by Ivy Asher
“Duda fruit,” Zeph answers flatly, digging into his own meal and going back to ignoring me.
“It tastes like pineapple to me. Do you guys have that fruit here?” I ask. He doesn’t say anything. “I used to hate pineapple when I was younger. That just seems funny to me because now I’m obsessed with it. My gran used to get it on pizza, and I would always pick it off. Holy shit!” I exclaim suddenly, looking down at the turquoise fruit in my hands.
“What?” Zeph demands, rising to come to me and searching around me for whatever has me so stunned.
“She called it dude pizza,” I inform him quietly. “I thought it was like a joke about surfers or something, but she was talking about this fruit.” I look up at Zeph and take in his face as the fire’s light flickers over his features. “She was missing this.” I hold up the fruit and stare at it with new understanding.
“What about the rest of your family; did they ever talk about anything that might give you a clue where they come from?”
I think back and try to look at my few memories of my mother and father, but nothing stands out. “My father was from an island. I don’t remember the name, and my gran hated talking about it.”
“What was his name?” Zeph asks, his focus on the wall of the cave and not on me.
“Awlon...Awlon Umbra. He had black hair and lime green eyes that always lit up when he saw me,” I tell him, a small smile sneaking across my face at the memory.
“Awlon the Dark was the last reigning prince of the Ouphe,” Zeph announces, and he looks at me with even more scrutiny than he did before. “He died though, he was murdered by a servant,” he adds, and he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of these facts. “Your mother?”
“Noor. Her name was Noor.” I try to recall her maiden name, but it doesn’t come to me. I know it was different than Gran’s, but I can’t remember what it was.
Zeph gasps and then starts to cough. My gaze flashes up to his, and I can’t tell if he’s choking on something or trying to cover up his reaction to my mother’s name.
“What?” I demand, handing him the waterskin.
He takes a deep pull, and I wait impatiently for him to explain what sent him into a coughing fit. He shakes his head at me as he swallows another mouthful of water. “The name Noor is common around these parts. You’d have to check the archives with her full name to see if you have any other family here,” he finally explains, and I sag with disappointment. “We should sleep; we have a long walk ahead of us tomorrow, and we both need to heal.”
I nod at Zeph’s retreating back and watch him settle on his side of the fire, his back to me. I can’t shake the suspicion that he’s not being straight with me. Then again, it’s not like I’ve been in the loop about anything since I got here. I finish the rest of my meal and wash the sticky juice from my hands and face with some water from the skin. I lie on my side again and scoot closer to the fire, feeling cold. It’s like the elements and my memories are working in tandem to make me feel empty and freezing.
I debate for a second about scooting even closer to the stone ringed fire pit, but the image of me rolling into the fire in my sleep keeps me from closing the distance. A shiver runs through me, and I pull as much of the fur around me as I can while still lying on it. Zeph releases an irritated huff.
“I can hear your teeth chattering from here,” he observes, annoyance painting every word.
I flip his back the bird and try to stop my sudden shivering. “Psst...Pigeon,” I call. “Want to go all feathered and save me from hypothermia?” I ask, but she doesn’t stir. “Who’s a pretty gryphon?” I say in my most playful voice usually reserved for cute puppies and kittens. Nothing. “Fine, but if I die in my sleep from the cold, you only have yourself to blame,” I warn her.
I pull the top of my shirt over my mouth and try to breathe warm air into the makeshift cocoon. Zeph grumbles and stands up, grabs his fur, and tromps over to my side of the fire. He lies down, his back touching mine, and silence fills the cave again. After a while of lying with Zeph at my back, I start to warm up. Apparently, he’s an asshole and a walking, talking space heater, who knew? I snuggle into my furs, my shivers chased away by his close proximity, and I fall asleep to the memory of my dad’s happy-to-see-me eyes.
13
“Fucking, fuck, fucker!” I whisper growl at the stick that just tried to stab through the soft arch of my foot.
Zeph shoots me a warning look that tells me to keep it down, so I proceed to pick up said fucking stick and chuck it at him. I nail him in the back of the head, and the stick clings to his curly hair. I raise my hands triumphantly and mouth score! I give myself a thousand points for nailing him exactly where I wanted to and smile until I step on a rock which then finds itself on the receiving end of my whispered wrath.
I want my fucking shoes and pants. I shifted with them on which means they’re probably shredded and sitting at the bottom of the lake, so as soon as we get back, I’m tracking down Ami and making him get me new ones. Tricky little fucker. I’m also going to treat him to a solid junk punch. I should feel wrong about hitting a teenage boy in the junk, but it’s the best punishment I can come up with at the moment.
We’ve been walking all day. I woke up cold and alone in the cave just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. Zeph showed up about ten minutes later with more duda fruit and a side of extra surly gryphon. He said we couldn’t take the furs as they would be needed by the next gryphon who sought sanctuary, but he did keep his pants and let me keep my shirt.
“If you would let me carry you, you could stop cursing the ground every two minutes,” Zeph snarls quietly at me.
“I’m healed, and I can walk,” I defend, repeating the same argument I used when he tried to pick me up back at the cave.
“Well, you’re slow and you’re clumsy. This is taking twice as long as it should!”
He reaches out to grab me, and I quickly scramble away from him. The whole skin to skin thing we had going on during yesterday’s trek is the last thing I need to happen today. I can’t spend all day smelling him and feeling his body against mine. It creates too much of a distraction from the fact that I hate him, and I need to focus on that instead of his muscled back and an ass that I want to bounce quarters off of or bite, I haven’t quite decided yet.
Zeph lunges for me, and I bite back a squeal and sprint to get away from him. Pigeon sits up, and I can just picture her clapping with glee. She’s finally getting the chase she was so desperate for when she flew the fuck out here and landed us in this trouble yesterday. Zeph growls and charges after me, and I pick up the pace, weaving through trees to escape him. I run full out until my lungs protest and I have to slow down in order to fill them properly.
I look back to see if Zeph’s closing the distance behind me, but he’s not there. I stop completely, trying to listen over my ragged breaths to the sounds around me. I scan the surrounding forest, certain that at any moment, he’s going to pop out from somewhere and scare the shit out of me to teach me a lesson. I dart between trees soundlessly and ignore the excitement I feel over this cat and mouse game we’re suddenly playing. I feel eyes on me, and my head swivels back and forth as I search for his honey eyes and huge body amidst tree trunks and bushes.
A twig snaps behind me, and I dart forward in an effort to avoid capture. I risk another look over my shoulder, which of course is when I slam right into his massive chest. An oomph slams out of me at the contact, and his bruising grip lands on my shoulders.
“Ow, you’re fucking hurting me,” I warn, and then I freeze as I look up and discover that it’s not Zeph who’s holding me at all.
“Now what do we have here?” the gryphon shifter asks, the tips of his fingers digging into the meat of my arms even harder. The telltale lilac-on-the-wind smell fills my nose, but there’s a sharp citrusy smell to him too. I struggle and try to get away, but I don’t scream, too worried that it might bring more hunters my way. The large man slams me against the trunk of a
tree, and my head cracks back against it, making me instantly dizzy. The world around me sways, and I try to blink it back into focus.
“What’s a pretty highborn girl doing out here at the edge of civilization?” the man asks me, raking his eyes down my body and slowly back up. He inhales deeply, and his smile grows even creepier. “You do look like a vision of naughtiness if I ever saw one,” he tells me lasciviously, dropping one hand down to the hem of my shirt.
I whimper and try to kick him away from me, but he clamps his other hand around my throat and squeezes, stopping the air from reaching my lungs. He lifts me off the ground, and I soundlessly claw at the hand around my throat. “Who would bring such a beauty all the way out here, huh, princess? Who’s out here playing with this pretty little cunt of yours?”
He snakes his hand under the bottom of my shirt and slowly, threateningly, moves it up my thigh. His pupils dilate, and fear pounds deafeningly in my head. Rage fills my chest, and I suddenly realize it’s not just fear pounding inside of me, it’s Pigeon ramming herself against my defenses and begging to be let out. I open the door I didn’t even know I had closed, and Pigeon explodes out of me. I embrace the shift as I try to keep from drowning in panic, and it’s over in the blink of an eye.
The man pinning me to a tree barely has enough time for his eyes to widen in shock before Pigeon clamps her hooked beak around his head and rips it off. She shreds him with no hesitation or remorse, and I cheer her on from inside our gryphon body. Just when I think the brutality is over, Pigeon squats over the destroyed body and pisses on it. I laugh, shocked by the perfect crudeness of her actions, and then proceed to question my own sanity.
Why the fuck do I find this amusing?
We take a minute to glory in our kill and collect ourselves. Pigeon sniffs at the air and takes off in the direction that I just ran from. Worry fills her thoughts, and she flashes an image of Zeph to me and two shadowed figures. “Shit. I’m pretty sure that’s gryphon-speak for he’s been caught.” Pigeon stalks through the forest, and she moves so stealthily that I can’t even hear a pine needle bend beneath our paws and talons as we make our way to where we scent Zeph and his captors. I haven’t spent much time with my gryphon, but I’m discovering that she has some serious skills. Pigeon flashes an image of our reflection on the water to me, and I chuckle.
“And you’re fucking beautiful, too,” I agree.
Zeph’s scent gets stronger as we get closer to where he’s being detained, and we can make out at least two voices. That same unusual hint of citrus mixed with the breezy lilac scent that gryphons have tickles my nose. Why do they smell different?
“Where the rut is Sheridan? He left to take a shit ages ago,” a voice complains.
“He’ll just have to catch up. We need to get this one back to the city for questioning,” a gravellier voice declares, and then I hear a thud and a grunt as the owner of the voice kicks Zeph.
Pigeon completely loses it, and before I can even suggest that we come up with a plan of attack, she’s charging through the trees and pouncing on one of Zeph’s captors. His surprised scream is cut off as she once again displays her expert decapitating skills. We round on the other guy, ready to shred him to pieces, but he shifts into a massive walnut-colored gryphon in less than a second.
“Shit, Pigeon. He’s fucking huge,” I warn, like somehow she’s incapable of seeing that for herself.
Pigeon puffs up as the big brown gryphon roars at us in warning. I expect her to roar her challenge back, but instead Pigeon pounces, flapping her wings to help propel her forward even faster. The other gryphon doesn’t seem prepared for this insane plan of action, and that makes two of us. Pigeon snaps at him, but he jerks away from her razor sharp beak and tries to take his own chunk out of our neck. Pigeon rears back to avoid it and bitch slaps him with a talon-covered hand.
It knocks him off balance, and we’re on him before he can recover. We dig the claws of our hind paws into his back and go to work with our talons and beak. The walnut-colored gryphon swipes at us on his back and then releases a pain-filled bellow as we rip off his ear. We scrape up the side of his face, and I’m pretty sure he loses his right eye in the process. He rears back and pumps his wings to help flip him on top of us.
Our back slams into a massive tree trunk, and I feel a crack run up our shoulder blades. Pain flashes through us, but we ignore it and continue to claw at anything and everything we can. I don’t realize right away that the gryphon we’re trying to kill exposed his neck to us, but Pigeon does, and she goes right for the opening the big brown gryphon created when he reared back. We claw at his throat with everything we have, snapping at the back of his neck with our beak. Blood is everywhere, and it spurs us on. The big gryphon slams us back into the tree in one last ditch effort to get us off of him and then slouches to the ground.
Pigeon scrambles off of his back and immediately tears out what’s left of the walnut gryphon’s throat. The blood and life pour out of him, but we don’t watch it pool around the still body. Pigeon looks around for Zeph, worried that he hasn’t shifted and helped to deal with these guys. We find him tied to a tree by a black rope. He’s struggling to free himself, and the rope is cutting into his skin in multiple places, making him bleed. Pigeon makes a purring sound, and Zeph immediately goes still. She walks over to Zeph and drops her head, leaning her forehead against his. He closes his eyes and breathes us in. The exchange is odd to me, and I observe them, transfixed by the interaction.
Pigeon slashes through the rope and hisses as it burns our hand. Zeph looks surprised when the rope falls away, and he quickly unwinds it from around his body and his hands. As soon as he does, he erupts into his gryphon. He flaps his wings at us aggressively, and Pigeon growls at him. He charges us, and it pisses both me and Pigeon off. “We just saved your ass, you fucker!” I shout at him, and it comes out as a roar from our mouth.
He lowers his head like he’s going to use it as a battering ram, but as his honey-colored eagle eyes land on ours, he skids to a stop. Fire punches through me, and Pigeon and I both scream, scared and in agony. Pressure slams into our chest, and I swear if Zeph just hit us, I’m going to fucking kill him. I try to focus on our surroundings as Pigeon drops to the ground, submitting to the pain. I find Zeph locked in the same struggle we are, and it terrifies me. Did those guys do something to us?
“It’s just the call being answered, little sparrow.” I hear Zeph’s voice clear as day in my head, but it makes no sense.
Beyond the burning sensation working its way through my body, I can sense Pigeon’s happiness, which confuses me even more. I try to reach for her satisfaction so I can look at it more closely, but she retreats inside of me, and I can feel the shift working to pull her back inside.
“Pigeon, you fucker, what the hell is going on?” I demand as she pulls away, and her chuckle vibrates through me.
The next thing I know, my cheek is pressed against the ground, and dust plumes at my mouth as I pant through the hurt that’s radiating in every cell I possess. I blink, and my surroundings come into focus. I watch unfazed as Zeph’s big ass charcoal-colored gryphon fully rips off the head of the walnut-colored gryphon that Pigeon already took care of.
Well, I guess he wasn’t as affected by the raging inferno that Pigeon and I just experienced.
My vision blurs, and I work to blink it back into focus. When I do, Zeph’s gryphon is inches away from me. He nudges my shoulder until I flip over onto my back. I don’t fight him, because it hurts to breathe let alone move. He sniffs at me, his beak warm and smooth against my skin. Goose bumps pebble over me, and he huffs out a breath that blows my hair back from my face.
“I don’t know what you did to me, asshole, but as soon as I can move, I’m going to pluck out all of your nose hairs,” I threaten, and a familiar chuffing sound radiates from Zeph’s chest.
“Are you laughing at me, you overgrown crow?” I demand, and Zeph drops his beak and sniffs between my legs.
“Not a
fucking chance, bird brain,” I warn and try to roll away from him without any success as he stops me and rolls me back the way I was.
“Mine!” I distinctly hear the male voice in my mind, and I try to shake away the confusion that sends crawling through me.
“What the fuck is going on?” I demand.
Unsurprisingly, nothing and no one answers me. The big black gryphon brings his head back up, and he presses his forehead against mine, just like Pigeon did to Zeph. I think it’s some kind of greeting, so I mimic what Zeph did. I close my eyes and breathe him in. The telltale lilac-on-a-windy-day scent that all gryphons have fills my nose, followed by the deep masculine scent that is Zeph. He overflows my senses, his essence working through me, and I reach up and place my exhausted hands on each side of the gryphon’s face.
I open my eyes and stare into his large honey orbs.
“Mine,” purrs through my mind again, and I laugh at the lunacy of it.
“You wish,” I respond, but I’m once again confused as to who I’m responding to; could be Pigeon, my crazy ass, or an imaginary friend at this point. Or maybe I’m losing it?
A white and gray gryphon lands gracefully on the ground, and Zeph steps over me and releases a menacing growl. Pigeon surfaces, and before I can stop it, we shift and she’s back in control. Our eyes meet a storm cloud gray gaze, and that same fire I was just recovering from sucker punches me in the gut again. Pigeon and I drop like a sack of rocks, and I scream through the pain. It’s too fucking much.
“I just answered her call! What the rut are you doing here? You’ve now sent her into another joining!” Zeph yells at me, but I’m incapable of responding and telling him to fuck off the way I want to.
“I rutting felt her panic. Someone was hurting her! I had to come; you know I didn’t have a choice.”
Ryn? What the hell is Ryn doing here?
Pigeon once again releases her hold and recedes inside of me. I’m pretty sure whatever is happening to us, she just did on purpose, and as soon as I can breathe and think clearly, I’m going to interrogate the little shit until she image-flashes me what the hell is going on. I feel hands on me, and it sends me past the level of sensation I can handle. I scream at the contact and thank fuck for the blackness that bleeds into my mind. I encourage it to consume me, and I breathe out a sigh of relief when it listens and everything just stops.