The Hidden (Shadowed Wings #1)(51)

On the word yours, he presses as deeply inside of me as he can get and roars out his release. He nips at my neck as he rides out his orgasm and then rolls us over so that I’m once again on top of him. Neither of us say a word as our panting slows into deep measured breaths. Zeph’s quiet snores vibrate through my chest, and I don’t even care that he’s still inside of me as I close my eyes and quickly fall into the deep darkness of satisfied sleep.





18





An echo of my dad’s voice floats around my head. He and my mom are talking, but I can’t make out about what. Gentle fingers smooth hair away from my face, and I squeeze tighter around my mother’s neck. I’m crying, and they’re arguing.

“She didn’t mean to, Awlon. You can’t get mad at her for doing something she doesn’t understand. She’s only four.”

“I’m not mad at her, Noor, but if any of my kind feel what she just did, they will come looking, and we both know that will not end well for anyone.”

My dad’s voice is laced with worry. I feel bad even though my mom is trying to soothe it away with gentle touches and cuddles.

“We need to move, and not to another city. If her abilities are manifesting already, then we need to keep to ourselves as much as possible until we can find another cladding stone.”

“I’m sorry, daddy, I was just trying to play princess like they do in the movie.” I sob into my mother’s neck, and my dad pulls me out of her arms and hugs me.

“Shhh, don’t cry, my heart. Don’t cry. We’ll make it okay.” My dad pulls back and wipes at my cheeks. I look into his bright green eyes and feel the love and concern spilling out of them. “Falon, my heart, you have to promise me not to make anything other than yourself obey you again. Do you understand?”

I just stare at him.

“Maybe you should have never taught her the language,” Gran snaps at dad.

Mom silences her with a look, and my gran stomps away, mumbling angrily under her breath.

“Tamod is a bad word?” I ask, and my dad’s eyes bounce back and forth between mine.

“A word is never bad, but bad things can be done with words, and we must make sure that we keep ourselves and others from doing that.”

I nod at him, and he wraps me in a tight hug.

“We will both have to do better,” he tells me as he kisses my cheek, and I hug him harder.

Loss sears through me, and I whimper at its icy touch. Sadness burns coldly through my veins, and I thrash uncomfortably. I slowly wake up from sleep. By the time I get my eyes open, the strange feeling has almost receded, and the memory I’ve never looked back on before is an echo in my chest. I’m tangled in my sheets, sweating my ass off, and feeling achy like I worked out way too hard the day before. I sit up and look around the room. There’s no sign of Zeph, other than his dry cum on my thigh. I wrinkle my nose at that realization and untangle myself from the sheets.

I feel better after a long bath. I wash all evidence of last night’s exploits from my body and don’t feel nearly as sore and ragged when I’m done as I did when I first woke up. I check my body for marks or bruising, but there’s nothing there that needs to be hidden. Strangely my skin looks almost glowy, my hair is shinier than I ever remember seeing it, and my lavender-colored eyes look downright radiant. Either the food here has some nutrients that my body has been lacking, or sex seriously does my body good.

As mind-blowing as last night with Zeph was, I don’t think it would be good for me or for Pigeon to tap that ass anymore in the future. Besides, if that purring tongue thing is something all gryphons can do, then we can get plenty of good sex elsewhere. My first order of business today is to talk to Sutton and find out what the hell happened last night. I tie the laces to my bra and pull up my pants just as Ami comes flying in through my balcony.

“Knock much?” I chastise as I reach for my shirt.

“Rut much?” he snarks back, sniffing at the room and wagging his eyebrows.

“Touché,” I offer as I pull my shirt over my head.

When I pop my head through the neck, I notice that Ami is doing his whole white-eye thing at me.

“Interesting,” he observes and then shields his eyes with his hand like he’s staring at something bright.

I just stare at him and wait for him to explain what the hell he’s talking about. His brown eyes flash into place, and he nods speculatively at me.

“You’re still silver, but like blinding silver now. I figured your color would blend now that you’ve…” Ami gestures toward the bed. “But it’s still one color. I’ll have to look at Zeph and see what—”

“Ami, what do you know about Bonding Magic?” I ask, suddenly cutting him off.

Ami’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “Not much. What do you know about Bonding Magic?” he fires back at me.

I shrug. “I guess it was used to form the vow that created so many issues between the Ouphe and the Gryphons.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty common knowledge,” Ami deadpans. “So common in fact that Gryphons hunted down possessors of that branch of magic and tried to force them to break the bond. You can see how well that worked out for them.”

“Yeah, I guess that explains why most of them are dead now,” I admit.