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“Don’t,” she says pushing up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it.”
I scowl. “You don’t understand,” I try again, looking at this woman and suddenly feeling like even though she is a tiny thing, she is stronger than she knows.
“Let me guess, you know what’s best for me, you have my best intentions at heart, you don’t want me to get hurt?” She twists her lips, looking up at me with those dark eyes of hers. Eyes that
cover a pain in her heart. A pain she doesn’t even know yet, can’t begin to fathom. Gaia, mother-fucking-Earth, has a purpose for her, but she doesn’t know that yet. And until she does, she won’t be able to understand herself.
I wish I knew the secrets Gaia keeps. The things about Lark that would make everything click into place. Why we are here and why she is here and why she can fly without wings, but of course, I don’t have those answers, so saying anything at all would only confuse Lark more. And God knows that my fast end to the party is confusing enough.
“I’m just gonna go home now, North,” she says softly. Then she grabs her purse from a chair. “See you tomorrow at rehearsal, okay?”
I nod, following her out the door to the elevator. Once she is safely in it, I head back to the suite, where the guys are all ready to pounce.
“You’re a real piece of work, you know that, North?” Vaughn starts.
I shake my head. “Not now. She’s leaving the hotel. We need to follow her.”
“Obviously,” Sawyer says, looking at me as if I’ve lost it. “That is the only thing that matters.”
The seriousness of our task trumps any feelings they may have toward me at the moment.
“Let’s go to the balcony, we can fly from there,” Arrow suggests.
I nod, and seconds later the door to the balcony is flung open, and we stand on the metal railing separating the hotel from the ground below.
Then we leap, all five of us, knowing Lark is our target. We need to find her, and once one of us does, the rest of us will fly back around and form a circle around her. Making sure she is safe.
As we jump, we spread our arms, our bodies shifting as we move. Our arms turn to wings, our bodies turn to smooth muscles, feathers, and beaks. We are no longer men.
We are hawks.
And we aren’t looking for our prey, we’ve already found the one thing that matters.
Lark.
I fly downward, arms outreached, headed to the front of the hotel.
I spot her, getting into a yellow cab, and I contact the hawks, signaling them to follow.
We may not know why we’ve been sent to keep her safe, but that changes nothing.
The fact she is the most gorgeous creature we’ve ever seen can’t distract us from our mission.
We must keep her safe at all costs.
5
Lark
The entire ride home I’m silently mortified. That kiss could have been the start of something wonderful but
instead North sent me away.
I’m not a yeller, a fighter, a screamer, or a tantrum thrower, but right this second I would give anything to be any one of those things. I wish I’d been more infuriated when North insisted everyone leave, but instead I stood there with a shocked looked on my face. Just when I thought I was finally going to break out of the shell I’ve been trapped in all my life, everything came to a grinding halt.
What makes it worse is that I was jumping on the bed with North, being ridiculous and just laughing and having real, actual fun, I’d thought there was a spark. A hint, a possibility between us. His hand in my hand and our smiles big enough to break through the dreariest day – but no. Instead of playing any of that out, he left and took the guys with him.
I can’t trust my gut; my instincts are all wrong.
After paying the cab driver, I walk up to the house. As I push the key in the front door lock, I look up, startled by what I see. Five hawks overhead, circling the house. I swallow, never having seen birds of this size. It scares me a little, the power that I know these creatures hold, but I push inside, exhausted from the night.
Mom is in the living room when I enter the house. An old record spins on her player, and there are candles glowing every- where. She has the curtain pulled back and looks up into the sky.
She can tell something is amiss right away. She can see it on my face. There is no need for a crystal ball to see that I am morti- fied by what happened. By what didn’t happen.
“Have those hawks been following you?” she asks, her eyes darting back up to the sky.
