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“Let’s debrief after I get back.” Lifting his arms, Jacques stripped off his T-shirt to reveal a chiseled chest brushed with curled dark hair. Over his shoulder draped part of a tattoo that Adam knew covered the left half of his back.

He’d been there when Jacques designed that tat—and when the final DNA-encoded ink was needled into his cells. Adam was no scientist, didn’t know how the ink held through the shift, but that it did was unquestioned.

He knew not just because of Jacques, but because of the tattoo he carried on his own left front pectoral, a memory of grief etched in flesh that had, over time, become a reminder of love.

Two falcons side by side, their wings forever stretched in flight.

Adam would never forgive his parents’ murder, but he was no longer blinded by it until that was all he remembered of them.

Or he hadn’t been.

Until her .

“Seriously?” Adam managed to keep his voice light even as his spine threatened to lock, his talons to release. “I do not want to see your pasty butt.”

“My butt is a delicious chocolate brown, per any number of admiring lady friends, thank you very much.”

As they laughed together with the ease of old friends who’d shifted together many a time, Jacques stripped to the skin and threw his clothes over a nearby rock before shifting into his falcon form.

Like Adam, he was a peregrine, but his feathers tended toward a more intense gray coloration with less of a blue undertone.

As for the tattoo, it didn’t vanish but was scattered across one wing in a spray of black that gave him a distinct appearance.

Ink wasn’t always that visible in both forms, but Jacques had a lot of it; the one that had caught Adam’s eye today was far from his only one.

After fussing with and settling his wings a couple of times—a pure Jacques trait—WindHaven’s second-in-command dropped off the edge of the plateau, his wings opening out in a smooth glide, a falcon at home in the skies.

Adam watched his best friend soar across Raintree.

Shaking off his own need to fly, to just get this energy out, he grabbed the other man’s clothes and dropped them in one of the closed bins they had out here for that purpose.

The bins were sunk into the earth, with only the lids visible.

Once he’d placed the clothes inside, he entered Jacques’s name on the digital label so his friend could find his clothes on his return.

No one stopped him on his way back from the plateau, and he deliberately avoided venturing into the section on the right that held a cluster of residences up against the cliff edge.

Today wasn’t a day to stop by for a chat with clanmates.

Instead, he entered the internal part of the Canyon, then made his way to his office, where he input the comm code that would connect him to a human friend in Enforcement.

The investigative service had a bad rap because it had been controlled and manipulated by Psy for a long time— not just politically, but through interference with the minds of the humans who made up a large percentage of Enforcement ranks.

Unlike changelings, humans had no natural protective shield.

That didn’t mean there weren’t good people in there, people who wanted justice and worked toward it. Adam’s contact had survived unmolested because he’d made certain he didn’t get promoted beyond the first rank of detective.

As a result, he was often the “junior” on important cases, even though his experience meant he knew far more than his supervising officers. Since he also didn’t care for credit, his senior officers let him do pretty much what he wanted as long as he got the work done.

Today, when the other man answered, it was to showcase a face with countless prison-style tattoos and a large and thick black beard against truly pasty skin.

“Undercover?” Adam asked the man four years his senior with whom he’d once played hockey in college.

“Or a really bad drunk that left you with permanent reminders?”

Damon’s grin was huge, revealing a newly chipped tooth. “You’ll have to stay in suspense until the next favor you ask me.”

“According to my records, I’m in favor credits.” Truth was, the two of them had long ago stopped keeping track.

“My mama always told me to watch out for smooth-talking birds. So, what’s happening?”

“You know anything about the Sandman?” Adam gave him the basic facts—including why he was asking the question.

Damon scratched at his upper jaw through the mass of the beard. “I’ve been on a big drug case the entire time since that kicked off, but a couple of my buddies just got pulled into the task force, so they’ll know more.

“I have heard about your J, though. She’s got a reputation—a good one.

No personality but also no bullshit, and she always finds the bastards once she’s on the hunt.

” He scratched the other side of his jaw.

“Fucking beard’s driving me insane. Anyway, give me a few hours and I’ll see what I can scare up. ”

“Thanks, man,” Adam said. “Don’t drop your guard on the home stretch.”

“No chance. Got a hot date waiting.”

“Say hi to Mira for me.” Adam had no idea how Damon’s relationship with his sweetheart of a wife remained so strong with how often the other man had to disappear into underground worlds, but the two had been married for seven years and counting, so they’d gotten something right.

Just like Adam’s parents, he thought as the other man shot him a lazy salute before signing off.

Even though Taazbaa’ and Cormac Garrett had never felt the pull of the mating bond, they’d been a forever pair, their breaths entwined.

Adam had grown up in the warm shadow of that love, their wings spread over him until he’d begun to display a need for independence.

Then they’d taken him flying, taught him the ways of the Diné and of his father’s Irish ancestors…

and set him free. That was the falcon creed.

They didn’t cage their young or keep them to tightly contained areas—such would be torture to a winged being.

Rather, they set boundaries meant to ensure a child’s safety, taught their fledglings how to protect themselves in the air, and took them flying often with the family and clan unit when younger.

“Remember, Adam.” His father’s hand ruffling his hair. “Stay above the safety line. You don’t want some idiot kid from school shooting up with a gun, real or meant for sport, and clipping you.”

“You’ve only told me three billion times, Dad.”

“You got off easy, then,” his sister had interjected in her droll way. “I was at four billion by the time I got to fly solo.”

His father’s deep laughter, intermingled with his mother’s kiss on the cheek, followed by a from-behind hug for a giggling Saoirse.

“Just wait until you have a fledgling,” she’d threatened her nineteen-year-old daughter, her laugh bringing out the dimple in her right cheek.

“I’ll be sitting right there with a glass of wine watching you lose your mind as your baby bird flies the nest.”

Many years after the sky ceremonies that had set their parents’ spirits free, when Adam was in his mid-twenties, Saoirse had told him something that she could only share with an adult little brother, and not the young teen he’d been during the events themselves.

They’d been seated at a bonfire on the plateau, and Amir had taken both Malia and Tahir over to roast marshmallows, his arms around the children as he crouched down to their height.

“I was scared when I got pregnant at twenty,” Saoirse had murmured, her eyes on her mate and children silhouetted against the firelight.

“I mean, it was with my mate, but I was so young. But now, I think it was a gift. Mom and Dad got to meet both my fledglings, and they stood with us the entire way, until we figured out what we were doing.”

She’d taken his hand, tears thick in her voice as she said, “I know I’m not Mom or Dad, Bear, but when it’s your time, I’ll be there for you like they were for me. Amir and I will teach you and your mate all the things Mom and Dad taught us for our fledglings.”

Able to feel the weight of her guilt that she’d had the chance to experience something he never would, he’d hugged her close.

“Don’t be a silly goose, Chirp.” A kiss pressed to her curls.

“I loved seeing them with Tahir and Malia, loved teasing them as they went from strict parents to grandparents who loved to spoil the babies.”

He’d been there when Taazbaa’ watched Malia learn to fly, a doting grandmother who’d plied her granddaughter with tiny food treats after each fall and cuddled her until Malia was ready to try again.

None of them had ever imagined that she wouldn’t be there by the time her adored “baby Mali” was ready to fly solo…or that Cormac wouldn’t be around to take Adam for his first adult drink as he’d promised. “You’ll be having a Guinness, my lad, else your Irish ancestors will roll in their graves!”

How could either he or Saoirse foresee the nightmare to come, their mom and dad the ones who’d find themselves shot out of the sky?