by Zoe Chant
Colby was right. Not being able to fly definitely had its disadvantages.
“He hypnotized his way out of that one,” Martin continued, “but then the dragons got him. Theo’s cousin Isabelle, actually.”
“Good for Iz!”
Theo sauntered over, obviously pleased at Isabelle’s contribution. “Little Cousin Izzie is really a prodigy when it comes to magical law enforcement.”
“I think she’d mind you calling her ‘little cousin Izzie,’” Gretchen said.
“She minds it often and loudly,” Theo said, “but she’s the closest member of my family, and you were the one who told me that meant I could tease her mercilessly. And lovingly,” he added belatedly. “But she really is remarkable.”
“Theo’s trying to get Isabelle a summer internship,” Martin said dryly, “despite the fact that we don’t actually have summer internships.”
“We could start one!”
Martin cleared his throat, which immediately got all the noise to die down. “Like I was saying, Cooper, it’s not over yet. Fixing a mistake always takes more time than making one does. We’re talking about a process that’s going to include exhuming whoever’s in Phil’s grave, explaining eight hundred times what happened with Roger, and dealing with what happens when a whole unit of shifter Marshals gets wiped off the map. Off the books, we’re going to be looking for whatever poor guy Roger put through that forced shift, to see if we can help him. And you’re probably going to be getting interview requests every day for a year, minimum. So it’s not over, but... all the worst parts of it are over. We’re behind you one hundred percent.”
“And I’m behind you a hundred and ten percent,” Gretchen said.
Theo looked pained, like Gretchen had attacked the sense of accuracy buried deep within his soul. “That isn’t technically possible—”
“And Theo’s behind you a hundred and fifteen percent,” Martin said.
“Please stop,” Theo said.
“Theo’s son-or-daughter in progress is behind you a hundred and twenty percent,” Colby said, apparently joining them just to heap further abuse on poor Theo’s stickler side.
“We’re teasing you mercilessly but lovingly,” Gretchen said.
“Point made,” Theo said. “I might have to just start calling Cousin Izzie Cousin Isabelle. Or Iz.” He yawned, politely covering his mouth. “And I’m going to head home before all of you decide to mercilessly love me even more.” He held out his hand to Cooper. “It was very nice meeting you.”
Somehow, Theo’s departure signaled that it was time for everyone else to trickle out, too. They all filed past, and each of them shook Cooper’s hand.
The last one to stop by was Keith, still groggy from being woken up. He looked pale and uncomfortable and uncharacteristically uncertain as he offered Cooper his hand. For all of his nervousness, he still looked Cooper straight in the eyes.
The kid had guts.
“I’ll understand if you don’t want to take it,” Keith said, but Cooper had already grasped his hand firmly.
“You were just doing your job,” Coop said.
“I was doing it harshly,” Keith said. He cleared his throat. “I owe both of you an apology.” The hectic flush his face took on implied that he’d maybe never had to give anyone an apology before, but Gretchen would give him credit: even if he found it humiliating, he was doing it anyway. “Gretchen, you were right. I paid too much attention to the rules and not enough attention to the people. And I was unfair because of it. Especially to you, Mr. Dawes. I’d like to make that up to you someday.”
Coop smiled. “I told you before that you could call me Cooper.”
“Cooper,” Keith repeated. He was still red-faced. “Good night. Good night, Gretchen.”
“Good night, Keith,” she said. She felt well-disposed towards him, and warm towards the world in general.
Tonight, at least, their little corner of it was all right.
Then it was just the two of them, Gretchen and Cooper alone in a now darkened office, with just the lamp on her desk to wrap them in a fuzzy yellow halo of light.
She thought she knew what was going on in his head right now, as he looked down in silence at his hands.
Hardly any time had passed at all since she had first taken his hand. Back then, that had been significant enough to rock his world, and the fact that she’d been drawn to doing it was enough to help signal that they were mates. Now, Cooper was coming back—slowly but surely—into a world where that kind of basic respect and decency was nothing more than normal.
She could guess at all that, but she couldn’t even imagine what it felt like.
“Coop—”
“Gretchen, will you marry me?”
Never mind. Maybe she hadn’t known what he was thinking.
What she did know for sure was all the advice people gave about this kind of situation.
Wait until you know each other a little more—just because he’s your mate doesn’t mean you have everything smoothed out yet. Wait until the legal snarls are all worked out. Wait until you’re sure.
But she was sure—and over the last few days, she’d finally learned to be sure of herself.
And she knew that even if she couldn’t wait to know him better—even if she was thrilled to think of familiarizing herself with every little birthmark he had, every story from his childhood, every favorite movie—she already knew him just fine: he was written on the inside of her heart, after all. The last few months of Cooper’s life had really brought home that unexpected events could burst in at any time and shatter all your plans. It made no sense to wait around for the perfect time to do something they both wanted.
“I know we’ll have to wait until everything’s settled,” Cooper continued, “and we’ll have to make sure it doesn’t stir up any kind of fuss in the press coverage, but—"
“Yes.” She wrapped her arms around him. “Definitely yes.”
22
Nobody could fill up a living room like the Miller extended family.
It had been easy to get them together. All Gretchen had had to do was call everyone and say she had something to tell them, and they’d flocked to her house at once. She had to shut the dogs in the spare room so they wouldn’t get all fired up by the pervasive smell of lynx.
She couldn’t just spring her whole family on Cooper without putting them all on their best, calmest behavior first, so he was having dinner and game night with Theo and Jillian and Iz.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to stay?” he had asked her before he left. “You don’t have to tell them who I am right away. Tonight can just be about telling them about your griffin. I don’t want to steal your thunder.”
Gretchen had wrapped her arms around him. “I’m sure. And I’m not worried about you stealing my thunder! It’s just that telling them what I am—that’s something I have to do myself. Besides, you’ve already promised to be Iz’s Trivial Pursuit partner. You can’t go back on that.”
Now, some small part of her wished she’d asked him to stay after all.
But that was silly. Why was she so nervous? They were her family, and what she had to say was nothing but good news.
As it turned out, it would have been a good idea to tell them that before she’d rounded them all up, because now they were all trying to guess.
“You’re moving.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“That smoking hot unicorn guy you work with let you touch his horn.”
Well, that startled her out of her reverie. It was like getting a bucket of cold water thrown on her. “What? Is that a euphemism, or do you actually want to know if I’ve touched his horn?”
“Both,” Anna said cheerfully.
“Aunt Gretchen, you know a unicorn?”
“Aunt Gretchen knows everybody.”
This led to a lively—and very loud—discussion of all the different kinds of shifters everybody knew, and since Bonnie knew a grasshopper mouse shifter, everyone
then crowded around to watch a video of a grasshopper mouse killing a scorpion and then doing a shrill little mouse howl at the moon. Even Gretchen had to admit it was adorable.
Tricia was the one who had always—or at least since the horrible day of the bite—understood her the best, and she must have seen something on Gretchen’s face, because once the video was over, she closed her hand over her wife’s to silently keep Bonnie from selecting a second one.
“What’s up, Gretch?” she said, as casually and quietly as if it had just been the two of them in the room.
Gretchen would have hugged her if it wouldn’t have wound up causing even more delay. She took a deep breath.
She almost just said, I have something to show you. Then she could have just slipped into her griffin form—the transformation already felt as easy and natural as water rolling downhill. It would be incredible to see the looks on their faces.
But as much fun as it would have been to spring a surprise griffin on them, Gretchen thought that what she needed wasn’t the big showoff moment but the big moment of trust. The last time she’d insisted that she felt like a shifter, that she had an inner voice, that she was like them—she’d been just a kid. A kid who had needed to be protected from impulses like, say, suggesting her little sister take a bite out of her. She’d spent years feeling like that kid, like she still needed to protect herself against wishful thinking. The last few days had taught her that that wasn’t true, not anymore.
Cooper had shown her the person she really was. He’d known it right away.
She could show that to her family. But it would mean even more if she could find out that they already knew it, that she was the only person who hadn’t trusted herself.
She said, “I found out I’m really a shifter after all.”
The next thing she knew, Tricia had bounded off the sofa and wrapped her in a back-breaking hug.
“Oh, Gretch, that’s amazing. I know it’s what you’ve always wanted.”
And the Miller, Miller-Alvarez, Miller-Sousa, and Miller-Hendrickson-Smith voices were saying things like:
“I knew it! Didn’t I know it?” Bonnie exclaimed. “I said she could bench-press more than any human woman I ever met.”
“Aunt Gretchen, are you a lynx like us?”
“Maybe she’s a badger. There was a badger on my paternal grandfather’s side...”
“How did you find out?”
“Can you shift for us now, or is it going to mess up your clothes?”
They believed her.
They had a billion questions for her, but none of them were anything close to, “Are you sure?”
They—like Cooper, like Martin, like Theo and Colby and even Keith—knew the person she was now, and they trusted her to know what she was doing. Gretchen felt like some balloon strings that had tied her down her whole life had finally been decisively cut. Most of those strings had gotten snipped while she and Cooper were on the road, but one or two had stubbornly held on. Childhood stuff was hard to get rid of. But now, seeing her family unite around her with complete trust and extremely loud enthusiasm, Gretchen felt the last of those old worries go. And she floated up, flying even without her wings.
“I’m part lynx,” Gretchen said. “I’m a griffin—part lynx and part falcon.”
That caused another eruption of questions, and answering them took up a lot of time. Then it really was faster—and better—to just go ahead and shift.
“You’ll have to stand back a little,” she said. “I’m kind of big.”
“Don’t you want to get undressed first?”
Gretchen grinned and shook her head.
“Oh, right, she’s mythic,” her brother Toby groaned, his voice ripe with envy. “Of course she gets to keep her clothes.”
“I know,” Tricia said, reaching over to pat him on the hand. “You’ve never forgiven us for tricking you into letting Katie LaPaglia see you naked in the backyard that one time.”
“I was fifteen! I couldn’t show my face in school for a week! And I couldn’t explain it, so everyone thought I just hung around your backyard naked! I never dated again.” He sighed, but then affection crept back in to sit alongside the outrage, and he wrapped his arm around his wife Anna’s shoulders. “Not that it didn’t work out.”
“Well, I’m safe from embarrassment,” Gretchen said. “Just watch.”
She melted into her griffin form, with her back paws thudding and her front talons clicking as they all hit the floor.
“Falcolynx,” Kimberly, one of Gretchen’s nieces, breathed.
“I think you can just call her a griffin, sweetie.”
Kimberly shook her head stubbornly. “You can just make it into one word. She’s like the griffin version of a labradoodle. Aunt Gretchen, can I touch you?”
Gretchen had been holding back a laugh at that labradoodle line—for all she knew, a griffin’s laugh sounded terrifying, and she didn’t want to scare the kids—and now she swallowed it down. She nodded and let Kimberly approach.
Kimberly gently laid one hand on the glossy feathers of Gretchen’s head.
“You’re so sleek!” Kimberly exclaimed.
That seemed to serve as a cue for everyone to mob Gretchen, gently touching her wings and the sensitive line of her back where feathers met fur, tapping her short tail to make it twitch, asking her to snap at something with her beak. Bonnie ran and got a tape measure to check her wingspan. The kids had to be talked out of taking photos—it was safe enough to photograph fellow lynxes, but no one would be able to explain a griffin photo that leaked out. Gretchen’s mom and dad hugged her, both of them telling her how beautiful and strong she looked.
Gretchen had to nod agreement to several promises to give the older kids rides sometime, and she was lucky she wasn’t forced into it right then and there. Instead, she shifted back.
As important as her griffin news was, she had other news that mattered just as much.
“There’s another thing,” she added. She had to admit that she was enjoying being the center of attention for once. She wouldn’t want it to happen all the time, but for right now, she was happy to bask in the spotlight. “I met my mate. He’s the prisoner that I was transporting.”
She thought she’d save the engagement news for another day so she didn’t give up all her bombshells at once.
Explaining Cooper, anyway, would probably take all night. Even though she now knew beyond a doubt that her family trusted her, finding out that someone was mated to a notorious convicted murderer was probably a little bit of a shock.
But to her surprise, all the legal stuff that would probably keep them ensnared for a year—if not longer—was dismissed in a matter of minutes.
It just didn’t make sense for Gretchen’s mate to be a bad guy, everyone seemed to decide, so of course he’d been framed. It was obvious. But could she prove his innocence? Were they going to have to run away together? What color was his eyes? Was he a shifter too? What kind? They were going to invite him to dinner—did he have any food allergies? Was he a vegetarian?
That was what went on all night.
And that, Gretchen thought, resigned and happy at the same time, is what I wanted to spare him from. Now when they meet him, they can just like him without interrogating him.
It was almost midnight by the time everyone started leaving. Gretchen stayed out on her big front porch to say all her goodbyes. For tonight, at least, she loved watching the sky and breathing in the chilly night air. She wanted to see how the moonlight shone on Cooper’s feathers as he flew home to her.
Tricia was the last one to leave. Bonnie went first to go warm up the car, but Tricia lingered just a little. She elbowed Gretchen so Gretchen would scoot over and give her some more room on the porch swing, and the two of them rocked back and forth.
“Why are we sitting out here?” Tricia said after a second. “It’s freezing.”
“I’m waiting for Cooper. You’re being a tagalong little sister.”
�
��That’s me,” Tricia agreed. She shivered dramatically.
Gretchen bumped their shoulders together. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re tagging along tonight. I still owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“For making you bite me when we were kids. I was just... desperate. I felt left out. Like I didn’t really belong with the rest of you.”
“I had nightmares about it for a long time,” Tricia admitted. “You don’t know how scary it was to see you fall down like that. You were in so much pain. But it was a long time ago, and I don’t blame you at all. I would have done the exact same thing. I would have done it if I’d thought it would make me more popular in junior high, for God’s sake, let alone unlock half my soul and make me feel more like I was part of the family.” She looped her arm through Gretchen’s and squeezed it. “But you always belonged with the rest of us. You know that, right?”
“I do. I promise.”
“Not just because you can shift. Just because you’re Gretchen.”
“I know,” Gretchen said. She really did. She really, finally did.
She could tell that came across in her voice, because Tricia grinned. “Good. And your mate belongs with us, too, so tell him to get used to being swamped with Millers too.”
No one deserved a Miller family love-swarm more.
Gretchen smiled. “I’ll tell him.”
After she hugged Tricia goodbye, she stood on the porch for another minute, looking up at the stars.
There he was! She could see the broad outline of Cooper’s wings. When he got closer, each feather stood out like it was outlined in gleaming silver. He was so beautiful that he made her heart ache, and she didn’t want to be away from him for another moment.
She stepped off the porch and shivered into her griffin form, stretching out her wings and flexing her paws in the snow.
Cooper was almost home now.
Gretchen leapt up into the sky to meet him.
Epilogue
Most people wouldn’t spend their honeymoon in a broken-down motel in the middle of nowhere, but then, Cooper Dawes and Gretchen Miller weren’t most people.