by Zoe Chant
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Chapter One
Ranger Griffin
By Zoe Chant
Copyright Zoe Chant 2017
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One | Emily
Chapter Two | Gabriel
Chapter Three | Emily
Chapter Four | Gabriel
Chapter Five | Emily
Chapter Six | Gabriel
Chapter Seven | Emily
Chapter Eight | Gabriel
Chapter Nine | Emily
Chapter Ten | Gabriel
Chapter Eleven | Emily
Chapter Twelve | Gabriel
Epilogue | Emily
A note from Zoe Chant
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Further Reading: Defender Dragon
Chapter One
Emily
A sign caught Emily Green’s eyes as she drove along the twisting mountain road.
THIS EXIT: BLUE OAK NATIONAL PARK.
Emily sighed. There was nothing she’d rather do than visit a beautiful national park, breathing in the crisp mountain air and listening to the roar of waterfalls as she hiked through the woods. And Blue Oak National Park was famous—one of the biggest and wildest and loveliest in America. Emily had always meant to visit it, but never had the chance.
Maybe on my way back, she thought. When I’m done with the job.
The thought of visiting after all gave her new energy. Forests had always called to her heart. She loved the dappled green light that filtered through the leaves, the songs of birds and rustles of unseen animals, the rich smell of earth and moss, and the feeling that at any moment, she might come across something amazing and wonderful: a witch in a gingerbread house, a dragon guarding its lair, or a unicorn polishing its horn on the trunk of a mighty oak.
When she’d been a little girl, her father had read her fairytales of brave young women who ventured into the woods to slay a dragon or find the rightful king or learn the secret of their heritage. The heroine always succeeded in her quest, fell in love with a handsome prince, and lived happily ever after.
“Will I meet a prince some day?” Emily used to ask.
Her father would always reply, “Of course you will. You’ll go into the woods, and slay the dragon, and meet the kindest, bravest, most handsome prince of all.”
“And can the prince and I stay in the forest?” she’d asked eagerly.
With a kiss, her father would say, “Of course you can. You’ll have a home as cozy as a cabin and as beautiful as a palace, in the most magnificent forest in the world. We can all be princes and princesses and dragonslayers, sweetheart. All we need for our happily ever after is to love each other.”
Emily believed every word he said. Her mother and father were like the prince and the dragon-slaying heroine in the fairytales, living their real-life happily ever after. They loved each other and they loved her, and that was all they needed. The only difference was that they were in a city rather than in the wilderness. Some day, Emily was sure, she’d find her prince. And some day she’d have her own children to read to, and to promise that fairytales really do come true.
But when she was only seven, her father died. And on that day, she stopped believing in happily ever after.
Though that was the end of fairytales for her, she never lost her love of trees and rivers and wild places.
“I want to live in a forest when I grow up,” Emily said when she was ten. “What sort of job should I get to do that?”
“You could be a biologist,” her mother said. “Or a homesteader. Or a park ranger.”
Then she took Emily to the library and got her books about all those jobs. Emily’s favorite was the book about being a park ranger. She read it over and over, and only reluctantly returned it. After that, she imagined herself striding through blizzards to rescue lost tourists, then returning to her cozy cabin to relax in front of a crackling fire. When she was sixteen, she added a sexy, handsome, brave, sweet man to her dream cabin.
And here I am, Emily thought glumly. Not a park ranger. No cabin. And no man to call my own.
She didn’t even have time to visit Blue Oak National Park. Another deep sigh shook her as she drove past the exit.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself, she ordered.
Her life hadn’t turned out like she’d imagined, but there was no point obsessing about what she didn’t have. Her job as a reporter didn’t often take her into the wild places that she loved, but it was always interesting and occasionally exciting. And she’d rather be single for the rest of her life than settle for anything less than...
“...true love,” she murmured.
Emily hurriedly clamped her mouth shut, shaking her head at her own silliness. She was an adult, not a teenage dreamer. And if there was one thing she’d learned in her life, it was that the sort of love she was thinking of—passionate and heartfelt and enduring forever—wasn’t ever going to happen to her. There was no such person as Prince Charming. And even if there was, he definitely wasn’t waiting for a curvy reporter chasing down a weird story about pterodactyl sightings.
At that thought, her amusement at her bizarre assignment overcame her loneliness. It might not be her dream job, but she did like being a reporter. Especially when she got paid to interview people who thought they’d seen flying dinosaurs! She grinned as she remembered how she’d kept offering to go investigate the letters her newspaper kept getting sent, and how her editor had kept refusing until she’d finally worn him down.
“It’s ridiculous,” he’d said, pointing to the blurry photo that had come attached to the latest email claiming that a pterodactyl kept buzzing his house. “Look at it! It’s just a hawk. Or something.”
It didn’t look very hawk-like to Emily. She wasn’t sure what it looked like. And that was exactly what intrigued her about it. She’d leaned over his desk and said, “Don’t you think it’s odd that all these people in the towns around a very isolated area keep seeing strange flying things?”
“Nope,” her editor had said. “People see unidentified flying objects all the time.”
“Yeah, but they don’t usually see dinosaurs,” she’d pointed out. “Come on. I’m not saying it’s real. I’m saying it’s interesting. Why are they all seeing the same thing?” Holding up her fingers to indicate headlines, she’d said, “‘The Birth of a Legend—Are Pterodactyls Today’s Bigfoot?”
“Okay, you win. Go for it. Could be a funny story.” He’d held up his own fingers in headline quotes. “‘Mass Hysteria in Rural America.’” With a snort, he’d added, “Have fun with the small-town nitwits.”
But the people Emily had interviewed so far hadn’t been stupid or hysterical. Instead, she’d spoken to an assortment of completely ordinary people—moms, farmers, teenagers, retirees—who had all insisted that they’d seen something very strange. The closer she got to the forests and mountains beyond Blue Oak National Park, the more stories she heard. And they didn’t all say it was a pterodactyl. Lots of them shrugged and said they didn’t know what it was, but it was big and had wings and looked like nothing they’d ever seen before.
> The more people she’d interviewed, the more convinced she’d become that whatever the flying thing was, it was real. A condor, maybe.
Or maybe something else.
She had volunteered for the assignment because she was tired of the everyday stories she usually covered, about city hall meetings and freeway closures and school funding. Though her mind knew it was impossible, her heart still hoped that the world was more magical than it seemed. She wanted to believe that even if there weren’t any dragons, maybe there were pterodactyls.
Emily glanced up at the sky. No condors, no pterodactyls, no dragons, no unidentified flying things of any kind. Instead, she saw a layer of ominous dark clouds. A storm was coming. Maybe even snow.
Nervously, she pressed down on the gas, driving as fast as she dared. She had a town on the other side of the mountain to get to, and the last thing she needed was to get caught on these narrow roads in a storm. A skid could send her off a cliff.
The light rapidly dimmed as the clouds thickened. Pellets of hail began to rattle off her car. They soon changed to flakes of snow. Emily slowed, wondering if she should pull over. It was getting hard to see where she was going. But she didn’t want to get trapped on the side of the road, either.
A sheet of lightning turned the world to brilliant white. Almost instantly, it was followed by a boom of thunder, loud as a bomb going off. Emily jumped, her heart pounding. The lightning must have been incredibly close for the thunder to have come so soon after it. She couldn’t pull over, even if she wanted to. Her car could get struck.
She drove on, biting her lip with nervousness. The visibility was getting worse by the minute, and the road was becoming treacherously slick with ice. She slowed, carefully controlling her car.
Something huge swooped down out of the sky.
Emily couldn’t see exactly what it was through the whirling snow. All she could tell was that it was big and winged and headed straight for her.
She gasped in shock and fear, then twisted the wheel, trying to avoid the thing without going off the cliff. Her car skidded, fishtailing on the slippery surface. Emily instinctively tried to wrestle the car back into control, then remembered that was the worst thing to do if you skidded.
You can do this, she told herself.
Forcing herself not to panic, she drove into the skid, holding the wheel lightly. The car’s wild motion began to even out. Her heart leaped as she struck the guard rail, but it was a glancing blow. She stayed on the road. A moment later, her car stopped fishtailing. She guided it back into her lane, and kept driving.
She heaved a sigh of relief. She was safe.
For now. Where was that thing that had flown at her? What was that thing? Was it gone?
Cautiously, Emily dared a glance up at the sky. She was just in time to see a set of giant claws take a swipe at her car. There was no time to avoid them. The claws crashed into the side of her car with a bang, followed by the screech of something sharp scraping against metal. Emily was thrown back into her seat. Terror seized her as the car was knocked sideways.
It smashed through the guard rails, then toppled over the cliff.
Time seemed to slow as her car tumbled through the air.
I’m going to die, Emily thought.
In that brief moment of falling, she was flooded with regrets.
I should have stopped at Blue Oak Park, she thought. I should have looked harder for someone to love. I should have—
There was a tremendous impact, and the car came to a jarring stop.
For a long moment, Emily was too shocked to think at all. Then she realized that it was all over. And she was alive.
She took stock of herself. She was still strapped into her seat, though it was tilted at an odd angle. Emily cautiously moved her body, rotating her ankles and shoulders, then squirming in her seat. There was no sharp pain, just some little twinges. Though she was bruised and shaken, nothing seemed to be broken.
In the moment before she’d hit, she had instinctively covered her eyes with her forearm. She lowered her arm and looked around.
At first she couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing through the smashed window and windshield: falling snow and... twigs and leaves? Then she understood. Her car had tumbled into a forest so dense that the foliage had caught and cushioned it, leaving it suspended above the ground in a web of branches.
Thankfulness flooded her. She’d fallen off a cliff, but she was alive! And not even badly hurt.
I’m not wasting any more of my life, she vowed. I’ll start by going back to Blue Oak National Park. The interviews can wait.
Once I get out of here.
As her shock started to recede, she realized that getting out wouldn’t be easy. She’d have to climb out of her car, then down the tree. It had been years since she’d climbed a tree, though she’d done it all the time when she was a little girl. But those days were long gone. And she was dressed to do interviews, not for climbing, in smooth-soled pumps, a business suit, and a light jacket.
On second thought, she should stay where she was and call for help. Someone would come with a ladder.
Without undoing her seatbelt, Emily looked around for her purse. It was gone. She realized that it must have fallen out the opposite window, which had been shattered in the fall.
No cell phone, she thought grimly. No way to get help. And I’m in the middle of nowhere.
All she knew was that she was near Blue Oak National Park. Or maybe even in it, given that she’d fallen off the road and into a valley. She shivered in the freezing air. Snow blew in through the broken windows, settling on her bare face and arms. She had to get to safety, or she’d freeze to death.
Tiny cubes of safety glass from the shattered windows and windshield covered her. Emily brushed it off, then cautiously released her seatbelt and peered out the driver’s side window. To her relief, the car wasn’t all that far above the ground.
“I did climb trees a lot when I was a girl,” she said aloud, trying to encourage herself. An icy wind whipped the words from her mouth. She shivered.
Emily didn’t dare try to open the door. She didn’t know how precariously the car was balanced. Anything might send it crashing to the ground. Instead, her nerves tingling with fear, she clambered out the shattered windshield and on to the hood. The car quivered ominously. Her heart pounding, she edged along the hood. The metal was so cold, it felt like it was burning her bare palms and knees. Drops of sweat formed on her face, then froze and fell off. They made tiny clinking sounds as they hit the hood.
She was immensely relieved when she was able to climb on to a wide branch. Emily crawled toward the tree trunk, gripping the corrugated bark tight. Before she started climbing down, she glanced back at her car. She had more clothes in her suitcase, but it was in the trunk and no branches that would bear her weight were close enough to the trunk for her to be able to reach it. She was stuck with the outfit she was wearing.
Just be glad you’re alive, she thought. Get down first, and then you can figure out what to do.
Emily began to climb down, stretching her legs and arms to maneuver from one branch to the next. Her muscle memory of her climbing days came back to her, making it easier than she’d expected. Soon she was perched on the lowest branch, six feet above the glittering white ground. She jumped, and landed ankle-deep in snow.
Now what?
Snow was still falling, more heavily than ever. An icy wind whipped her face. She peered up, trying to spot the cliff and the road, but she could see nothing but tree trunks and falling snow.
Wrapping her arms tight around her chest, Emily thought back to the flying thing that had knocked her car over the cliff. What had it been, anyway? She tried to picture it, but all she could conjure up was a quick glimpse of wings and claws. She didn’t know of any flying creature big enough to move a car. But a number of the people she’d interviewed had specified that the thing they’d seen, too high in the sky to make out details, had looked bigger than a car.
She’d never heard of a condor attacking a car. But there was a first time for everything.
“It’ll make a great story,” she said, trying to cheer herself up. “‘Condor Terrorizes Towns, Attacks Reporter!’”
She just hoped it wouldn’t be Condor Causes Car Crash, Reporter Found Frozen.
What was the best way to avoid that fate? She knew that when you were lost and stranded, it was usually best to stay with your car. But the snowstorm would prevent anyone from being able to see it from above. And no one would miss her for days. Her best chance was probably trying to find a path back up the cliff to the road, then walking along the shoulder until she either flagged down a car or reached a town.
Or froze to death.
I am not going to die, she told herself. I’m too stubborn. And there’s too much I haven’t done. I still have to visit Blue Oak National Park—unless I’m visiting it right now. And I am definitely not going to die before I’ve ever fallen in love.
Emily took her best guess about the direction of the cliff, and walked into the storm.
Chapter Two
Gabriel
Gabriel Allen flew above the treetops, enjoying the feeling of the cold wind beneath his wings.
He was on the last stretch of his sweep of the most remote edges of Blue Oak National Park, making sure no hikers were caught in the blizzard. As a park ranger, his job was to ensure the safety of everyone who entered Blue Oak, and he took the responsibility very seriously. No one knew exactly how he was so good at finding lost and stranded hikers—the other rangers joked that he was psychic—and as far as Gabriel was concerned, he’d take his secret to the grave.
The snow blew about in the fierce wind, making it hard to see the ground. Gabriel swooped lower. He wasn’t worried about anyone seeing him. Along with his ability to turn himself into a griffin, he also had the power to make himself invisible when he was in that form.