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Hawl shook their grizzly head without turning. “Go and have a look. They’re back.”
I opened my mouth to ask whom, then understood.
I left the cabin and loped across the deck, my pulse quickening in anticipation. Across the deck, some of the crew were already gathered—standing in a nervous group, murmuring together.
I followed their gaze to the rail of the ship where Sunstrike sat, perched like an incredibly large bird, licking one of her paws delicately.
Overhead in the gray sky that was rapidly turning blue and purple with the rising sun, Nightclaw circled, flapping his massive wings and casting a dark shadow over the deck below.
I brushed past the crew and approached my exmoor.
Sunstrike looked at me from under long, brown lashes and continued to groom herself, but I could sense she was pleased to see me.
I ran a hand over part of her shoulder—the part I was tall enough to reach. Sitting on the three-and-a-half-foot ship’s rail, she was at least nine feet high.
Her fur was soft and silky, a deeper texture than her mate’s. As if reading my thoughts, she looked skywards. I felt her begin to purr as she watched Nightclaw with satisfaction as he soared and dove.
“Good hunt?” I asked.
She made a contented chirping sound and switched her attention to her left paw, flicking her large, batlike wings out briefly.
“Show-off.” I smiled. Ever since Sunstrike’s wings had developed, she had been trying to display them to me every chance she got. Only within the last few weeks had they finally grown large enough and strong enough for her to join Nightclaw in his hunting escapades.
The timing had been perfect for the sea voyage. The exmoors would leave the fleet, sometimes for days at a time, feed, and then return at their leisure.
I looked at Sunstrike’s wings, then at Nighclaw high above me.
The answer, I realized, had been staring me in the face all along.
I had been planning a grueling journey over the Ellyria Mountains, one that involved a great deal of hiking, stumbling, and rocks in my boots.
But I didn’t have to walk at all.
Not when I could simply fly to my wife on the back of an exmoor.
CHAPTER 18 - MORGAN
