Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“How?” Bram asked, desperate for an answer. “How do you keep from being sucked into the abyss?”
“Clan,” Adam said at once. “We’re not in the fight alone. Neither are you.” He stopped the vehicle so he could look at Bram. “You’re Eleri’s family, so you’re mine, too. Which makes you part of WindHaven.”
Bram didn’t know how to take that, how to imagine being part of a family that wasn’t formed on a foundation of pain and fissures of the soul.
“And I don’t care what you and Dahlia get up to in your own time,” Adam said, “but she’s got wounds of her own. Don’t hurt her.”
Bram wondered what the wing leader would say if he told him that Bram wasn’t the one in charge, not by a long shot. He felt winded, as if he’d taken a blow…and he wanted to go back for another one.
• • •
“I’m pretty sure Dahlia’s about to take Bram’s virginity,” Adam told Eleri late the next night while the hospital lay cloaked in soft evening light around them.
He’d flown in to see her on the wing, after having spent the day being the leader his clan needed him to be—with Dr. Czajka as well as Max and Sophia sending him regular updates.
Those updates had all been the same: No change.
“Though,” he added, “your friend looks like he might be the type to have broken that rule already.”
Eleri’s chest rose and fell in silence.
Picking up the lip balm Malia had given him, he slicked it with tender care over Eleri’s lips so they wouldn’t dry out. As he moved, the material of the scrubs one of Dr. Czajka’s nurses had given him after he arrived in falcon form made a soft rustling noise.
“Malia told me this stuff is ‘magic!’ and gave me stern instructions to put it on you.” Amir and Saoirse’s fledgling was already determinedly bouncing back—and had thrown herself headfirst into Project El-Shield, the name for the project Malia’s brainchild.
“All fledglings have a few falls when they first start learning to fly—we make sure it’s from low heights. But where most sit in the dirt stunned and confused until a parent comes over to dust them off, I remember watching Malia bounce up, dust off her wings on her own, and run over to Amir on those tiny falcon feet to ask to go again.”
He’d grinned that day, delighted by her and knowing he’d forever remember her aggravated little face as she dusted off her fluffy wings before she got excited again and ran over. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need softness.”
Adam had taken her with him to his aerie this morning, and they’d sat with their legs dangling off the edge of the exit into the canyon, with him cuddling her to his side while she poured out everything in her head and in her heart as he fed her small bites of breakfast.
Tough as she was, Malia needed to be spoiled and coddled until the fright passed, to be the baby bird under her wing leader’s care. As did Tahir, the younger brother who loved to irritate Malia but who’d die for her. He was shaken by the thought that he hadn’t been able to protect her from a predator. Adam had taken the boy flying, and they’d spoken beside Tahir’s favorite grotto. The changeling sense of hierarchy would help here—Tahir’s falcon understood the weight of responsibility was Adam’s.
He’d spent time with Polly, too, the sweet girl who was still distraught over her friend’s abduction from only meters away. “All the affected fledglings are talking about what happened,” he told Eleri. “That’s a good sign. It means it won’t turn into a slow-acting poison within. I also reached out to the families of their dates and arranged for the boys to come on up to the Canyon to see Malia and Polly.”
Naia was monitoring the entire situation and would arrange for empathic counseling because she was adamant that now they had access to the Es again, the clan should make such counseling part of their medical arsenal—per WindHaven’s own ancient records, which Naia had dug up, Es had performed that function for the clan before the Psy immured themselves in Silence.
He exhaled. “And yeah, I’m pissed with myself for not seeing the snake in our midst, but I’ll deal with it.”
Picking up Eleri’s hand, he clasped his own around it. “As for Bram and Dahlia and his impending debauchment, Wild Woman magazine is a staple in the Canyon, and word is that there are a lot of very dangerous Psy walking around who are in fact novices in the sheets. I wonder if Dahlia realizes that.”
He wondered if Eleri would’ve laughed at the idea of Dahlia seducing Bram, or if she’d have felt protective of her chosen brother. He wished he could ask her, wished she was awake to tell him, wished the two of them could lie tangled in bed as the sun rose and discuss the unexpected attraction between his wing-second and her friend.