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But it does, and I do and maybe that is enough.
There are crazier things in this world than falling in love with a bird.
I don’t want anyone to press me on what those things are at the moment, but I know there is scarier and crazier shit than falling in love with a woman who makes you believe in the impossible.
Who shows you the impossible is possible. Here we are and here she is, and this is love.
I don’t tell her this now. The last thing she needs right now is a heartfelt confession. This day has been long enough and hard enough as it is.
Her mother is gone and a fucking eagle tried to strike her with lightning. Fires burned beneath us and with her arms stretched wide, she flew for the first time in her life.
That’s more than enough for one day. My words can wait.
Right now, she doesn’t need any of the hawks to tell her anything. Although I can sense we are all feeling the same thing. I see it in the way we fly around her, trying to shield her from whatever is out there trying to get her. It’s no longer about a job Gaia gave us. It’s about our loyalty to Lark.
I look at Vaughn, North, Sawyer, and Arrow. We’ve flown together all our lives, but I don’t think we ever felt so much fear as we did today. The eagle was vicious and filled with a power I’ve never witnessed. And he must be even more powerful than I realize for Gaia to intervene.
Lark didn’t seem to realize the danger she was in. She couldn’t have. Her heart has been broken into a thousand pieces. I’m just grateful that in her shattered heart she knows her mother loved her. And she knows she loved her mother.
That’s more than I ever had, more than any of us hawks ever had.
As infants, we were found in a nest and rescued by Gaia and given the ability to shift. She found us a place to live in a shifter community, but it wasn’t hawks we were sent to live with. It was bears. And we never belonged.
We were different, hawks living without a family, yet some- how, we managed to survive.
We didn’t have a mother or father. For better or for worse we had one another.
In the past, I think we all believed it was enough. All for one and one for all.
But now I know that’s not true. It’s not enough. Now, we need Lark.
We came here to protect her, but I want more than that.
I want to love and support her. I want to be there for her, through thick and thin.
It’s crazy, those words coming from me.
Me, a man who slept with more women than I probably should have. Me, the person who has caused more problems in this group than anyone else.
Yet right now, I can’t imagine life without any of them. All I want is to stick it out together, the six of us. Forever.
I watch Lark fly toward her neighborhood with her wings outstretched. The six of us moving through the trees is a thing of beauty. She has brought us together and made us feel like we belong together after we’ve spent our lives on the outside looking in.
She is more than a bird, more than a woman, a daughter, a lover, a friend.
She is the love of my life.
26
Lark
When we get to the house, we shift to human form. All it takes is a simple landing, and the will to
return to my body and there I am, standing on the porch.
Mom’s twinkling Christmas lights are on and I swallow hard, feeling overwhelmed with emotion. The hawks sense it and Sawyer asks if I’m all right, noticing that my balance is off.
I’m not sure when they stopped being hawks and became my hawks, but they did, and they are. I am claiming them as mine.
Right now, they are all I have in this world.
Maybe it’s selfish to want them to take care of me right now. But I nearly fall to the ground, not used to shifting from animal to human. Vaughn catches me.
His body, which he seems to think is too big, fits me perfectly. He lifts me up into his arms and carries me inside. He sets me down on my mother’s vintage couch and tells me it’s going to be okay.
He kisses my forehead, but I need more. I need it all.
Right now I’m lost, and these men found me, and that is everything.
“Kiss me?” I ask him.
No, it isn’t a question. It’s a demand. It’s what I need and want and have to have. I pull Vaughn down to his knees and he settles himself on Mom’s antique rug. I wrap my arms around his neck and look into his big blue eyes, drawing him nearer.
