by Livia Quinn
Take These Broken Wings
Destiny Paramortals, # 5
Livia Quinn
Contents
Copyright
Books by Livia Quinn
Author’s Note
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Veterans Resources
Copyright
Take These Broken Wings
© 2016 Campbell Hill Publishing
Cover Art by Cora Graphics
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. All characters are from my imagination or fictionalized. To obtain permission to use portions of text, please email: [email protected]
Praise for Destiny Paramortals
“My new favorite series!” “Okay, I’m hooked, Give me, give me some more!!!” “A bit of magic, a lot of fun and a budding romance!” “Tempest Pomeroy is the best new paranormal heroine of the year!” “OMG, I loved this book. Run don’t walk to the buy button.” “Destiny. . .is like a mini-vacation from the real world.”
If you love Darynda Jones, Eve Langlais or Kristen Painter, you'll like Livia Quinn.
Books by Livia Quinn
The Destiny Paramortals
Storm Crazy, #1
Cry Me a River, #2
Eve of Chaos, #3
Blame It on the Moon, #4
Take These Broken Wings. #5
Blood Moon #6
Blood Opal
Undone
Men of Honor (Contemporary Romance/Military)
Ridge
Luc
Nick
All I Want for Christmas
Men of Honor Box set
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Author Note
I hope you’re enjoying the progression of the Paramortals. After the shock Jack received in Blame it on the Moon it’ll be anyone’s guess as to how he’ll handle it. I mean Destiny is definitely no longer Mayberry. . .
Happy reading!
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As they say in my favorite escape, Britain. . .
Caide Mile Failte’, A hundred thousand welcomes.
Livia
liviaquinn.com
Welcome to Destiny, home to the Paramortals since…well, forever… where human neighbors and their new sheriff live alongside shifters, dragons, vampires and a family of djinn. . . Just don’t tell the humans.
Strap in, ‘cause it’s a wild ride through Destiny, or should I say Middle Earth…
Not long ago, Sheriff Jack Lang would have sworn there were no such things as vampires, storm witches (Tempestaeries), djinn or dragons. That was before he met Tempest Pomeroy, his sexy redheaded mail lady and trouble magnet. He’d fallen for her before he found out about her special abilities. But that wasn’t what turned his life upside down. His transformation into a supernatural being… Yep, that would do it.
Tempe had feared her supernatural nature would be a problem for Jack, who’d mistaken Destiny for a normal safe, small town. Turns out, Destiny is more paranormal then normal. But that didn’t explain why Jack left her in favor of haunting the highest levees in the parish. Sure, he’d received a shock, and Tempe's willing to do whatever it takes, but can she convince him to return to his life and to her?
A stubborn man was one thing, but a grumpy, depressed twenty-ton dragon presents a bit more of a challenge.
Fans of Destiny Paramortals say:
“Tempest is one of the best paranormal heroines I’ve read.” “WOW…just wow! Give me some more!” “This is my new favorite series!” “OMG, I loved this book. Run don’t walk to the buy button.”
If you like Darynda Jones, Eve Langlais or Kristen Painter, you’ll like Livia Quinn.
Chapter 1
Love and desire are the spirit's wings ...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Jump off a cliff and
grow your wings on the way down."
Ray Bradbury
Tempe
"Aiy-yy…"
The cry intensified as it grew closer. A brilliant silver streak whizzed past and the source of the sound was suddenly plain.
A bright, hot Sunday morning was made even brighter by the crystalline rainbows bouncing off the skin of my dragon boyfriend as he ran toward the top of the levee at full speed. Actually, it was more like a clumsy lope. Then he leaped, sun sparkling like diamonds off his crystal scales before he disappeared from sight. Zeus' missing molars!
His cry broke off as I made it to the crown of the levee just in time to watch Jack plummet, wings flapping furiously—and futilely—into the river below. "Below" wasn't that far and "river" was too generous a word for the swampy backwater where he now sat covered in duck weed and gumbo looking dejected. And tired. Poor baby.
Jack' beautiful silver green eyes looked up at me, revealing more than a little distress. I expected him to change back into his human form but for some reason he didn't. Instead he pushed up, struggling out of the muck, his massive backside making a loud wet sucking sound… schwuuuk… as the gumbo released its hold.
I backed out of the line of fire as he gave a mighty shake and great globs of slimy mud flew in all directions, leaving his scales sparkling and shiny once again. At least he was getting a grasp of some aspects of his change, or it could be instinct. His powerful hind legs rose from the swamp and one step at a time he tromped toward me then, with a hmmp, he hopped onto the bank with both feet. The ground rocked under me and I widened my stance to keep from falling over. From my position up on the levee I was nearly eye level with him.
"No luck, huh?" I asked.
He opened his mouth to speak and remembered he couldn't, at least not yet. Our dragon friend, Conor, thought Jack's ability to speak in his shifted form would come in time. Apparently, nothing was certain. Jack shook his head and diamond-like prisms nearly blinded me.
"That sucks," I said, shading my eyes. He glared at me and I shrugged, "Sorry, no pun intended."
He turned away.
A trudging dragon is a depressing sight, but it described what I saw in my lover's face, in his bowed shoulders, the way his wings hung at his sides and in the ground-shaking thump of his feet. I should buy him a t-shirt with MY BUTT IS DRAGIN' on the front. "Stop that, Tempe," I said, chastising myself for being so insens
itive but… I was very frustrated, almost as frustrated as my man.
Jack's problem—the disappointment eating at him after the initial hope that had helped him come to terms with his dragonness—was that he couldn't fly, and obviously, it wasn't for lack of trying.
"Jack. Wait." I ran after him as he plodded down the levee, fatalism in every stride. Boom. Thud. Boom. Thud.
I'd never forget seeing him in his backyard under the moonlight looking alternately disconcerted and elated. He'd denied the elated part right off, even though he missed flying, but admitting to the desire to fly as a dragon would mean acceptance of his new reality. First, he had to admit he was a dragon. Maybe there’s a Dragons Anonymous somewhere because Jack's problem since he'd moved here was denial. He was old hands with the emotion.
He'd gone AWOL soon after his change and I found him sitting in the middle of a disked up cornfield, looking like a frog the size of a land leveler. Then the frog had hopped into the air, and his identity had been obvious from wings that reflected the sun's brilliance as far as the eye could see. I sat through a repeat of these attempts until it was just too painful to continue.
Months later there'd been little change. He simply couldn't accept that a former Navy jet pilot-turned-dragon would not be a flying dragon. My mother and Conor had repeatedly explained that dragons aren't all the same, and not all of them fly. What's more, unable to control his change he'd been forced to take a leave of absence from his duties as sheriff five months ago, leaving Ryan Kirkwood in charge. We hadn't been together once since that day.
Five long months had passed, and yes, I was frustrated. And worried, and lonely. I decided Jack needed an intervention for Jordie's sake if nothing else.
"Jack, would you please stop?" Even in slow fatalistic plodding mode, with his long strides, it was hard for me to keep up. He was at least twenty feet tall, when he wasn't slumping, which was most of the time lately. I heard a deep sigh, like the moan of a big Willow in a strong wind and he stopped, dropping one giant clawed foot beside the other. The gorgeous dragon face fringed with delicate crystal feathers turned on his muscular neck, and he peered down at me with a look that said, What is so important that I have to quit doing what I'm doing? It was so fraught with pain it made my heart ache.
"Defeated" was his new demeanor ever since the Para-moon and his unexpected change. Change. What an understatement!
For a man who'd lived for thirty-three-years as a Navy pilot and father, someone who'd chosen Destiny thinking it would be a normal town (read that: boring, vanilla, safe…human) to raise his teenage daughter, he'd had to rise above many challenges in a short time, accept the truth about Destiny's citizens, its nature, and about me. Who knows? Maybe those struggles had prepared him for what was ahead. I wanted to believe that. No, I needed to believe it.
From that first non-human victim in the clubhouse the day I met him, to the war on Destiny a few weeks later, Jack had been bombarded with the supernatural. First, there'd been the dead guy who'd walked away from the M.E.’s office; then, he'd been an inadvertent witness to some of my Tempestaerie talents—zapping stuff, unlocking doors without my key, etc. but when my father returned from the "dead" I'd let loose with a full out Tempestaerie hissy fit. That had Jack rethinking putting down roots in Destiny. It wasn't only me and my family, though… Jack had his own personal demons to overcome… his ex being one of them. The one shock I hadn't been sure he could stand—finding out his daughter was a new Paramortal—he'd accepted rather quickly. Denial again.
And yet, as strange as Destiny and my family and the revelations about Jordie must have seemed to him, all of it had been trumped by his own Vyal K'allanti. Humans call it "destiny" or "fate". With no advanced warning Jack had changed into this amazing dragon, blinding in full sunlight. Of course, he hasn't spent much time in the sunlight because he's adamant about not being seen in public, a rule that goes back to his policies as sheriff to avoid unnecessary panic with human citizens.
Anyway, Jack's transformation was the last straw. It's why I was here on the levee not having a conversation with him, but trailing behind him through the mud trying to get his attention. Who knew when a human might show up, a fisherman perhaps.
Oh, and by the way, I'm not human either.
I'm Tempest Pomeroy and though I have a human job delivering the mail in Destiny, I recently went through my own quickening into a full-fledged Tempestaerie. It runs in the family, so I at least knew it was a possibility. I'd denied my heritage for so long that when I finally let loose, well, let's just say Jack called it "going nuclear".
So how had Jack not known? I mean, was somebody in his family a Paramortal, a dragon? Did they keep this from him?
Well, duh! but first things first. "How long have you been out here, Jack?" He tilted his head and gave a dragonly shrug. "Right, no speakey the dragonlais—yet. But you will. Soon." Hopefully. "Didn't Conor say be patient?" His look told me what he thought of that and he turned, resuming his march toward… I didn't know where, but followed.
Conor is our friend and the other dragon in Destiny. He's huge, twice as big as Jack, with black and red scales. He's also a knight with two awesome swords. Conor's had his hands and claws full lately, what with Jack turning and Dylan losing both his Finrir and human forms to roam the countryside as a wolf pup.
Though, the last time I'd seen Dylan he had grown into a handsome nearly full grown black wolf. All of our friends were working on keeping him from getting run over and searching for an antidote.
I watched Jack's steady progress toward the woods. He'd apparently given up on flying for the day. The sun was rising and humans would be about. I wished he'd return to his job as sheriff. That and his parental responsibilities would keep him grounded.
Oh, Zeus, another pun he wouldn't appreciate.
Chapter 2
When you're putting out fires take the biggest one first
Tempe
A sound like the churning of a dump truck came from Jack's midsection. I reached for his arm, or dragon bicep, or whatever! "Jack, was that your stomach growling?" He tilted his head and tapped his foot, giant claws clicking on the ground.
"You're hungry. I had no idea." I frowned, "Zeus! What's that smell?" The wrinkle over the dragon's eye was all I got.
"So, do you eat…virgins?" His silver eyes snapped to slits. "Right, not funny."
I sighed, "Look, if we're going to communicate you're going to have to change back." The shrug of indifference I could read. It was universal, the male equivalent of Go away. I don't wanna talk about it. He turned and resumed his slow trek through the shallow water toward town.
"Well, what are you supposed to eat?" I persisted. He spun around growling and I stepped back, hands up in a gesture of peace. "Hey, I promise, no jokes, I'm just trying to help."
He seemed to consider for a minute but then turned away again. What was wrong with him… besides the fact that his life had been up-ended, he couldn't work, he couldn't fly, he missed his daughter, and he was starving? He was depressed. I knew that, too.
"Ach, he will nae listen, he has a hard heid, aye?" Conor appeared over my shoulder. He'd been keeping an eye on Jack and Dylan since their respective crises. Montana said it was his mission. "I've advised the mon to be patient, tryin' to force that which will come, or nae come, is futile, and 'twill likely interfere with the natural progression of his abilities."
I could relate to that having kept my Tempestaerie at bay for almost twenty years. Conor's advice had fallen on deaf ears just like mine had. Well, I was tired of the status quo. It wasn't getting us anywhere. If I had been like most young women my age I might have called my mother and asked for her advice but we didn't have your normal mother-daughter relationship. Phoebe and my Djinni daddy had concocted a scheme and perpetuated this big lie that included community glamour and false relationships and the ultimate biggie—my father's "death" which had kept my brother and me apart from them for most of our lives. So as usual, I'd either handle it or
turn to friends like Conor, Montana and Aurora.
I looked at the knight, "He's hungry, Conor. What's he supposed to do about that? Not to mention the uh, aroma when he…"
"Makes gas? Aye, that's natural, Tempe, and a good sign." Conor grunted and didn't offer more except the comfort of his physical presence, which I had to admit was considerable—his presence, not the comfort part because I wouldn't stop worrying about Jack until he returned to some semblance of "normal". Shootfire, he'd think that was funny, considering how much grief I'd given him over that word, but not funny, ha-ha. His sense of humor was as lost as he was.
I ran to catch up with Jack. I could still see him, but he'd slogged his way through a good two miles of backwater while I'd been daydreaming. When I reached him, I didn’t talk just tried to keep up.
A muted pop sounded from beneath his foot and he froze. His expression—if that's what you call it—his dragon face looked surprised.
He glared at the spot where his foot sank into the muddy bank. His giant snout lowered and I walked toward him leaning forward as well. "What is it, Jack?"