by Zoe Chant
His face was as pale as ashes as Annie gently slipped her thumb between his lips, opening his mouth.
Please, Beau. Please. I love you. I need you. Please, wake up.
Carefully, she placed the vial in the corner of his mouth, upending it and pouring the dark liquid inside down his throat. Unable to stop herself, she leaned over him once it was gone, placing a gentle kiss on his cold lips.
She’d wanted to do that long before she actually had. She had kept telling herself that she wouldn’t give in to her feelings for Beau – that would only lead to her getting hurt.
And now, she could barely stand the thought of living the rest of her life without him.
You’re my mate, Beau. I accepted our bond. You can’t leave me now.
Once again, she felt the golden glow of their connection wreathing her heart. Once again, she felt it calling out to the golden light within Beau – and this time, she felt it answered.
Beau!
Annie bit her lip, clenching her fists. This had happened before, she told herself – and that time, their connection had sputtered out.
She was determined not to let that happen again.
With all of her strength, she called out to him, reaching for his side of the mated bond.
A golden ribbon of light appeared before her – weak, barely visible, but there. She imagined herself catching it with her hands, twining it with her fingers, and pulling it forward toward herself, pressing it to her chest.
Please, Beau. I love you. Come back.
“Annie…”
For a moment, Annie didn’t dare to believe she’d really heard Beau saying her name. His voice was hoarse and cracked, but it was his.
Annie’s eyes flew open, her heart in her throat.
Beau was looking up at her, his dark brown eyes soft.
Her breath hitched.
Is this really happening?
In the next moment, Beau had reached up, twining his fingers through her hair.
“I heard you calling to me,” he said, voice still rasping in his throat, but sounding stronger now. “I don’t know where I went, but I heard your voice…”
Annie blinked away her tears, running a hand over Beau’s cheek. “You got shot,” she said, the words almost choking her. “You used your powers to save me. But you – you sacrificed yourself –”
Beau frowned, blinking, before his expression cleared. He swallowed.
“I remember now,” he said. “I’m sorry, Annie. If there’d been another way, I wouldn’t have –”
Annie shook her head, leaning down to silence him with a kiss.
No apologies. I know why you did it.
Somehow, Annie knew Beau could sense her thoughts as he returned the kiss. At least, until Landon cleared his throat quietly, and she pulled back, blushing.
But she didn’t really think Landon could blame her – and wasn’t he the one who’d told her to use the power of the mated bond to begin with?!
“Landon,” Beau said, struggling to sit up. “What’re you doing –”
Beau broke off as he took in the scene around him. Annie had been barely paying attention to any of it all this time – she’d been far too focused on Beau to care – but now, she had to admit, this was like something out of a dream.
A very, very strange dream.
“We heard the gunshot and figured something must’ve gone wrong,” Landon said, as Annie stared at a condor that was swooping at and keeping a collection of other birds – a pair of eagles, the peacock from earlier, a couple of swallows and what looked like a toucan – in one corner of the room.
Over by the stairs, a boar was growling at a lion, while a woman wearing an evening gown yelled at it to Calm down, Sidney, there’s no point in getting angry about it now.
There were a group of people – the ones who’d apparently not been able to escape and had resigned themselves to being caught – standing in handcuffs and surrounded by the black-clothed agents from earlier. One of the guests was shouting You’ll be hearing from my lawyers!! so perhaps they weren’t as resigned to having been caught red-handed in an illegal gambling den as it seemed.
But where –
“Rosalind,” Beau said, obviously having had the same thought as Annie. “Where did she go? Landon, she turns into a –”
“A phoenix,” Landon said, nodding. “We know.”
A phoenix?
Annie blinked. She should have realized it sooner – of course she was a phoenix, with her flaming wings and tail.
Oh, of course, she thought, rolling her eyes. Like that’s a normal thought to have!
But it still didn’t explain where she’d gone.
Or where Scott is either, Annie thought – though right now, she wasn’t certain just how much she cared about that, beyond not wanting Mr. Dearborn to suffer any more than he had already on Scott’s account.
As if in answer to her questions, there was a sudden burst of flame from one of the rooms adjoining the foyer, followed by a furious, otherworldly shriek and the sound of a – a horse?
The unicorn from before, Annie realized, shaking her head at the idea that this was just a relatively normal thought for her to have now. They must still be fighting –
“That was Declan,” Beau said, struggling to sit up. “I need to go help him –”
“Wait, Beau,” Annie said, holding his arm as he stood up. “You’re still injured. You can’t just –”
“Believe me, Annie, I feel fine,” he said, though he winced a little as he rolled his shoulder. “And I can’t just stand by and let everyone else do the work.”
“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t let anyone who’s just had dragonsbane in them go anywhere,” Landon spoke up. “But… griffin’s blood is a powerful healer. And to be honest, against a phoenix? I think even Declan will need some help, and it seems like everyone’s got their hands full here.”
“This is a time when we could really use Garrett,” sighed Beau, and, at Annie’s questioning look, explained, “Garrett’s a dragon. Even a phoenix’s flames wouldn’t bother him.”
Another surge of heat, followed by the angry screech of a bird, came from the room off the foyer.
“I promise I’ll be careful, Annie – and Declan and the others are here now. I’ll be all right.”
Despite his reassurances, Annie only reluctantly let him go. She had only just gotten him back, and she was still processing the fact that he’d woken up at all. To let him go again so soon –
Beau squeezed her hand, as if he’d read her concern in her face – or her heart.
But in the end, she knew Beau had to help his friends and colleagues. She knew that sitting back and letting other people take on the danger wasn’t something he could do.
He promised he’d be careful, Annie thought, as Beau stepped back from her, holding her gaze. He looked her in the eye as if to affirm the promise, and then he shifted.
Although Annie had already seen him do it once before, it took her breath away to watch it happen – the shimmer of his skin, the sudden spread of his massive wings. Watching him change from the man she loved into the fearsome mythical creature filled her with… pride.
My mate, Annie thought, her heart pounding in her chest as he gave her one last look, the love he had for her somehow clear even through the golden eyes of the eagle, before he spread his wings, lifting up off the marble floor of the foyer and heading toward the vast room Rosalind had fled to.
But he didn’t fly far. In the next moment, Rosalind’s fiery form swept back out into the foyer, her long tail trailing flames in her wake.
Annie gasped, feeling Landon’s hand on her shoulder as she scrambled to move out of her path.
But as it happened, there was no need – Rosalind’s flight was checked suddenly by Beau, rising up into the air, his wings spread wide, a furious screech leaving his beak.
Rosalind banked sharply, her wings curling, in the face of Beau’s much larger form. He might not have been on fire, but he was cle
arly undaunted by the flames and heat emanating from her body.
Letting out an enraged squark, Rosalind tried to turn, only to find Declan behind her in his unicorn form, golden horn slashing through the air and barring her way.
She might have been fast, but Beau was still able to outmaneuver her, curving his body in the air and extending his talons as she tried to get past him.
But truly, there was nowhere for Rosalind to go, Annie realized. Shifter Patrol Corps agents blocked the doorway and lined the stairs, in both their human and shifted forms.
Annie could almost see the moment Rosalind realized she was trapped as she turned a tight circle in the air, looking for somewhere to go.
But there was nowhere. The phoenix squawked again, wings fluttering, clearly unwilling to give up.
In a flash of light, Annie saw Declan shift from his unicorn form to his human form.
“Just give up!” he called out. “There are more agents coming. There’s no way for you to escape.”
The phoenix circled once more, before letting out another angry cry and swooping down to the ground. In a swell of flames, she became the white-haired woman she had been before.
To Annie’s surprise, the first thing she did was laugh.
“All right – fine. You got me. I’m not so stupid as to not know when I’m beaten.”
She held her hands up, a smile twisting her lips.
Annie’s first instinct was not to trust her – there was something in her expression she didn’t like at all. Beau swooped down a moment later, shifting back into his human form. Annie could see his own mistrust writ large across his face. He shook his head.
“There wasn’t any need for you to get humans caught up in your mess,” he said, his voice grave. “And the gambling – let me guess, you built your fortune using your telepathic abilities to cheat and influence the games?”
Rosalind laughed. “So what if I did? You think casinos don’t cheat people and rob them blind? What I did was merely redressing the balance a little.”
“Maybe so,” Beau said. “But you still ordered the destruction of an innocent man’s life’s work just because his son owed you money. How is that different?”
Rosalind shrugged. “That young fool shouldn’t ever have gotten involved if he couldn’t balance his ledger. He knew the consequences. You reap what you sow.”
Annie frowned. Even if that were true, how could Rosalind justify her actions? And wasn’t she running exactly the same kind of place here as the casinos she’d just been deriding?
It seemed like she was adapting her outlook to suit herself, no matter what.
“It’s a pity – I liked this body,” Rosalind continued after a moment. “It was quite fun while it lasted. But I don’t intend to spend the time I have left in it in jail. Congratulations – you almost had me.”
Annie blinked. What does she mean?
She could see the confusion on Beau’s face too, at least for a moment, until comprehension suddenly seemed to dawn across it.
“Declan – stop her, she’s going to –!”
Annie gasped, lifting her hand to shield her face as a sudden blast of heat exploded through the room. Parting her fingers to peek through them after the initial heat had died down, Annie saw – Oh my God!
Rosalind’s body was engulfed in flames, flickering and dancing in a long, fearsome column. None of the others in the room could get near her, so intense was the heat. And then, after a moment, there was a loud fwoomp! and the flames died down as quickly as they’d come.
Blinking, Annie cautiously lowered her hands. On the floor where Rosalind had once stood, there was now only a pile of ashes – and two brilliant, long, dazzlingly golden feathers, just like the ones Annie had seen trailing from Rosalind’s tail when she’d been in her phoenix form.
She – she burned up?
Annie didn’t know much about mythical creatures. She’d never even heard of a hippogriff until she’d met Beau. But she would’ve had to have been much more ignorant than she was not to be aware of the legend of the phoenix, the immortal bird that was reborn in flames once it reached the end of its lifespan.
But if she was, uh, reborn, then… then shouldn’t there be a baby around here? Or a little phoenix chick?!
“Dammit,” Beau said, shaking his head. “She was too fast.”
“Not much we could’ve done anyway,” Declan said. “You can’t stop a phoenix from rebirthing.”
“But where did she go?” Annie cut in, walking on shaky legs toward the pile of ash and feathers. “Shouldn’t she still be here?”
Beau shook his head, his expression grim. “No – that’s not quite how it works. When a phoenix rebirths, they rebirth in the nest they first hatched in, no matter where that is or how far away they are from it at the time they end their life cycle. I don’t know how it works, but that’s ancient shifter magic for you. Rosalind could be literally anywhere right now – the next county over, in another country, on the moon. Not that it would really matter.”
“Why not?” Annie asked.
“Because a rebirthed phoenix doesn’t carry any memories from its past life with it,” Declan explained. “Or at least, that’s what they claim. They say the new life really is a new life. So Rosalind, wherever she is now, is just an innocent little hatchling again. We couldn’t arrest her for crimes that, technically, she hasn’t committed.”
Annie wanted to argue against that – to tell them that no, it wasn’t fair, and that Rosalind shouldn’t get to escape justice just because she’d chosen to self-immolate rather than face up to the consequences of her actions.
But at the same time, she could see how it wouldn’t be fair to punish a new life for something the old one had done.
Maybe she’d choose differently in this life, Annie thought.
She hoped so. And that was really all she could do.
Because the alternative is a little scary.
“Well, if she really doesn’t remember anything –” Annie started, but stopped when she saw Beau nodding, as if he’d read her mind.
“If she doesn’t remember anything, then there’s no chance that she’d still be pursuing any vendettas she had in this life,” he said, answering her unasked question. “She won’t remember anything about Scott, and whatever money he might owe her.”
Annie nodded, letting out a relieved breath. “Okay. Well, as long as there’s no chance of that.” There was something she still didn’t quite understand, however. “Why was she so intent on getting it back, anyway? She kept talking about ‘balance’ – what did she mean by that?”
Beau and Declan exchanged a glance.
“I’m not really sure,” Beau said slowly after a moment. “But one thing about phoenixes, from what little we know about them, is that they like things to be even – if you do a favor for a phoenix, you better bet they’ll do one for you in return, and vice versa. And if you wrong a phoenix, you had better believe they’ll extract their revenge. Perhaps it’s for the best Rosalind rebirthed after all. I wouldn’t want a mad phoenix on my tail.”
Annie swallowed, looking down at the ashes before her.
Maybe so.
“All shifters have their quirks,” Declan said, taking up the explanation. “Griffins have a huge sense of loyalty. Dragons don’t hoard gold anymore, but they still get pretty weird about what belongs to who, and they’ll go to the ends of the earth to return lost property – but similarly, borrow five dollars from one and don’t pay them back within the week and you’ll never hear the end of it. Unicorns are obsessed with clans and bloodlines.”
A shadow passed across his face as he said the last one, and Annie wondered what it was that had caused it.
“You sound as if you’re speaking from experience,” she said cautiously – she didn’t feel she knew him well enough to ask him why unicorns being so interested in their bloodlines seemed to affect him the way it had. She turned to Beau. “Well, what are hippogriffs’ little quirks, then? Just what am I g
etting myself into here?”
“Oh, only how hilarious and charming we are,” Beau said, smiling dazzlingly at her. “But you know about that already.”
“And modest,” Annie shot back at him, and Beau laughed.
“I guess you could say we put a lot of importance on family – but not in the same way as unicorns do, where bloodline decides everything. Hippogriffs… we’re more open to letting people join our families, no matter who they are or where they’re from. We’re pretty communal.”
“That sounds… actually really nice,” Annie said softly. A family. Just like she’d always wanted. She opened her mouth, not sure what she wanted to say – but then she felt her knees wobbling, her head suddenly feeling light as a balloon –
“Annie!”
A second later Beau’s strong arm was around her shoulder, holding her up as she blinked, waiting for her stomach to calm down and her vision to clear.
“I haven’t fainted since I was a kid,” she said breathlessly, still feeling dizzy. “Sorry – I can stand up by myself now –”
“Not a chance,” Beau said, his face serious. “You’ve been through a lot, Annie – it must have taken more strength than I can imagine for you to heal me the way you did, no matter what else was involved. You passed your strength to me, and to be honest, I’m only surprised it’s just hit you now.”
“I think I’ve been running on adrenaline for the past two hours,” Annie admitted, happier than she was willing to acknowledge that Beau was still pressing her against his side. She resisted the urge to snuggle closer in.
“I’m getting you out of here,” Beau said firmly. “You’ve gone above and beyond, Annie, in every possible way. You need to go home and rest. Let other people deal with this for now.”
Annie looked up, half afraid Declan or someone else might tell Beau he needed to stay. But instead, Declan only nodded.
“Of course. You two head off. You’ve both been through enough. Let us deal with the rest here.”
Relief and gratefulness flooded through her, but right now, Annie could only bring herself to nod back at Declan in thanks.
“Come on. Let’s get you home.”