AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I swallowed hard and stepped back. “Fine, huh?” The corner of my mouth lifted in a smile designed to break the layer ofice she’d wrapped around herself.
“Goodnight,Killian.” She turned the corner before I could protest. A few quick steps and the flutter of feathers covered her as she transformed a little more and ran the length of the block in seconds.
I swore beneath my breath, uncaring who heard me.
Dammit, I’d get out of that girl what she was hiding. And if she wouldn’t tell me, I’d rip through the staff until I figured it out. Starting with my best friend and hers.
Unclean piece of shit.The drunk asshole’s words sifted through my mind as I walked back to Fray and locked the place up for the night before I hit the books.
I’d assumed the aggression had been aimed at me. Unlike Rafe, I didn’t hide. Something about being a male buck gray, maybe. Still, my brain churned on.
It took an hour too long to wonder if the assholes I’d written off as drunks had been talking about her instead of me.
Chapter Two
Lux
A dark shadow flickered overhead, high enough to register as a speck if I squinted, though I recognized the way Rafe glided along the thermals in an ever rising ring. Longing burned in my heart. I could make my feathers into pretty colors. I could turn my legs long and run. But I could never fly, or be free. Not like him. Regret tightened my chest, and I directed my excess emotion elsewhere.
Beside me, myco-bartender, James, unbuttoned his city-boy shirt to reveal a hard, carved eight pack, warm ivory skin, and a bare chest enhanced by a lean physique. The Korean-born Aussie watched the color rise in my cheeks at his display. The hint of a smile etched the corners of his mouth as he provided me with my own private strip show, despite the rambunctious crowd of shifters who surrounded us in the open space.
My body heated at the memory of playing with him in one of the lower dungeons. We’d never been lovers; the switch black swan shifter offered to support my need for pain when the world got too much for me. While James offered the utmost respect, his gaze told me otherwise.
More than once I’d wondered what it would be like to experience physical affection from him—or anyone—once again, but the thought opened its own barrel of baby quokkas, and I couldn’t let more of those run free. Anxiety tightened my smile as I turned away from James, my face flaming for a different reason.
“Ready to run, Little Bird?”
Killian’s presence at my back seared heat into my skin. Not the uncomfortable sort, more theI-know-I’m-safe-because-he’s-not-a-predatortype of heat. It should have been reassuring, but predator or no, Killian wasn’t the man anyone wanted to pick a fight with. I’d watched more of his and Rafe’s impromptu boxing match than I intended. Fray’s floor manager had always been competent in a fight, holding his own against the worst of rowdy patrons, but watching him fight bare-knuckled added an extra level of lethality to his edge.
Swallowing back my personal pity party, I forced my gaze from the sky and returnedto earth with a resounding thud I knew echoed in my ears alone. “Maybe I should stay…” I gestured around me without looking up at Killian. A tiny fluffy ball rolled past me to bowl into its brethren, scattering them in a star-shaped pattern. “Here. To…” My flimsy excuse didn’t stand on its own, and I let it die a pitiful death.
“That’s not what today is about. Come on.” Killian’shand appeared in my range of vision, his fingertips already tinged black and sharpening.
He might be ready for today, but I never could generate the enthusiasm everyone else from the shifter community managed on Fray’s Sunday Picnic. Held on the third Monday of each month in the Yarra Ranges, our community invaded the national park a few hours west of Melbourne where Fray sat. The large picnic area offered native shifters who were unable to change within city limits outside their home a few stress-free hours of unlimited freedom.
No one to hunt us, no one to see.
Fray’s security contingent protected the area, standing sentinel ateach entrance and warding off other visitors who might get the shit-shock of their lives at a bunch of people sprouting fur and feathers.
Cool air grazedmy cheeks, and the flush reduced. My head cleared enough to refocus on the argument. Not that I had much of a choice. Killian would win. He always did. Expending energy on fighting against my own nature pushed my thin veil of defiance aside.
I nodded my resignation to his victorious grin as the blue tartan picnic blanket beneath me shifted to expose the rocky ground. The small cluster of baby quokkas rambled around my ankles and began to climb me.
“She’s not a jungle gym,” theirmother scolded them. Willow Bonnier, Rafe’s fiancée and sub, sent me a rueful look. “You should go, get some time free while you can,” she whispered behind her hand, liberating a fluffy fur ball with another.
I sighed and uncoiled my long legs, making sure not to kick anyone, keeping a mental tally of Willow’s five baby quokkas in my head. “I’m not getting out of this, am I?”
“Nope.” Killian’s large hand wrapped around mine. He hauled me upright with a littletoo much enthusiasm.
I crashed into his chestand knocked my head on his chin.
“Owww.” We both moaned at the same time.
The picnic rug beneath me erupted into a fit of giggles.
Nothing is quite as infectious as five baby quokkas giggling madly about nothing at all. Killian’s chest rumbled, and even I cracked a grin.
“Not your goal, I hope?” I asked as he drew me up for a second time.
