“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.