by Ivy Asher
I gasp and sit up straight in the bed. I pant, desperately pulling deep gulps of air into my lungs. With wide scared eyes, I look around to find I’m in the tree room I was in before. It’s night, and the space is dipped in shadows. I scrub at my face with my hands and groan. What a fucked up dream. What the hell was that all about?
A shadowed figure rises in the corner, and I squeal, terrified, and clamber back away from it. The darkness-cloaked figure steps into a sliver of moonlight to reveal Ryn. He looks alarmed. I slam a hand to my chest and glare at him.
“You scared the shit out of me!” I whisper growl at him, my heart hammering in my chest and my breathing just on the verge of hyperventilation.
“You scared me!” he whisper yells back. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt? I almost lost you, Falon,” he tells me, reaching for me as I scramble out of the bed so I can round on him. I’m completely naked, but I’m so mad I don’t even care right now.
“Why didn’t I tell you I was hurt? You shot me out of the fucking sky, Ryn, how could I not have been hurt?” I snap at him, stepping to get into his face—more like chest because the fucker is so damn tall. That just pisses me off even more. I can’t even yell and intimidate him like I want to, because he’s the size of a well-muscled building.
“Exactly when was I supposed to reveal anything to you? When you choked me to the point of unconsciousness? When you spewed vague shit at me in the cell I woke up in, before you just up and disappeared? Should I have shouted it at you when I stood in front of you and your good buddy Lazza? Oh no, I got it, I should have told the psycho bitch you sent to mark me. The one who knocked me out and then ran off just as soon as I opened my eyes again.”
Ryn takes little steps back as I press angrily forward. His eyes narrow and fill with frustration as I rant and spew judgment and anger at him.
“I didn’t know that was you in the sky!” he growls back at me. He stops his retreat and leans toward me, his features and body language furious. “I thought you were safe back in the Eyrie. How was I supposed to know that your word means nothing?” he accuses.
“Oh fuck you. I had no choice. Maybe if you and Zeph didn’t think it was perfectly fine to leave me in the dark about everything, I’d have known what I was flying into,” I counter.
“Leave you in the dark?” Ryn questions, advancing on me.
I take one step back before I can rein in my flight instincts and then refuse to give him anymore of my space.
“Yes, Ryn, you have me flying out here in fucking pitch black. Care to tell me what you’re doing here?”
Ryn folds his thick arms over his chest, brushing against my bare breasts. Sensation zings down through my abdomen, but I refuse to be distracted by my physical reactions to him.
“That’s what I thought,” I snark. “You can’t blind me and then get pissed when I slam into something because of it.”
“We’re not blinding you, Falon, what I’m doing here is complicated, and it’s between me and Zeph. We’re in the middle of a war, and that’s all you need to know,” he tells me cryptically.
“Oh, well, in that case, I’ll just fly my happy ass home, like I’ve been trying to do since I woke up in this hell hole of a world. I don’t fucking belong here in the middle of a war I don’t understand or care about!” I shout at him.
Ryn moves to cover my mouth and quiet me. I slap his hand away, and we both square off.
“You belong here now, and your stubborn wings should be safe and sound in the Eyrie, waiting for me to come back!” he scolds.
“Well, that’s never going to fucking happen, because even if you can get me out of this place, Zeph will kill me if you take me back.” I mentally facepalm as that last little detail slips out of my mouth. There’s no way I can tell Ryn everything that happened. If he knows what I am or what I’m apparently capable of, he might not help me anymore, or worse, he might just throw me to the wolves like Zeph did. Zeph said I’d be hunted and used, and that’s the last fucking thing I need to go down while I’m stuck here.
“What the rut happened between you and Zeph after I left?” Ryn demands.
I glare at him. “It’s complicated and between me and Zeph,” I mock, parroting the lame excuse he just gave me.
Ryn growls and throws his hands up in exasperation. “You’re impossible! Why can’t you just trust us and listen to what we tell you to do?”
“Why should I trust you?” I volley.
“Because you’re…” Ryn cuts himself off, annoyance etched into every one of his features.
“I’m what?” I challenge, shoving at him, fed up with all the censorship and omissions.
“Because you’re a gryphon,” he finishes, but I can feel the lie in it, feel the wrongness in what’s not being said. Fire burns inside of me, and in a blink, my vision changes, my size grows, and the irritated growl in my chest reverberates around the room like the snarl of a predator that’s going in for the kill.
“Pigeon!” I cheer, relief and excitement crashing through me.
She towers over Ryn, pissed, and in the driver’s seat of our gryphon body. I’m so fucking happy to see her, and I can’t believe that my argument with Ryn shoved aside the fact that I was waking up from supposedly being healed.
“Fuck, Pigeon, I missed you so much, are you okay?” I ask, scanning our massive gryphon form for any signs of injury.
Pigeon sends me a wave of warmth and then an image of a lion dropping a heavy paw on its cub.
“Did you just gryphon speak that you want me to shut up?” I ask incredulously. “And if anyone in this scenario is a baby, that’d be you, Pidge,” I argue.
She sends me another image of a paw batting a cub away. The cub goes flying, and a pure wave of Pigeon’s satisfaction rolls through me. I gape at the mental gryphon bitch-slap that just happened, but the snarl still rumbling out of our chest drowns out my outrage. Pigeon takes a menacing step, towering over Ryn, and I wait, fully expecting his gryphon to show up and try to put us in our place. Pigeon is fucking pissed, and I give her a mental wing five, glad to see that she’s just as over this bullshit as I am.
Curiosity smashes through my gray matter when Ryn’s gryphon doesn’t go all caveman and rip out of his body, ready for a fight. Instead, sorrow streaks through Ryn’s gray gaze before he drops it to the floor. Ryn tilts his head to the left, exposing his neck. I watch, not sure what to make of any of this. There’s a hum of that’s what I thought rippling through Pigeon, and she drops the curve of her razor sharp beak right where Ryn’s neck meets his stone chiseled shoulder.
Ryn stiffens, and Pigeon releases a warning growl. I can’t tell what she’s doing, but it feels like Ryn is walking a fine line right now. One wrong move, and I can tell that Pigeon will rip him apart. Alarm blares through me, and I don’t know what to do. Yeah, I’m pissed at Ryn, and in my mind, I’d happily rip him apart, but I don’t actually want him to die. I make that clear to Pigeon, bombarding her with plenty of activate your chill and what the fuck are you doing, but she ignores me.
“I’m sorry, I don’t willingly dishonor you, but there’s so much more going on than you understand,” Ryn whispers softly, his breath tickling the feathers of our chest.
Pigeon really doesn’t like that answer. Fury punches me in the face, and I see stars from the mental hit. Pigeon rears us back, and in a split second, I know what she’s going to do. I scream at her to stop. Beg her to understand if she kills him, it could mean our death. She’s been out of it since we got here, she doesn’t know the place that Ryn holds among the Avowed. I shove myself past her, fighting to reclaim every inch of our body. A screech rips out of our beak as we battle for control. Ryn looks confused and takes a few staggering steps back as my form battles between shrinking back into me and staying the rage-filled gryphon that wants to tear Ryn to shreds.
Pigeon and I don’t hold back; it’s all pulling hair and feathers, boob punching, and eye gouges as we both do anything and everything to take control. It�
�s dirty and it’s brutal, but neither one of us wants to let the other win. I hate that I feel her irrational pain beating in my veins. Whatever Ryn and Zeph have done feels like betrayal in its purest form, and it’s fucking hard to not want to just let Pigeon end Ryn and then hunt Zeph down to do the same.
I have to peel her emotions and perceptions from mine, but it’s like ripping something off that’s superglued to your skin. I have no choice if I want Ryn to survive, but it’s leaving me raw and bloody and hurting.
I release a scream as I shove Pigeon away with everything that I have. I find myself on all fours, every muscle I possess locked tight with the effort it takes to control my form. I look up at Ryn, my eyes shifting between the sharp gaze that Pigeon has to mine with every blink. He steps toward me, his arms outstretched like he wants to scoop me up and help, but I shake my head, a warning screech spilling out of my clenched teeth.
“Leave!” I growl out, my control slipping slightly before I clamp down on it again. Ryn’s worried gaze is torn and unsure, and he doesn’t move. “Leave, Ryn, or she’s going to kill you,” I shout at him, and he jerks like I just ran a sword through his chest. He looks horrified, then stunned. Disbelief filters into his gaze, and his hesitation pisses me off.
“Get out, or I’ll let her,” I bellow and feel my body start to shift as Pigeon rams against my control like a feral animal and it starts to crack.
Resignation bleeds into Ryn’s stunned gray stare, and he starts to back away. Pain rips across his face, but I’m too focused on trying to keep him alive and in one piece to care. I may not want him to die, but that doesn’t mean whatever the fuck is going on is right. I keen and beg Pigeon to stop as Ryn reaches for the door, and she goes at me even harder. My senses and size change, and I know I’m seconds away from losing this battle.
“Go!” I scream, the sound a terror-filled demand.
I swear I see devastation flash through Ryn before he slips out the door. Pigeon wails furiously as he disappears, and I feel like we shatter into a million pieces of rage and hurt and betrayal. I don’t know what to do about any of it. I’m locked in a battle with her, and I don’t know what to do or how to console her. She burns with abandonment and drowns in wrath. Tears stream down my face as we war against each other, shifting from gryphon to woman with each breath, emotions hammering away at each other, both of us lost to it all.
I try to explain what’s been going on, to help her understand as flashes of gryphons and knots and fire bombard me. It’s clear that neither of us is understanding the other, and that’s just feeding into even more frustration and fight for control. It hurts so fucking bad, our bones and muscles breaking and reforming over and over again, as we can’t make up our mind who should lead.
A male voice shouts something from the doorway, and I swear to fuck if Ryn comes back in this room, he’ll deserve whatever Pigeon wants to do to him. I scream as my shoulders pop out and the bones in my back start to rip apart. Mismatched eyes appear in front of my face. They’re filled with worry and questions as they take me in. Wonder and surprise fill me, and Pigeon suddenly just stops. I gasp as my body stops shifting and then cry out as my bones snap back into the shape of me.
“What’s happening?” Treno asks, pulling me into his lap, distress twitching through his body.
“Fighting,” I whimper out lamely, panting and shaking from the adrenaline coursing through both Pigeon and me.
“What do you mean?” he asks, running his hands over me and then looking around the room like he expects to find an opponent hidden in the shadows or vines.
“Fighting my gryphon,” I add. “She’s pissed, and I can’t let her kill…” I trail off on a grunt as Pigeon internally sucker punches me.
Understanding pools in Treno’s gaze, but I’m too busy mentally shouting at Pigeon and trying to decipher her images to pay much attention.
“I don’t know what the fuck your problem is. But you can’t go around killing anything and everything that you like! I don’t want to die, and going on a murder spree is only going to get us both killed!” I yell at her.
Again I’m hammered with images of gryphons, knots, fire, a phone, fabric being sewn together, and sex of the gryphon and people variety.
“I don’t know what that means!” I shout at her for the thousandth time, and we both turn our backs to each other and stew in frustration.
I don’t know how everything has gone so wrong in such a short amount of time, but I don’t know if I can take it. It’s one thing for everything on the outside to be fucked up, but this battle now between two pieces of my essence feels like the last fucking straw. Treno asks me something, but a sob shoves its way out of my chest. Out of nowhere, an army of them march their way up my throat and out my lips, arming themselves with the tears streaming down my cheeks. I slam my hands over my face, like somehow it will trap this army of devastation, but I can’t hold them all back. I’m not even sure why I’m trying to anymore.
Treno wraps me up, his arms holding me tightly, as I fragment and splinter. His lips move against my ear, but I can’t hear what he tells me as I bleed out my pain and frustration. There’s a small voice in the back of my mind, telling me that I don’t fucking know this guy and should immediately stop losing my shit all over him, but I don’t have it in me to care. I’m tired of fighting alone and not understanding anything.
I don’t know where to set my feet down or what to point my wings toward. I don’t know what’s safe or how to spot the threats. I feel fucking hopeless. I’ve never had to navigate that emotion before I came here, not when my parents died or my gran passed, not even back when I thought I was latent. Then I wake up in the Eyrie and learn my whole life is lies and bullshit, and all I can seem to feel anymore is helpless and…overwhelmingly hopeless.
A hand strokes from the crown of my head down to the small of my back where my hair ends. It repeats this action over and over again, gently working out the tangles, as my sobs slow. Shuddering breaths pattern my pain, and my tear reserves dry out. Everything around me falls quiet, but that hand keeps stroking down my hair as I’m held tightly against Treno. I soak in his warmth and shamelessly wrap myself in his comfort.
I sniff and ease into an empty calm, every emotion in my body purged. I drop my hands to my lap and rest my cheek against a warm shoulder. We stay like that for a while. I breathe him in. Pigeon evaluates the situation curiously while still flipping me the bird. Treno runs his hand soothingly down my head and back, and we all just exist and settle into a numb kind of peace.
“What can I do to help?” he asks me quietly after a while.
Several beats pass before I take a deep breath and respond. “I need answers, knowledge. I need to understand as much as I can so I can try to make sense of it all. I don’t want to feel lost or hopeless anymore,” I confess quietly.
His hand moves softly to the small of my back and pauses there. “Very well then, let’s go hunt for some answers.”
I sit up, surprised by his easy response. “How?” I ask, hope and uncertainty warring inside my chest.
“We can start with the archives, see if we can find what you’re looking for there. If that turns up nothing, we can check with the seers. If we have to comb the Amaranthine Mountains until we find where you woke up and search the area for clues and answers, we will. We may have to wait until the war is over, but we won’t stop searching for answers until you have them,” he reassures me, brushing strands of hair from my face.
My eyes bounce back and forth between his blue eye and his purple eye. I search them and then his face for any hint of deception or just kidding, but I don’t see anything other than warmth and tenderness there.
“Just like that?” I ask, unable to help myself.
Treno’s brow furrows slightly at my question, and he studies my face.
“Yes,” he answers simply. He brings his hand up and skims my cheek with the back of his fingers.
“Okay,” I agree, my gaze dropping to his lips moment
arily before I move to get out of his lap.
He stands up with me, and I move toward the door, ready to see what we can find.
“You may want to get dressed first, flower,” he calls to my back with a chuckle.
I look down and am quickly reminded that I’m completely naked.
Shit.
I whirl around and just catch Treno adjusting himself. He’s in soft leather pants and a well-fitted tunic. Hunger unfurls in my gut, and I trace every line of muscle and every smooth expanse of fabric over his incredible body with needy eyes. His long white hair falls over one shoulder, and I want to push it back so no inch of his upper body is obstructed. Satisfaction grows like a seedling in my chest, and I cough and narrow my eyes at its presence.
Pigeon!
I know without a shadow of doubt that the little turkey is back to fucking with me. She may be pouting in the corner right now, but she knows nothing pisses me off like when she scrambles my hormones. You’d think the winged menace would have learned her lesson with Ryn and Zeph, but no, here we go again.
I blink and try to clear my head of the lust-spiked fog currently rolling through my mind.
“I don’t have any clothes,” I tell him, ignoring my heavy breasts and the zings of anticipation flickering between my thighs.
He smiles slowly. “Well, we’ll have to sort that out too then, I suppose.”
“Oh, you suppose?” I ask on a flirty giggle that has me mentally bitch-slapping myself and barking out a steady, girl as if that alone will corral my libido and force it to behave.
I scan Treno’s body one more time for the memory banks and then cut that shit out. Answers, knowledge, and a plan...that’s what I need to focus on. Abs, assholes, and gryphon shifters are nothing but trouble, and I’m fucking done with them.
Maybe.
Definitely.
Probably.
6
The heavy tome in my hands closes with a thunk, and I let out a sigh. Nothing in this one either. I offer a small smile at the archivist who passes by the table Treno had brought in here just for me. I slowly stand to go track down the next edition in the extensive genealogy records the Avowed have kept of their people. The only problem is, Gryphons and the Ouphe live just a skosh shy of forever. The records of their ancestry fill up several buildings on their own, and it’s going to take me a while to go through the last five hundred years, which is where I started. I’m pretty sure my parents weren’t more than five hundred years old, but the more I learn about Gryphons and the Ouphe, the more I’m starting to wonder.
