WingSpan (Taken on the Wing Book 1) (22 page)

“Yes,” he whispers as he repacks the weapon.

“A real one?” she pushes.

“Yes,” he snaps, somewhat offended but her eyes are huge as they fly back and forth between the disappearing blade and his armour. Damn it. He’d been just as amazed by the first one he’d seen unsheathed and the ranger who owned it had been a hell of a lot more courteous. Cloud doubts her eyes, not his honesty.

“Yes,” he tries again and holds the sheathed sword out to her.

Talon has to hold back a laugh when he realizes she’s stopped breathing but can’t when she barely keeps it from dropping to the floor.

He gives her a minute before he relieves her of it and rolls it up with his other weapons.

“Cloud, take these to the anti-room where Sire Lev and his guard are hosted.”

The girl’s mouth hangs open.

“Unless you can’t manage the heavy bags.”

Cloud scowls at the slight as Talon knew she would. There’s only one way to get things done when it comes to gryphons. Their pride will never let them turn down anything as long as he presents it as hard and he’s not disappointed. She holds her head so high she’s nearly facing the stone ceiling.

“Very well,” Talon touches her just under the chin.

Chapter Eighteen

Shadow waits in a corner of the main cavern with Lev and Soar when Talon steps from the tunnel. In spite of Lev’s affection, her nervousness is easy to pick up. Talon’s stomach doesn’t lurch at their closeness now that he knows how they’re related. His female’s sire is part of the protective net he casts around her.

Shadow notices his approach and moves to join him, taking a few steps away from Soar in the process. Her unease ramps up until her focus is entirely on Talon. Something has gone on between her and the master of Lev’s guard. Soar saw them together but Shadow doesn’t know that. It’s something else that puts the lead weight of grief in her heart.

“Talon,” she smiles though she keeps her distance. Somebody’s pure white garments hang from her and he’s certain they’re Tawny’s. Even though she appears like a child in her dame’s clothes the set of her shoulders says she’s had it with surprises. Jesus, if he couldn’t feel her inner turmoil he’d never know she’d been through hell today.

“Shadow,” Talon replies with a bow of his head.

“I took off because it just got too weird,” her brow wrinkles with worry as her mouth makes a little O. Then her arms stick out to tell him precisely what weird meant. “I mean I ran out. I spent the night at a hotel and when I went back to your place the next day you were gone—”

“Shadow, I—”

“Shut it, Talon,” she snaps and he glances at Lev. Everyone in the chamber including the Sire can hear Talon being told off. Lev’s firm nod tells Talon he’s on Shadow’s side. Each word Shadow speaks seems to lighten her mood ever so slightly so he’ll let her unload on him here at least for a while.

“I bussed as far as Jasper and decided I couldn’t face you in Parksville either then last night Torrent grabbed me out of my hotel room and I woke up in a hole in the fucking wall,” she points twice in the air to emphasize her last two words. Yeah, she was held right where he thought but for her to wind up so close for days before she was brought in? Damn, if he’d just looked a little harder he could have eased her transition to gryphon life.

“Then all I had to eat was a plate of meat I could hardly see until I had to put on the itchy clothes—”

“I know, Shadow,” Talon tries to hold her but she takes a step away, palms up stopping him like she did before.

“Tawny says I’m the leader of an eyrie. Lev is my father and I have a guard?” Her chin comes up like she’s daring him to talk again and even though it sounds like a question he doesn’t speak. “We’re married or something? We bit each other and you touched my tears but I can’t be mad at you for not telling that would go down since you wouldn’t have suspected I thought I was human… still feel like a human.”

Shadow grabs his branded arm in both hands then turns to glare at Lev.

“What did my father do to you?” she demands, lips red with anger and her scent clear through the fragrance from her bath.

“It’s your mark, Shadow. I’m the master of your royal guard like Soar is master of your sire’s,” Talon drops to one knee, pulling his arm free and offering his hand in exchange. There’s a little stress twitch under her eye and this is as far as he’s going to let her go in public. Shadow seems to get it and as she looks around the crowded chamber she leans down to take his arm again.

“I know exactly what it means,” she turns toward Soar and much to Talon’s surprise Soar steps behind Lev. Damn, she’s formidable but if she’s going to have a blowout at anyone it will be him and not here.

“Where is your den?”

“Um,” Shadow turns several times trying to get her bearings and points up. “Tawny says there’s a tunnel up there with my things in it. There’s a den all set up for me but I can’t get up there or back down.”

Talon stands and she lets him pick her up.

“I know the one, hold on.”

As he spreads his wings the center of the room clears and after a few steps he kicks off from the ground. Shadow’s shoulder gets up in his throat as she holds on for dear life. “I got you, tight turns.”

And he means it. Talon has to circle as they climb high then they cross. His wings fold behind him as he lands a few feet inside the opening.

“Don’t leave me up here, please?”

“Not unless you throw me out.”

Instead of putting her down, Talon carries her through the long tunnel, not missing the irony that it’s more like taking a human bride over the threshold than anything else. Nothing would make him want their first encounter any different than it was but taking her on the wing has been a long time coming.

“We’re in the den,” Talon says and she unfolds, putting her feet on the ground. Although he can make things out it’s pitch black to her. “Don’t move.”

But she doesn’t listen and clings to his elbow as he goes to the dark light on the wall. Talon places his palms over what looks like a glass-smooth bulge and lets them part as he blows, a warm open mouthed sigh. Silver light floods the room and Talon has to adjust his eyes so he’s not blinded.

“How did you do that?” she gasps.

He takes her hands and places them over the light then pulls them apart.

“Blow, cold air, pucker your lips.”

She does and the light goes out.

“Ha!” Such a small thing fills her with triumph. “How do I turn it back on?”

“Warm air; just exhale with your mouth open.”

In only a couple of seconds they stand in light and Shadow turns so quickly he has to check his balance before he falls on her.

“How long have you been able to read my mind?”

“I can’t,” Talon explains. “I have an idea what you’re feeling but not what makes you feel it or what you’re thinking.”

“How long?”

Her stare makes his heart pound both because he’s got her complete attention and because he dreads making her angry. He can’t decide which is sexier.

“Before I saw you I felt this pain coming up behind me on the highway: failure, shame. When you stopped beside me I had to say something.”

Shadow nods, her attention far away and Talon knows she’s thinking about her brother.

“I’d quit drinking for a week,” she whispers. “I was going where nobody knew me to buy vodka.

“Look, some things are really, really private. I don’t want to know that you know if I’m upset.”

“That’s not all that’s bothering you, is it?”

“No,” she takes his arm and turns him so it’s in the light. “Terry was all I loved for twenty-eight years and until I met you the booze was the only thing that got me through. Not much of a future. No future at all really, without him.”

“Condor,” Talon tries. “He was Condor. I met him once ten years ago.”

“Then you knew Condor better than I did. My brother was Terry. A big blonde adorable man with an alpha streak a mile wide. Nothing ever got him down. He’d stand up to anything like a giant fir in a west coast winter storm, arrogant as hell like a big fuck you to the world.”

She pauses, her fingers tracing the air over one burned line after another, following their curves over his ash darkened skin like she’s committing them to memory.

“When he died the world didn’t feel right anymore. Something had shifted underneath me and it didn’t start to feel stable again until the day we met.”

“Shadow,” Talon whispers, trying for a kiss but she doesn’t look up from his arm. It’s the closest thing to love she’s admitted and he understands why she’s so cautious to connect with anyone again; her brother gone in an instant, snatched from her arms.

“I thought I saw… now I’m sure I saw an angel come for him. We lived in six foster homes until we left the system. Some were more religious than others and we were expected to at least participate in the beliefs of our foster families. Lev says when we were six he introduced himself to Terry. It was then my brother lost interest in church but I didn’t. I believed in angels and heaven, sometimes more than others and lying there on the road looking at my dead brother, when the angel came, I knew he was there to take him to heaven.

“Talon,” Shadow’s eyes are wet with the agony in her spirit. “The only thing that kept me from following him to the grave was that it was a sin and I’d never go to heaven to be with him. I believed Terry was an angel and one day we’d be together again.

“Then today, Lev walked in with the angel who knelt next to Terry’s body.”

“Soar.”

“Yes, Soar,” she sighs. “And I knew he wasn’t an angel and Terry didn’t go to heaven and everything I tried to imagine about him watching over me was a lie.”

Shit, he can’t even tell her it isn’t a lie, because that would be one.

“Lev says the night he died they took his body from the basement of the hospital and the females blessed him then they put him back. I don’t know what he meant. There was no service for him, nothing official anyway. His biker friends got drunk. When I could ride again I took his ashes to Tofino. I stopped where the accident happened and fell apart for a while before I took him to the beach and left him there, in the waves and on the rocks.

“Even a little bit in the couch he loved. We used to rent a cabin there on weekends sometimes and hang out.

“Everything that’s happened, it’s all here,” she holds her palm over the burn. Her heat makes it sting but Talon doesn’t move. “On you.”

“Shadow,” Talon picks her up and she tucks her head in next to his chin and wraps her legs around his hips, arms tight around herself.

“I know,” she answers before he can speak. “I’m stronger for it but right here, right now, I don’t have to be.”

“No, you don’t,” Talon kneels on their sleeping mat and waits for her to straighten up.

The thought of seeing her winged is entrancing, her tail moving, echoing the curve of her hips as it brushes against his. “Tomorrow we leave for your eyrie and I need you to do something for me before we go.”

Yeah, she gets it.

Shadow nods, looking at the great spread of his wings.

“How?”

Easier said than done. After some instructions about using her imagination and her body would do the rest and an hour of trying Shadow flops back on the mat in defeat. Talon’s coaching would be helpful if she could clearly remember it happening to Swift but he won’t turn human to show her. If his patience wasn’t so completely unflappable they’d have bickered themselves into separate corners of the den.