form, but when he saw you in danger, it was the gryphon side that took over.”
“That’s impossible.” My lips, my face, suddenly felt frozen. Could Ryker be telling the truth? And if he was… “Why wouldn’t he have told me?”
“He’s not a fool, Kira. And he’s intensely honorable, for a fae. He knows there can never be anything serious between you. So even if he believed that you felt the same, he wouldn’t have encouraged you to hope. He’s probably been in denial that this was even happening.”
Denial seemed like the right response to all of this.
Most of this. If Draven genuinely had feelings like that for me, I had no desire to deny them.
“Why do you say this can’t work?” I said fiercely. “If we both care about each other?”
“He’s the son of the fae king,” Ryker said sternly. “You’re the heir to the dragon throne. Both of you have responsibilities. Secrets. The risks of allowing Dathair a foothold in our court are too great.”
I didn’t answer. I had no idea what to say to that.
Instead I waited silently for Draven to show any sign that he was recovering, my eyes tracing his scars while I knelt there in the mud.
He had so many, and that was only on the parts of him that I could see. A life of fighting for your place would do that, and his fight for acceptance would have left others—deeper scars that hid where
no prying eyes could reach.
Was I doomed to become just another one of his scars?
One more person who rejected him as not quite good enough?
If Ryker was correct, it was already too late for me to disappear from Draven’s life with no consequences. And I wouldn’t agree to that anyway, no matter what my family had to say about it. I never wanted to be the kind of person who would abandon a friend, and if that was what being a dragon princess required, I didn’t want any part of it.
Draven’s hand jerked in mine, and his gray eyes opened. He looked at me, then at Ryker, then seemed to register that he was covered by nothing except my coat.
“Something bad happened,” he said flatly.
“Let’s just call it something… unexpected.” I let go of his hand. “Do you feel up to letting Ryker take us back to the enclave?”
He lifted the hand I’d just dropped and stared at it oddly, flexing his fingers as though he could find an answer there. “Have him take you first,” he said, not meeting my eyes again. “He can bring me back some clothes.”
Whatever he’d remembered, it was pushing him away from me again, and while I ached to ask him for the truth, what he probably needed now was space.
Also clothes. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to have a serious conversation with me right now either.
“All right. I’ll send him straight back. We’ll talk later?”
But Draven wasn’t looking at me. Or speaking. His face had gone cold and distant.
And I wasn’t sure I knew how to break through the shield I could see him building for himself.
So I let Ryker fly me back to the enclave. I showered quickly, then hung out in my room, resolved to give Draven the space he needed.
My resolve didn’t last past dinner time. I ended up in front of his door, pounding on it and calling his name.
The jerk didn’t answer.
I was too frustrated to just sit in my room, so I “borrowed” one of the golf carts the Lodge staff used to get around and headed for Ryker’s house with my swimsuit. My brothers weren’t answering their phones, but he’d offered to let me use his hot tub anytime I wanted, and I was sore and cranky enough to take him up on it. Hopefully, it would help my lousy mood.
I didn’t even bother to knock, just walked in and headed for the kitchen.
“Ryker?”
“In here.”
I followed the sound of his voice to the den, where my mouth fell open in surprise—and no small amount of hurt.
Draven was there, along with Declan, and the three of them had obviously been having a serious conversation.
I wasn’t sure when my brothers and Draven had gotten this close with each other. If anything, I would have thought today might have driven a wedge between them, but I could tell that their guards were down. There was tension in the room, but no hostility.
“This is the part where you all assure me that you weren’t discussing me or my life behind my back.”
Declan was the only one who would look at me. “I don’t think you would believe us if we denied it.”
Hah. Smart guy, Declan.
“Nope. Not to sound self-absorbed, but I’m pretty much the only thing you three have in common. Now, are you going to tell me the truth about this little conference? Or do you intend to keep on making decisions without consulting me and claim it’s for my own good?”
Silence.
“Yeah. Okay then. Suit yourselves.” I swallowed my rage and hurt, but let the dragon show through my eyes. “Just don’t ever fool yourselves into believing that you know what’s best for me. Or that I’ll tamely go along with whatever plans you have the hubris to make. I won’t live that way again.”
I made it halfway back out to the golf cart before I decided I was too mature to stomp off in a huff. I also really didn’t want to miss my soak in the hot tub, so I changed into my suit and slipped out the back door, confident that they probably wouldn’t even notice I was still in the house.
Ryker’s tub sat on his back deck, where you could look up and see stars glimmering through the trees and be surrounded by the scent of pine. I flipped off the cover and turned on the jets before easing into the hot water, letting out an involuntary groan as it hit my sore muscles.
According to my brothers, dragons loved heat, and almost every house in the enclave boasted a hot tub of its own. It was a luxury I could certainly see myself getting used to—I could feel my dragon begin to purr with happiness as the steam rose around me.
Closing my eyes, I tried to clear my head of the day’s worries and just relax, but there were too many questions competing for my attention. Every day I spent here seemed to bring more questions, but never any answers.
Would there ever be a moment where I could stand firm and know that this place, this time, this people, were exactly where I belonged? Or was I forever doomed to feel like I was stuck on the outside, never quite fitting in with anyone—either human or Idrian?
Homesickness struck me out of nowhere, a longing for familiarity that made me gasp with the pain of it. I wanted my house, my store, my bed. My Chicken and Waffles, my favorite mugs, the sound of the bell over my door, and the homey urban bustle of Twenty-third Street. I wanted to eat my favorite barbecue and let Seamus ruffle my hair while I sipped on ginger ale and smuggled books in my pockets.
But most of all, I wanted Aunt Morgan. I wanted the woman who’d raised me and loved me to show up and say that it had all been a mistake. That she would never betray me, and we could go back to being our own cozy little family of two.
I didn’t cry—I didn’t have the energy. I just sat there with my eyes closed and breathed in the steam, wanting home and realizing that it had somehow grown to include so many different pieces, it might never again exist in just one place.
When I opened my eyes again, someone was standing beside the tub.
I sank down into the water with a little squeak and a splash right before I realized who it was.
“I’m sorry if I startled you.”
I wrapped my arms around my chest, suddenly a little embarrassed for Draven to see me in my swimsuit.
“I didn’t know you were out here,” he continued, beginning to turn away.
That’s when I noticed he was wearing nothing but swim trunks and had a towel slung over his shoulder.
“I bet my brothers didn’t either,” I managed to say. “But don’t run off on my account. There’s enough room for two.”
Hah. What was I saying? I was already having difficulty keeping my heart rate under control.
“Kira…”
“You have two choices,” I said, speaking firmly to disguise the tremor in my voice. “Talk to me now, or talk to me later.”
“I’m not sure I should.” Maybe he wasn’t sure, but he also didn’t walk away. Instead, he took the towel off his shoulder and laid it across the hot tub cover. “Your brothers believe I should leave the enclave as soon as possible, and I’m not sure I disagree with them.”
I swallowed a stab of betrayal, along with a surge of longing as he sat on the edge of the tub. The lights from beneath the water briefly illuminated the perfectly sculpted planes of his chest before he ruined the view by sliding silently into the water.
“Why do you feel like you need to go?”
“Because I don’t understand what happened today,” he told me bluntly, the faint silver glow of his eyes shining through the steam. “I’ve never heard of any gryphon taking that form, and it’s never happened to me before. I’ve always believed the wings to be all I would ever have. If Ryker is correct…” He didn’t finish the statement.
“Would it be so terrible?” I blurted out, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
“Yes,” he said simply, stabbing me in the heart with that single word. “And no. Kira, it’s not an easy thing to explain.”
“You haven’t tried.”
Our gazes held—silver and amber—and as the tension between us rose, I couldn’t imagine continui
ng to deny what I felt.
He was beautiful, and I wanted him. I wanted to touch, to taste, to feel.
But it wasn’t just physical desire—I wanted him. All of him. All of his hard-edged, thorny complexity and quiet compassion. To sink into his strength and his warmth and let him borrow mine. To stand beside him and help shoulder the pain I saw in his eyes. I wanted to be able to tell him all the truth I held inside and receive truth back in return.
But no matter how difficult he claimed it would be to walk away from me, it seemed that he was going to do it anyway.
“It’s too dangerous for you,” was his only reply, which roused both my anger and the dragon’s.
“Why don’t I get to decide that?” I let him hear my disappointment. The dragon was just miffed that he still didn’t think I could take care of myself. “Why won’t you at least tell me the truth? Trust me enough to let me determine what I can and can’t handle.”
“I trust you more than I trust myself,” was his answer, stark as a winter’s day.
I had no response to that.
But just when I thought he was going to shut me out entirely, he sighed and closed his eyes, leaning back against the edge of the tub as water dripped slowly from his hair down across his face.
“I’ve always believed that my mother gave me little other than wings and an everlasting distrust of the fae. But now it seems I’m far more gryphon than fae, and my ignorance could be disastrous for more than just me.”
“How so?”
“I could have killed Ryker today.”
“That’s crazy, Draven. He’s fifty times your size. There’s no way you could have—”
“He agrees.”
That shut me up. It would take a lot for my competitive brother to admit such a thing, and to an emissary of the fae no less.
“I have my mother’s power over storms, her shifter strength, and my father’s magic. Usually, those attributes are diluted in half-bloods, but not in me.”
I swallowed the sudden taste of fear. Not for me, but for him. If the fae ever found out, he would be viewed as an immediate threat. Queen Elayara would make it a priority to ensure that he never drew another breath.