Mated to the Griffin (Elemental Mates 5)

Warmth blossomed inside Chiara at his simple pronouncement.

“And I’m yours.” She sighed happily as she wrapped her arm lightly around his side.

Who’d have thought that turning your life upside down and letting go of everything that made you normal would lead to this?

She probably wouldn’t recommend it as a good course of action for finding the love of your life. And not only because most other people would probably find it difficult to find an evil shadow dragon to hunt them down.

But this—this simple connection between them, the intimacy of getting to know Jared not just as a person, but down to feeling his soul, the deepest secrets of his heart—that made it worth any danger.

If anything, werewolves and evil dragons were a small price to pay for holding him in her arms right now.

Chapter Eighteen: Jared

It took until evening for the chimera to summon them once more. Meanwhile, Chiara and Jared had used the time to shower and nap, and then had spent another two hours hunched over Ginny’s laptop.

They’d been able to narrow it down to two different mountains. It was hard work, trying to convert the tiny symbols on the golden disk into a map. Fortunately, there weren’t a lot of mountains from which they’d be able to see all the star constellations in two days, and which also featured a distinctive, curving river scratched into the gold.

“I could just fly there and check out both,” Jared said when they’d made it back into the council chamber. “We’d be cutting it close—it’ll take me at least half a day to fly from one to the other. Still, I could—”

“I found something,” the chimera’s voice came echoing from the shadows. “An old legend—very old. A place of power. We don’t know if it’s connected to the fifth elemental dragon, but at this point, it’s all we have. If there is a new elemental dragon, and he has managed to hide from us for so long, he must be powerful indeed.”

“I found something as well,” Chiara said into the silence that followed Gareth’s words.

Jared gave her a surprised look.

Chiara pulled out her phone, grimacing a little as she stared at the screen. “So I know you think that all this conspiracy theory stuff is ridiculous, but...”

“But?” Jared asked in encouragement.

Chiara took a deep breath. “I asked my friends. My online friends,” she added, looking nervous and determined at the same time. “About that symbol. Most had never heard of anything like it—but there’s one person who said that his grandparents had seen it before. And that they told him tales of strange creatures living in the mountains near their home. Strange beasts flying in the sky. Of course he now thinks that there used to be a secret army base in the mountains where the government did experiments with alien DNA to create monsters. But in truth...”

“In truth, his grandparents saw dragons,” Jared finished in excitement.

Chiara shook her head, swallowing as she looked at him. “No. Not dragons. From his description, I think they saw... They saw griffins. There were griffins living on that mountain, Jared.”

“Griffins,” Jared repeated mechanically, his mind reeling.

All along, there’d been the small hope that by finding the mysterious fifth elemental dragon, he’d find out more about his lost family as well.

He hadn’t dared to believe in it. After so many years, he’d given up hope that they might be alive, or that they’d want to see him if they were. After all, they were the ones who’d abandoned him.

But now, with more and more pieces of this puzzle coming together, hope began to bloom inside his heart once more.

Hope was a terrible thing. As a child, he’d hoped that any day, his parents would reappear, that there would be apologies and explanations, and that he’d be swept away to a new life.

He’d loved his adoptive parents. And he’d loved Gregory, whom he still thought of as a brother.

Still, for a child, it had been impossible not to dream of those things.

Of course, that dream had never come true. His real parents had never appeared. He’d never known if they’d ever loved him, or if they’d simply wanted to get rid of an unwanted child.

Now that he was an adult, he knew better than to dream.

At least that was what he’d always believed. But that old wound was still there, deep inside his heart, aching once more as he tried to imagine what his parents had looked like.

He was too old for dreams. He knew the secret amulet wouldn’t lead them to his parents. It was a new elemental dragon they were looking for—not an aging couple of griffin shifters.

Still. Still.