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The sound of wings coming closer as she slipped away her phone, the tenor different from when the falcons had taken off. Faster, more rushed. She saw why when the flyer winged into view…it was the smallest falcon she’d ever seen, its feathers still slightly white and fluffy in patches.

A child.

Beating its wings with far more force and less finesse than its elders, it dove into the opening…

to land on Eleri’s arm, which she’d outstretched without thinking about it.

The child’s chest heaved as it settled its feathers, its tiny heartbeat rapid.

Its talons gripped Eleri’s forearm tight but without breaking through her shirt.

A larger falcon landed on the ledge moments later, and she had the certainty that this was one of the child’s parents. Giving their fledgling freedom while hovering protectively close.

The adult falcon shot her a penetrating glance before settling its wings and remaining in place where it had landed.

She knew why, could feel Adam’s heat against her back.

“This fledgling is heavier than they look,” she murmured, unable to believe what was happening to her, what she was doing, what she was experiencing.

Even dulled as it was by the reconditioning, it was more beautiful than anything she’d ever before done or felt.

Adam reached around to scratch the top of the child’s head.

Closing their eyes, the child leaned their head further into the contact. Adam chuckled. “He’s a rocket, this one. Races around the Canyon like it’s a track. Probably outpace me soon.”

The child spread its feathers, and even though Eleri knew little about falcon ways, she knew the fledgling was proud at the praise.

The pull she’d felt toward Adam from the day they met was a thing visceral, but this, seeing him with his clan, how his people lit up near him, how this child trusted him, it altered the primal into an emotion far more conscious: Adam was a good wing leader, a good man .

Eleri wanted to know this man in every way.

“Here.” Moving to her free side, he held out his hand, on which were small tidbits of food. “It’s his favorite.”

The falcon made tiny sounds that Eleri thought must be excitement.

Managing to curl her arm slightly to better take the baby falcon’s weight, she picked up a piece of what seemed to be a pastry from Adam’s palm and held it to the fledgling’s beak.

He took it from her fingers with more politeness than she’d expected, given the excited way he was fluttering his wings and moving his talons on her arm.

Adam lifted his forearm. “Hop over, little wind racer.” A glance at Eleri as the child obeyed. “Your arm would fall off otherwise. He likes to perch. Now you can feed him for longer.”

Eleri did just that—after first shaking out her own arm.

Adam was right; it took more strength than it seemed to hold up even a small changeling falcon.

The little raptor accepted every small morsel with happiness and, when Eleri held up the final pieces in her palm, didn’t peck but picked it up with care not to hurt her.

“He’s very gentle.” She dared touch him as Adam had, the sheer softness of his downy feathers feeling an impossibility.

“He’s a smart, kind, boy, our little Ollie.”

When the child opened his beak in a yawn, Adam curled his arm to his chest where the fledgling nuzzled into him, and Adam used his free hand to cradle him close.

His hand covered the tiny child’s back, a protective shield as he made sounds in his throat that had the fledgling making little sounds in return that were clearly of happiness.

Eleri, her shoulder aching, determined to start exercising those muscles much more regularly so she— But no, she wouldn’t have many more chances to offer a fledgling a perch. “How old is he?” she asked, pushing aside the future to come for the beauty of today.

“Four,” Adam murmured. “Only four and tired from his morning flight with his mom.” The larger falcon turned and walked over—just as a man of medium height with dark hair and brown skin, his eyes rounded and cheekbones flat, entered the dining area and made a smiling beeline to them.

“I’ve got him, sweetheart.” His glance at the adult falcon held the kind of affection and comfort that wasn’t born in a single day or a week, but over many months, even years.

This, she knew without being told, was the child’s father.

Adam handed over the fledgling, who mumbled sleepily as he nestled against his father’s chest. “Morning, Bayani. Ollie’s getting stronger.”

“Tell me about it,” the man grumbled, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it, his hand tender on his son’s back.

“No one ever told me that mating with a hot falcon I saw in a bar one night would mean having a kid who thinks it’s the height of hilarity to fly to a ceiling perch when he’s in trouble with his papa. ”

Adam’s shoulders shook even as the child’s mother opened her beak in what seemed to be a falconish laugh.

Raising a hand, Adam slapped the other man on the shoulder.

“If he gets too cheeky, call me.” A grin.

“That’s what a wing leader is for—and it’s not just because you’re human.

I had to put the fear of Adam into Simsim the other day after she decided she was big enough to fly to Raintree on her own. ”

“I’d have had a heart attack. Sweet mercy. Ollie listens if I tell him to stick with me, so I can take the ceiling taunts.” A deep crease in his cheek. “One day, he fell asleep up there. I climbed up, fetched him down, and tucked him in, and he was amazed to wake up in bed.”

“This is Eleri,” Adam said. “Bayani Bautista, geologist and professor. And that’s Harper Jay”—a nod at the falcon—“our head accountant, without whom our finances would be in shambles.”

“We heard you helped Jacques,” Bayani said with a warm smile, while his mate made a low, almost cooing sound. “Thank you and welcome to our home. If you’d like a geological tour, hit me up.” A grin. “I’ve bored everyone else already.”

The couple left soon afterward, with the falcon flying out the exit and her mate walking into the Canyon with their son, the two having agreed to meet up at their plateau home. “Do you have a lot of human clanmates?”

“About fifteen percent of our population. No Psy clanmates, though.” Human eyes ringed by falcon yellow locked on hers. “Not yet.”

Eleri’s past receded in a rush, the future a blank.

Here, this moment in time when everything was possible, was her forever. Except…Adam was brushing his fingertip over her cheekbone and all she could feel was a dull sense of need that wasn’t even a ghost of her breathless wonder from that day outside the courtroom.

Inside her was a scream locked in black fog, silenced by her own mind.