Page 20 of Bound to the Griffin (Hillcrest Hollow Shifters #3)

Gwendolyn

I was still a little shaky when we got dressed, tugging my sweater over my head with hands that wouldn’t quite stop trembling.

Not from fear, exactly. This was nerves and excitement: too many things tangled together to name.

My head was spinning as I thought about what we were about to do, and I was also still rattled from the dream. Another one.

I’d gone to sleep with him holding me, still sort of grounded in the world I’d always known was true and real.

That world was without magic, without people who could heal with a touch, or a sheriff who could turn into a creature of myth.

Now, in the aftermath of passion and terror—a combination that had left marks beneath my skin—I was stepping into a different world.

This world was home to my Jackson, to the people in this town.

My heart pounded as I thought this through.

Did I really want to do this? Become part of Jackson’s world?

Yeah, I did. It felt like, for the first time in my life, I’d found where I belonged.

He called this place a home for outcasts, and maybe I wasn’t magical like him, but I sure as hell felt like an outcast back in Chicago.

Then Jackson tucked my hand into the crook of his arm, and I felt like I belonged.

It wasn’t so hard to follow him down the stairs, through the creaky, moaning house.

We slipped out the back door into the night.

Frost glittered across the yard, crunching faintly under our boots.

The forest loomed behind the B it was just a crescent now, draped in tendrils of clouds like the stars.

I shivered, because the sight reminded me of something in my dreams, though I couldn’t quite recall what.

Then something caught my eye on the sill by the door: the dented thermos I thought I’d lost, its lid balanced neatly beside it.

It glittered with silver and the faint green pattern embossed on it, faded by years of use.

I reached for it, confused. “This was outside?” I was certain I’d lost it the evening of the wolf attack, a wolf attack I was starting to realize might not have been a wolf attack at all.

Jackson had called it Kai’s attack, Kai making it up to me by fixing my floor.

So, if Jackson was a griffin, was Kai a werewolf?

I almost laughed at the absurdity that was now my reality.

Jackson’s mouth curved in that way of his, not quite a smile, but full of meaning.

He was oblivious to the turmoil in my head, or perhaps his sharp eyes saw it and he was trying to distract me.

“I found it for you,” he said. “But I didn’t have a chance to bring it inside.

I meant to earlier, but it sounded like you fell, so I was in a bit of a rush. ”

Warmth spread through me, cutting the chill in the air.

Of all the chaos, all the danger circling us, he’d noticed a stupid little detail like that.

He cared. He noticed everything, must be the eagle eyes that came with being what he was.

I scrunched up my brow as I tried to recall exactly what a griffin was.

Lion and bird of prey, eagle, right? Or was it hawk? Regardless, he probably had great eyes.

The warmth faltered when I glanced toward the tree line.

The dark out there seemed thicker tonight, pressing in.

Ever since the dreams started, I hadn’t let myself think too hard about what they might mean.

A nightmare was just a nightmare. After I’d sleepwalked out here, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe there really was something waiting in the shadows. Watching.

Jackson must’ve read it on my face, because he touched my arm, grounding me.

“I’ll keep you safe,” he said firmly. “Whatever this is, I’ll find it.

I have… sources you can’t even imagine yet.

I’ll get answers.” He said it with such confidence that I believed him, and it became just a bit easier, again, to believe all this was true.

It tingled across my senses and settled in my belly.

Resources I couldn’t imagine? Yeah, I believed that.

I leaned into his chest when he pulled me close, my breath hitching.

He smelled like woodsmoke and wild air, like comfort wrapped around something sharp and dangerous.

I wanted to linger there, but I knew we needed to do this.

If we waited any longer, I might get nervous again, and that I couldn’t allow.

Like I told him before, I needed to see this, be part of this.

After we’d had utterly mind-blowing sex, it was even more important that I saw this side of him.

If it was real. And I was pretty sure that it was.

His fingers were warm, the pads calloused, as he brushed the side of my jaw and tipped my chin up.

His eyes gleamed golden, too golden to ever be called brown.

His kiss was tender, steadying, and over too soon.

I inhaled deeply, drawing his scent into my lungs as he stepped back.

A cold shiver ran down my spine, but wrapped in warm clothing, I knew it was just because I missed his nearness.

He lifted his arms slightly out to his sides, like a magician about to perform a trick. There was that edge in his grin again, sexy, a little mysterious. His eyes danced with confidence and a hint of something mischievous.

“Here?” I asked, half disbelieving. “In my backyard?” I glanced around uneasily at the sagging fences that surrounded the snow-covered, empty flowerbeds.

The next house over on either side was separated from mine by more yard and fence.

One had no occupant; the other’s windows were all dark.

I had not seen any light on there, except one window at the front.

Still, those windows felt like eyes, anyone could be staring out of them.

“No one’s watching,” Jackson said simply, calmly.

“Not unless they’re standing at your window.

And you’d know if they were.” He jerked his chin at the windows at the back of the B I needed to make certain I wasn’t imagining this.

He towered over me, tall as a horse, wide as.

.. well, as a lion, I supposed. There was suddenly so much of him, and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that.

“Jackson…” His name was barely a whisper.

I wasn’t sure if he could speak like this, but I didn’t need him to.

I only needed to look into his eyes to know that it was him.

Eagle eyes, gold in such a way they never could be called brown.

Maybe they were lion eyes too. Didn’t lions have gold eyes?

I just knew that I saw that same steadiness, the fire of a protector, and the kindness he’d always shown me.

Slowly, he lowered himself in a bow—regal, almost ceremonial—before lifting one mighty wing.

Then he lowered that feathered, beautiful head and touched his sharp beak to the snow.

Yeah, a bow, but something more, too. Ceremonial?

Try ritual. This was… I gasped, pressing a hand to my mouth.

“You’re inviting me…” He gave the smallest huff, air gusting from his beak, and tilted his head toward the curve of his back.

Still trembling, I stepped closer, and it definitely wasn’t nerves in my stomach now, I felt nothing but awe.

My fingers brushed his feathers: impossibly soft, layered in rich gold and bronze, warm beneath my touch.

I stroked down along his side, tracing the shift from feather to fur, the ripple of sheer muscle under his skin, marveling at the strength coiled there, contained, but ready.

He might be a blend of two creatures—impossible—but he was all predator.

When he dipped lower, patient, I placed a foot against his side and swung up, clutching fistfuls of feather to steady myself.

My whole body vibrated with adrenaline, fear and awe mingling until I couldn’t tell them apart.

If childhood me had known she’d one day ride on the back of a myth, she would have been so eager—believed it was possible, eyes wide open.

He started with a walk, his paws soundless against the frost. Massive as he was, it did not crunch beneath his wide paws the way it would beneath our boots.

I gripped him tighter, my cheek pressed against the warmth of his neck, and eyed the trees he circled away from.

When we faced the fence and empty yard of the abandoned building next door, his wings stretched wide—the sweep of them stole my breath—and with a powerful downstroke, the ground fell away.

The air caught us, lifting, carrying. My stomach dropped, then soared, like I had gotten on a roller coaster ride—yet not.

Below us, Hillcrest Hollow lay tucked in for the night, lights winking only in the windows above the General Store.

In the dark, you couldn’t see how much of the town was boarded up, empty; it looked peaceful.

Then Jackson banked left, and the woods stretched endless and dark, fields blanketed in silver frost, the river a ribbon of reflected moonlight.

Wind whipped through my hair, cold on my cheeks, but I barely felt it.

I felt lighter than I had in weeks, the weight of fear and suspicion torn away in the rush of flight.

So this was what the town had been hiding, and now I was part of it.

This was what had been protecting me, and I had no doubt that a simple burglar, after some dusty money, was no match for it.

Clinging to him, I laughed; wild, breathless, amazed.

This wasn’t just him showing me what he was; it was him carrying me into it, tying me to him in a way that felt unshakable.

Trust. Wonder. Delight. And somewhere deep down, I knew this moment was binding us, stitching something permanent between us under the winter sky.

Sitting astride the wide, warm back of a beast straight out of a story, I was alone with my thoughts.

Jackson was there, carrying me, but he couldn’t speak to me, at least, I didn’t think he could.

There was also something about being high up but safe, overlooking all these tiny buildings and trees, that turned my thoughts inward.

All my life, I’d been fighting with the norm because I was different, I didn’t quite fit.

I certainly didn’t fit my mother’s mold.

Somehow—though I’d never met him—I took after my father: independent, a little rebellious, and searching for real connections, not these shallow things my mother was after, or capable of.

Money was an afterthought, not a constant pursuit.

And appearances? It was a struggle to make myself care about that, most of all.

Coming to Hillcrest Hollow, a name that was apt, as the town really was nestled in a hollow between hills, had freed me.

Cool as my reception had been, it was a choice I’d made for myself—not to do as others wanted, or to rebel in some way, but to do something I genuinely desired.

I’d come here to carve out a true home, and I’d found it.

I knew I had. The thought of that thrummed inside my chest, tightening what was between Jackson and me.

I felt it, like a tangible thing. For the first time in my life, I belonged somewhere.