Chapter 11

Lucius

I knew I’d made the worst mistake of my life the moment the car left the final perimeter of my property. That was the moment Ava left my lands and my protection. My instincts went haywire, my heart turned to stone in my chest, and it became a battle to stay aloft, high in the sky. Every part of me strained to go after her, to call her back, to keep her safe.

What had I done? Selfishly took from her what she offered for a night and then showed her the door. I’d thrown her back into the danger she was running from. This werewolf who was after her, Calder, was the lowest of sorts. A male so despicable, he stole the weak and the unmissed from the streets. A male like that would stop at nothing to end my precious Ava.

I deserved every minute of the curse that Elspeth the witch had cast on me. She was right. I was a terrible male for turning away those in need. Why did I deserve the endless nights of immortality when I turned my back on the helpless, and worse, when I turned my back on my mate?

At that moment when Ava left, my protection changed everything. I understood it now. What meaning did living forever have when I couldn’t have her? When it was a world that might not have her in it? My body shivered as a full change took hold of me, and my wings caught fire in the morning sunlight. I never flew at this time, not when dawn had passed and I could be seen from the ground by clever human eyes. Today I didn’t care.

My sharp gaze followed the car as it sped down the winding road into town. I followed, circling high to avoid detection. How was I going to convince her to stay with me? Nothing had changed for her: I was still the monster, the winged beast of the manor. Unworthy of her, because I’d acted horribly, shamefully. Turning her away in her hour of need.

The car stopped at the town’s motel, and I was shocked to see how much it had deteriorated since last I’d laid eyes on it. I rarely flew this far, even if the dawn light covered my presence. I watched as the car left her, a lonely, small figure in a concrete lot. There were only a handful of cars, and the one she gazed at was a sorry, small little thing that had seen better years very long ago.

Of course, Ziv was there. She was holding him in her arms and the feline familiar was purring up a storm and butting his head against hers. It made me growl with a possessive anger. He was leaving scent marks on my female. Not that I had any right to her, not yet.

How did I approach? That was the hard part. I couldn’t just land in broad daylight in a human town, even if we were right on the edge and the road was empty. I hadn’t even thought to bring the amulet that could provide a disguise when I ventured out into the human world. When I landed, everyone would be able to see the creature that I was, the phoenix, the monster.

Spinning in another wide circle, I appraised my options. The town was emptier than I remembered it, with many shopfronts boarded up. Houses looked shabby and unkempt, and the Sherrif’s office was closed, with no sign of a patrol car. I was going to risk it, there were so few people about… Ava was more important.

When I swung my gaze back to my mate and the motel parking lot, cold fear shivered through my flesh. She wasn’t alone anymore. Backpedaling away from the flat-roofed building, a tall, black-haired male was following her. Several more slunk out from the open motel room door and fanned out behind their leader. I had no doubt about the identity of the male who was scaring Ava straight across the concrete lot to her car.

Calder, the werewolf. I dove, my body arrowing toward the ground in a rapid descent, silent but for the roar of the wind in my ears. I could hear their voices drifting up to me as I plummeted. Ava was defying her foe, as I knew she would, but I could hear her fear in the tight pinch of her tone. “Leave me alone, Calder! You’ve got what you want, I left. I’m not telling anyone.” A self-deprecating laugh, cold and harsh. “Who would believe me?”

I was almost on him when the male responded. “Nobody gets away from me, Ava. Especially not someone who gave me as much trouble as you did. You’re going to pay for what you did.” He started to shift, a half-form somewhere between human and wolf; a feat that required an immense amount of control. I would have been impressed if not for the rage that roared through my veins.

We clashed right as the male slashed a claw toward Ava. Fur and feathers, fire and rage, and the stench of burning flesh as we tangled. My claws hit him first, scoring grooves along his back. A shifter was dangerous to fight. While we were technically the same, able to change our form, I did not have the fast healing that he had. A phoenix relied on his rebirth to heal in a single, explosive burst, but otherwise healed at the rate of a mortal. I had no rebirth to protect me, but there was no fear, none at all.

Ziv shot like a lightning bolt from Ava’s arms and leaped into several faces as a distraction. It was enough to disengage from the werewolf and rise protectively between him and my mate. My form shivered into two legs, the shape that Ava knew best. I was a tall male, and I towered protectively over her, wings spread as I blocked the way for the pack of angry shifters.

I recognized the pair that I had chased off in the woods. One was a coyote who looked as scruffy and mangy in his human shape as he did on four legs. The other was the grizzly bear, a mountain of a man with long, shaggy red curls, and an angry scowl that matched his boss’s. The other two were of even less consequence, just more hired muscle.

The werewolf tossed back his wolf-shaped head and howled, a sound that morphed into a ferocious growl. “Stay out of this, Phoenix!” he snarled, his voice distorted by his half-shifted form. I spread my arms and made it obvious I was refusing to back down; fire dripping in sizzling splashes from my wings onto the cracked concrete below.

“Lucius, why are you here?” Ava whispered from behind me. She sidled closer and pressed her hands to my back between my wings without fear. She already knew my fire would not harm her, but it would harm the males that dared to threaten her. “Not that I’m not grateful, but eh… aren’t you worried about, you know?”

She was tactfully dancing around the truth, as she tried not to reveal my weakness to the enemy, but I could still see the cunning wolf's eyes sharpen. There was one more danger to worry about. Another male leaned up against my mate’s old car casually. That one did not answer to the werewolf, he smelled local, and he smelled powerful to boot.

“I’m here because you need protection, Ava. This is the werewolf you told me about, Calder?” I didn’t need to hear her reply, I already knew, and I pierced the male with a glare to warn him off. He was covered in streaks of blood from my claws, his shirt shredded to bits along his back, but the wounds had already healed. When the others started shifting, I was going to have to move fast.

“I’m warning you, firebird. Unless you want me to pluck your feathers, get lost! The female is mine. She owes me, big time.” I bared my teeth at him. They were not impressively sharp and fang-like the way his were, but the meaning was clear. I located Ziv perched on the roof of the motel, he must have relocated himself there when the fighting slowed down. He was licking a paw in a dainty manner, his fur ruffled by the earlier scuffle, but his golden eyes were laser-focused on our confrontation.

When he met my gaze, I knew we were on the same page this morning. The discord Ava’s arrival had caused between us smoothed away and our cause was the same: protect our female. Ziv would get her to safety as soon as he saw an opening, that was all I needed to know.

Tossing back my head, I laughed. The feathers the wolf taunted me with flared up around my shoulders and on my head in a proud display. “These feathers? You could try.” The dare was enough to set him off, and his pack of shifters followed suit. Clothing was shredded or flashed away depending on the skill level of the shifter. Fur erupted everywhere as their transformations completed. Even Calder completed his form to a full wolf, but I kept my two-legged shape. I wanted to keep my hands available in case I needed to pluck my mate from the ground and escape with her into the sky.

With a roar, they converged on me, and I met them. Adrenaline surged through my veins, a battle rage unlike any I’d ever felt before. I felt alive, filled with a purpose worth living for. A purpose that was worth dying for too. We clashed, fire and claws and fur. My fire roared louder than their voices when I pulled it out, raising it into an inferno all around me. Nothing could stop me, I would fight until each enemy was gone. Until Ava was safe.