Daughters of Olympus (Reverse Harem Romances)

We’ve flown far from the city proper, and the desert lands out here are undeveloped. It’s a relief, but this eagle is relentless, he keeps swooping toward me, trying to get me. But it’s like I have a source of protection around me, keeping me safe.

Protection. My hawks.

They are here, looking out for me. Maybe Gaia is real, giving them power to watch over me in my most vulnerable moments. They seem to envelop me and keep me from the eagle’s attacks.

In the distance, figures emerge. “Look,” Vaughn shouts. “Below.”

We fly faster and I strain to reach the eagle, but he keeps whipping around in circles above me, unable to come close enough to hurt us.

“Look,” Vaughn says again. “They’re running straight to the fire.” “What is it?” I ask.

“I think it’s wolves?” Sawyer says.

The wolves run quickly toward the flickering flames that are growing around us. As the wolves near the fire, they stop running, and as we flap our wings, we watch as they change form, shifting from wolf to man, wolf to woman.

“What’s happening?” I ask, my body trembling, fighting to understand.

“Shifters,” North explains quickly. “Look,” he shouts. “She’s stopping the fire with her hands,” he says.

He’s right, the woman below is somehow harnessing strength, some channel of energy, and pushing out the fire. Pushing into a ball, and rolling it up in the sky, hurtling toward the eagle.

As the fire rolls toward him, a massive wind rises from the east, forcing the Eagle up, up, and away. Away from the fireball that has now dissipated into the ether.

“What’s happening?” I ask, flying above the wolf shifters and noticing the woman’s bright red hair and her eyes, which are lifted to the sky. She watches us with intensity. It’s as if her eyes are locked on mine.

“Is this how weather always works?” I ask my hawks.

“No, it’s not how the weather works,” Vaughn says. “It’s how Gaia works.”

The violent wind swirls in the sky, and the eagle is separated from us, unable to come any closer.

“Gaia is doing this?”

The hawks nod, circling me. The wind is familiar; I’ve felt this before.

My memory from the past returns to the day Tennyson died. The wind breaking through the sky, scooping up her lifeless body from the grass, carrying her away.

Where did Gaia take her?

“Do you want to go talk to them?” Brecken asks. “Talk to who?”

“Whatever those people are,” Sawyer says.

“No,” I shout. “I don’t. I just want to go home.” Already the sorrow is returning. Flying may be a thrill, but it doesn’t get me any closer to the truth. Any closer to understanding the connec- tion I have with the eagle.

An eagle that has already taken the one thing I love. My mother.

I need to go home, to sleep in my mother’s bed; to crawl under her sheets that smell of lavender and clary sage. I should never have put on this stupid ring. I should have followed mom’s rules all along.

Never, ever go outside during a storm.

I stopped listening. And now she is dead.

My heart is broken. There are no tea leaves to read and even if there were, there is no witch to read them.

There is no comfort to find in family when you don’t have one.

I fly home with my hawks, knowing they are not my flesh and blood.

And realizing, with a pang, neither was my mother.

25

Brecken

I always knew Lark was special, set apart from other women in a way I couldn’t pinpoint. I thought it was

because her graceful movements on stage remind me of my own body. How I move, how I fly, but now I see it’s so much more than that.

She soars across the pale pink sky. The sun is just beginning to set over the desert and she looks so graceful, fragile, and beau- tiful with the pastel hues behind her. I feel my heart expand as I watch her fly for the first time. I know my hawk brothers sense it too.

Right now, it isn’t about how sexy she looks in a leotard or the way her body opened up to us when we made love. It’s not the physical lust that we feel for her that makes our hearts beat hard, our chests ache.

Right now, in this moment, it isn’t about sexual desire or chemistry.

Right now, as we watch her, flanking her as we fly toward home, what I feel is love.

How do you love the woman you barely know?

I can’t answer that, but I do. Maybe love isn’t something that has to be built over a lifetime. Maybe it’s something that either is or isn’t.

This is. This is love.

I don’t know everything about Lark, but the truth is, she doesn’t know either. Who her parents are or why she can fly and why a ring on her finger makes her magic.