Wings of Destiny (Great Plains Dragon Feud Book 5)

by Emilia Hartley

  Wings of Destiny

  Emilia Hartley

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, businesses and incidents are from the author’s imagination, or they are used fictitiously and are definitely fictionalized. Any trademarks or pictures herein are not authorized by the trademark owners and do not in any way mean the work is sponsored by or associated with the trademark owners. Any trademarks or pictures used are specifically in a descriptive capacity.

  Copyright 2021 © Emilia Hartley

  Emilia’s Heartlies

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  Contents

  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

  What’s Next In the Great Plains Dragon Feud Series?

  More Emilia Hartley Series

  Heartlies Box Sets

  Thank you!

  1

  Reece Montoya flew over his family’s territory because it was about as far away from the drama as he could get. His sisters had formed mate bonds with supposedly villainous Barnes shifters, sending Alice Montoya into a furious frenzy. Reece couldn’t stand his mother’s desperate grasp for the little power that remained in their family. He couldn’t stand the way she made a loud fuss to cover up her mixed feelings over her daughters’ happiness.

  It was all so pointless to him. Reece knew that he wouldn’t find the same kind of love. His beast refused to attach to anyone. He’d thrown himself at love time and time again. Now, he knew it would only stick for a night. When the sun rose, the rush of passion and infatuation bled out of him and left him as empty as he’d started.

  He tilted his wings and slid his tail to the side. The subtle movements allowed him to bank through the air. Dark clouds rolled in, covering the stars. A wall of falling snow appeared before him. He tensed right before he crashed through it. The world on the other side was dim.

  The wind whipped him back and forth. He didn’t mind. He rode the chaotic currents and let them guide the way. The snowstorm’s frantic nature calmed him in a strange way. As the outside grew wilder and wilder, his erratic thoughts settled.

  The Barnes family had been their enemies for generations. Ever since Logan Montoya went to ground after Elliana Barnes’s betrayal, the Montoya family had done their best to steer clear of those assholes. Well, it turned out that the Barnes shifters weren’t all that bad.

  Reece had been confused when his cousin, Gale, fell for the goth Barnes woman. Reece had brushed it off as a kind of compulsion. Maybe Gale had a thing for goth girls and needed to get it out of his system. But it had been weeks, and the two of them were still head over heels.

  Then, Cash had found himself a Barnes woman. One by one, Reece’s sisters formed bonds with Barnes men. While Reece could have brushed off Gale and Cash’s relationships as folly, the girls were different. Reece trusted their decisions. Neither would love evil men.

  In a way, Reece was jealous of them. Reece had tried to fall in love and failed too many times to count. He couldn’t imagine giving his heart to anyone the way his sisters had given themselves over to their Barnes mates. Reece would never be so lucky.

  He tucked in his wings and twisted his body. He spiraled through the air, the world around him turning into a grey blur. His heart pumped. When his wings snapped out, the tip of his right wing collided with something solid.

  Though he felt no pain, his heart lurched into his throat. A creature made a pained noise. He turned just in time to see a white shape plummeting out of the sky. It was so small, there was no way he would have noticed it in this storm. He pulled his wings in again and sped toward the falling creature.

  Closer, he could make out the familiar shape of feathered wings. The human part of his mind recognized it as a snowy owl. The poor thing was fragile compared to Reece’s massive dragon form. He feared he might have killed it.

  Though the wind buffeted them both, he caught up to the creature and managed to cradle it in his claws. He threw out his wings to slow their descent and gently touched the ground. He debated shifting forms and walking the owl back to his house where he could tend to it. Walking wasn’t the best idea in a storm like this.

  So, he pushed off the snow and leapt into the air once more. He held the owl close to protect it from the harsh winds and pelting snow. This creature should have been hunkered down for the night. Every smart owl knew not to screw around during a storm like this.

  But Reece also knew better. He should have been more aware of his surroundings. He’d been lost in his thoughts and blind to what was going on around him.

  His cabin came into view at the edge of the storm. Landing, he shifted back and clutched the owl close to his chest. He didn’t bother getting dressed. The wounded owl was more important to him. He found his emergency kit, stocked with everything he needed to help a bird of prey on the fly.

  The creature stirred and whimpered when he touched its wing. It was snapped in two places. He sighed, guilt stirring.

  “Come on, Reece,” he muttered to himself. “You’re better than this.”

  The owl shrank away from him, as if it recognized his name. He rocked back on his heels and cocked his head as the owl tried to get to its feet. The bird swayed unsteadily.

  “You’re in no shape to go anywhere like that,” he warned the creature.

  It couldn’t understand him, though. He’d been working with birds for years. His first job had been at the local aviary when he was barely a teen. He’d fallen so in love with the place that he’d never looked back. Since then, he’d rehabilitated hundreds of birds and released them back into the wild. He’d even gotten to fly alongside a few of them.

  It was much more gratifying than anything else his life had to offer.

  Reece set the bird’s wing the best he could. The poor owl slept face first on the towel he’d set out. He stood back and considered how strange this bird was, but it was just a bird.

  When he was finished and he looked around, the cabin was too empty. The rooms were hollow. The floor to ceiling window in the living room revealed the empty silence of the woods. He couldn’t stand the hollowness of it all.

  Flying had allowed him a moment of freedom, but alone in his human form, all Reece could think of was how empty his arms were. He yearned to feel the press of flesh against flesh. He wanted to taste a woman’s lips and explore her body.

  Restless, he dressed and shoved his feet into a pair of boots. He clicked a button on his keyfob and heard the engine outside roar to life. With a glance back at the owl on his counter, he shrugged. It wasn’t going to go anywhere. If it woke and panicked, he could calm it down.

  Reece went to the nearest bar. He bought a drink for the first woman to look him in the eye. Three drinks in, he pulled her onto the dance floor and pretended to not know what he was doing so that she would lead him. He savored her hands on him and how close she stood.

  But it wasn’t enough. Reece craved more. He wanted to take her home, but he knew the wounded owl in his kitchen would bother her. Women loved that he rehabilitated birds, but they never wanted to see it firsthand. They lik
ed the idea of it more than the practice.

  He couldn’t take her home, and he didn’t feel like spending the night in a stranger’s bed. At the end of the evening, she followed him outside. She kissed him under the streetlight. He waited to feel something, but nothing happened. There was no rush of adrenaline or excited flutter of his heart.

  Nothing.

  He tried to ignore the look of disappointment on her face when he said goodnight.

  Teagan heard his name.

  Reece.

  There was a Montoya man by that name. She had to leave, but her body hurt too much. She tried to stand, but the pain overwhelmed her. What had hit her?

  She never should have tried to fly tonight. The storm had caught her by surprise. If she’d bothered to check the local weather radar, she would have seen it coming. She would have stayed home.

  Instead, she’d taken to the skies like a fool. Her hunger for the freedom had overpowered her ability to reason. Locked inside for days, Teagan needed a small taste. She’d meant to stick to the area around the town. Then the storm had blown her off course.

  “You’re in no shape to go anywhere like that,” he’d said.

  She could remember his face. Shaggy red hair had framed his strong jaw and showcased a roman nose. His soft eyes had surprised her. Montoya men didn’t have soft eyes.

  He’d been shirtless, too. No, not shirtless. The man had been stark naked. The image of his firm buttocks flashed through her bird brain. She would have laughed at her own foolishness if she didn’t have a beak.

  But before she could even think of shifting back, the darkness crept in and beckoned her. She issued one quick warning to her beast, urging it to stay in control. If the Montoya man discovered that he’d brought home a Barnes shifter, then there would be hell to pay. She couldn’t risk shifting.

  She couldn’t…

  2

  Reece stirred before the first rays of morning light. Unable to get back to sleep, he decided to check in on the owl and make himself a cup of coffee. The sight in his kitchen stopped him dead in his tracks. Stuck in the hall, he stared at the unconscious woman on his kitchen counter.

  He tried to reason that she was some sort of Goldilocks home invader that had snuck into his cabin in the middle of the night, but he saw the splint under her arm. The bandages had snapped and fallen away, but the splint was still trapped between her body and her arm. Bruises mottled the pale skin of that arm, filling Reece with remorse. The platinum-haired vixen gently snoozing on the counter was the owl he’d brought home.

  Reece managed one step forward. The floor creaked beneath his foot. The woman sprang up, eyes wide and hair wild. She rolled back off the counter. For the span of a heartbeat, Reece had a wonderful view of the woman’s naked backside. Then she dropped down and disappeared.

  He released a breath and shook his head. How had he not known? He’d been distracted by his thoughts and his base needs. That distraction had blinded him to the distinctive shifter scent that clung to every shape-changer.

  “Can I have a shirt?” she asked from behind the counter.

  Reece nodded then realized she couldn’t see him. “Sure. I’ll be right back. Don’t run off anywhere. I have questions.”

  She mumbled something, but he couldn’t quite make it out. Instead of prodding her to speak louder, Reece retreated. He snatched a shirt from the floor of his bedroom. The long sleeves flapped wildly as he raced back down the hall.

  The woman peered over the top of the counter. Her grey eyes brought a possessive growl out of his beast. The sound stopped Reece dead in his tracks. Reeling from the reaction, he sucked in a breath.

  She extended an arm over the counter and made a grabby hand gesture. The motion snapped him out of his daze. He slowly approached while a part of his mind attempted to process what his dragon was trying to tell him. She yanked the shirt out of his grasp.

  It vanished behind the counter. A second later, she stood. The button-up shirt hung open, exposing the milky expanse of skin between her breasts before her nimble fingers closed the buttons.

  “I’m sorry about hurting you last night,” Reece said. “I was being careless.”

  She shrugged, her gaze lowered. “It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have been in the sky.”

  The tone of her voice dragged another growl out of his beast. This time, it was aimed at whoever convinced this woman that she was small and needed to apologize. She seemed to shrink in front of him, as if she felt the need to disappear from the world altogether.

  If she became any smaller, she might vanish completely. His core clenched with fear. It drove him forward.

  “You’re welcome to stay while you recover!” He didn’t mean to raise his voice.

  Clenching his jaw tight, Reece took a step back. When he lifted his gaze again, he noticed her holding her bruised arm. A small grimace reached the corner of her lips.

  “Why haven’t you healed yet?” Again, he could have kicked himself for blurting out everything that came to mind.

  “I don’t, ah, shift all that often,” she said. She reached for her wrist, her fingers wrapping around bare skin.

  His brow furrowed. “So, you chose the night of a blizzard to go flying? As an owl shifter?”

  She groaned and descended behind the counter once again. He rounded it to find her on the floor with her arms around her knees. She lifted her chin to glance at him, then went back to staring at the floor.

  “Alright,” he said, drawing out the word. “I hope you don’t mind if I make myself a cup of coffee. I might figure out how to keep my mouth shut after I’ve had a dose of caffeine.”

  She huffed. He assumed that was as much of a laugh as he was going to get out of her for now. He went about setting up his coffee maker, shaking his hips and bobbing his head to a song trapped in his skull the entire time. When he checked in on the girl on his floor, she was smiling.

  Of course, she immediately looked away. She covered her face with her hands and let her head fall against the cabinets behind her.

  Reece didn’t know what she was dealing with, but he knew how to distract a woman.

  He wiggled a cup of coffee under her nose. “Care to share a cup with me?”

  She pulled her hands away from her face and started to wrap them around the mug. She pulled away, hissing as she shook her fingers.

  She’s not a dragon shifter, dumbass. Reece scolded himself and found a hand-knit contraption that his sister gave him. After a moment of trying to figure it out, he managed to get the yarn sleeve to fit around the mug and handed it back to her.

  She stared at the liquid’s dark surface like it might reveal its esoteric secrets before extending her hand to accept the mug. Something in his chest swung open. A vault long forgotten beckoned him to explore its dark corners, but he didn’t know what he might find, so he slammed it shut once more and leaned his hips against the counter behind him.

  Teagan was going to be in so much trouble when she left this cabin. Her father was going to go on a rampage if he found out where she was. She’d managed to keep him out of her life up until recently. Her sister, Ember, had stirred things in an effort to be a closer family.

  Ember hadn’t bothered to ask Teagan what she wanted beforehand, though. Teagan had been happy with her unassuming existence. She’d been fine with moving on and pretending that the past had never happened. Bridges didn’t deserve to be rebuilt if the one who burnt them couldn’t stop from burning them again.

  Callum Barnes might have adopted her after her mother walked away, but he hadn’t been much better than her mother. They’d both abandoned her, just in different ways.

  Teagan shook herself out of her spiraling thoughts. Pain flared from her shoulder, all the way down her arm. The coffee mug tilted precariously. The red-haired man lurched forward and snatched it from her before it could spill.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He watched her a moment too long, blinked, and blushed. “Not a problem. Are you okay?
I’m not a doctor, but I can take another look at your arm if you’d like.”

  She managed a wry half-smile. “You patched me up pretty well last night. Between your hands and my shift, everything should be in the right place. It will be a while before I heal completely, though.”

  His brow furrowed. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Like I said, I don’t shift often enough. My beast is weak and my fa—my fear of flying keeps me on the ground.”

  She couldn’t discern the meaning behind the sound he made. He nodded, as if he understood. If he noticed her fumbling her words, he said nothing.

  She’d almost blamed her father for her shitty healing abilities. Though her predicament was Callum’s fault, she didn’t need to say that to every stranger she met. Besides, this guy would probably agree with her father after the night she’d had. Callum told her to stay out of the skies because this was dragon territory.

  A collision with a dragon could easily kill her while she was in her owl shape. Her father never missed an opportunity to remind her that she was safer pretending to be human, even if that meant healing at a snail’s pace.

  Teagan had struggled to comply with her father’s wishes in the beginning. Her bird’s natural desire to explore the open air had been irresistible and had gotten her into trouble a few times. After that, she’d donned a silver-plated bracelet. The meager amount of silver had kept her bird at bay.

  Even if it made her sick.