Introduction
Can a broken hero get a second chance at life and love?
Once known as the Iron Eagle of the skies, Eli, a former military hero, now spends his time drowning his regrets in alcohol—until a woman challenges what’s left of his pride.
Yvette, a human with a mission, drags Eli from his pit of misery with a plea he can’t ignore: The world needs you.
And Eli needs something to help him move past grief and guilt.
What this shifter doesn’t expect as he regains his feathery courage, is to fall in love.
But will he have a chance at a happily ever after given the threat facing the world?
Time to be a hero one last time.
Get ready for an action-packed story that starts out in Kodiak Point, Alaska, and ends up in strange and wonderful places. And be warned, in this book, we will finally meet up with some of the characters from Dragon Point. Because it’s a small shifter world, after all.
Welcome to Kodiak Point, where the wildlife might wear clothes, but animal instinct rules the heart.
Prologue
A nice day to fly. Clear blue skies without a wisp of cloud, excellent visibility for miles around, and warm but not too hot at this altitude. As Eli soared—his wings extended to catch the air currents—he formed a shadow on the ground below. A majestic shape.
To think lions were the ones called kings. Everyone knew eagles did regal better. The greatest country in the world used them as their symbol.
Eagles rocked! Especially after a few beers and a rousing line dance.
The earpiece Eli wore remained silent for the moment. It was tucked right into his ear canal and covered by feathers. It usually survived the shift, unlike his clothes—a smart person undressed before shifting. No one wanted another incident. A wing caught inside a sweater could have tragic consequences.
While he’d gotten naked for this mission, he did carry two things in his talons and the instructions in his head. The mission briefing had made the task sound simple, but Eli understood the importance of doing it just right. As squadron leader, success rested on him and the brave soldiers he worked with.
If he should forget, then the earpiece would guide him. Unlikely he’d need prodding, though. He hadn’t gotten his current rank in the military by ignoring orders. A good soldier always obeyed.
Eli’s team—totaling nine, including him—had split into three flights of three. He led the point group, while the others lagged slightly behind, flanking his left and right.
He finally got an update in his earpiece. “Target is approaching the zone. Visual should occur in less than sixty seconds.”
The plane remained on time and followed its secret flight path, coasting low enough to avoid most radar, headed for a range of mountains in Afghanistan. They couldn’t let it reach the rebels. It was up to Eli and his team to stop it.
He couldn’t reply. His eagle shape was good for flying, not talking. He led by example, banking and then flapping to get higher, high enough that the pilots wouldn’t think anything of the dark specks above them. After all, no one expected a two-hundred-pound bird to be in the sky, let alone nine of them.
Eli’s flight—he, with Thomas and Bentley—followed his every move. They’d been training and working together for years now. They knew how to move as if one mind, one body. Once he moved, the other two flights would have started narrowing the gap between them and the plane, setting their plan into motion.
Being eagle-eyed, literally, meant the entire squadron spotted the plane coasting below before they heard it. A dark approaching smudge loaded with weapons that would harm civilians and troops if rebels got their hands on them. They couldn’t allow the fragile peace in the Middle East to shatter.
As the plane moved faster than they could flap, threatening to soon move out of range, Eli’s flight dropped, plummeting feathery missiles whose talons opened once they could read the fine print on the plane. The magnetized bombs smacked the exterior of the craft and clung. Lights blinked on as the devices activated.
“Skree.” He uttered a sharp cry that the receiver he wore would convey. One for success. More than a keening sound, and the mission was a bust. It was also a signal for his crew.
On his exclamation, they veered from the plane, flying hard in the opposite direction.
Seconds later, the bombs exploded, shattering metal and compromising the aircraft. Spinning midair, Eli flapped a few times to flutter as he looked. The plane had suffered catastrophic damage. Flames shot from some of the engines, and the speed had reduced drastically. The aircraft wobbled and, for a moment, it appeared it would spiral. The pilot regained control and damn if he didn’t manage to get it steady as it descended, headed for an open area.
The chances of it landing intact weren’t great. Still, no loose ends.
Uttering a piercing shriek, Eli signaled the other two flights. Swooping in, they herded the plane, dive-bombing it, rendering it blind, making it virtually impossible for the pilot to plan his landing. The mountain got closer. And closer.
The aircraft passed the point of no return. Eli let out a piercing whistle, and his squadron veered, a seamless spin upward and away, pumping their wings for altitude. The plane couldn’t match their maneuverability.
Boom!
Their target smashed and exploded in a fiery ball that destroyed everything inside. A complete success.
All in a day’s work for the Iron Eagle. Another successful mission in a series of them. His last shining moment before the epic fall.
Chapter 1
Many years later…
Stumbling home after an afternoon of drinking, Eli’s not-so-iron stomach heaved and roiled, threatening to splash the road in plain sight of his neighbor peeking through her curtains.
Fuck me. Not again.
The last time Mrs. Parkley had lost her shit, claiming she did enough cleaning up of her husband’s vomit after a night of indulging. She didn’t need to hose Eli’s off, too.
He’d apologized because it was the only thing he could do. He’d been making an effort to avoid throwing up in front of her place. Failing. For some reason, it was like his stomach saw the familiar sight of that frog riding a motorcycle on the front lawn and knew it was almost home. Kind of like how a person had to shit the moment they walked in the door.
If you don’t want to puke, stop getting wasted.
Hmm.
Tough choice.
He should have a drink and think about it when he got home; which, thank fuck wasn’t much farther. Although, using the term home was being kind. It was a mobile home, shabby on the outside and yet spotless inside. Every time he woke hungover, as punishment for once more being weak, he spent an hour or more scrubbing before he went to work at the local fishery. Smelly stuff, but he needed a paycheck. How else would he buy booze?
Kodiak Point didn’t have the free wine samples offered in some cities. Although, the weed he grew in the woods was pretty good. If only the stash he cultivated lasted the whole winter and didn’t make it smell as if a skunk had moved into his place.
The city would have offered better work and classier drugs, but when he got out of the military, he’d moved to the town he’d grown up in, raised by his grandfather—a place far away from people. Humans, to be more exact. He didn’t have a choice because he never knew when he’d get so drunk his eagle would burst free. Started as a teenager at a Halloween party. He’d mixed beer and whiskey. Bad idea. He’d woken up naked on the front lawn with his grandfather glaring at him. His grandfather’s head was bald and shiny, but his brows were bushy caterpillars that could gesture eloquently when he gave Eli a proper dressing down.