Hayley felt like her entire worldview had been turned upside-down and shaken. She turned to Hugh, wondering what sort of walking legend he would turn out to be. “And you’re…?”
“Bloody exhausted.” Hugh took his hands off Griff’s chest at last, flexing his fingers as if he had pins-and-needles. “There’s nothing more I can do now. I want to leave him here, with you, if that’s all right. He’s not fully back to human yet. Maybe you can get him the rest of the way.”
“I’ll try.” Hayley sank cross-legged to the carpet, taking Griff’s hand. His fingers were still curled into claws, but they relaxed a little at her touch. “I won’t leave him alone.”
“And we won’t leave you alone.” Dai looked around at the other men. “So, who’s taking first watch?”
CHAPTER NINE
Griff
Griff woke up with every part of his body aching with a bone-deep, throbbing pain.
That was a pleasant surprise. He hadn’t been expecting to wake up at all.
Wincing, he very cautiously pushed himself upright on the couch. All the vertebrae in his back ground against each other like granite rocks, but at least he wasn’t hunched over on all fours like a beast.
His knuckles popped as he flexed his fingers, testing their movement. All his fingernails had gone back to human, but three of the fingers on his right hand were now crooked, curled into hooked claw-shapes. Grimacing, Griff tried to straighten them. The joints were locked solid.
Guess I’ll be learning to write left-handed, then.
He couldn’t believe he’d gotten off so lightly. Even with the wyvern venom instantly halting his uncontrolled shift, he’d expected to come back to a body that was more animal than man…if he’d come back at all.
What happened?
His eagle was still catatonic at the very back of his mind, leaving him with only human levels of perception. Griff looked around, blinking to clear his dry, strained eyes. Everything seemed dim and foggy, as if he was looking through smoked glass. He was so unused to the limitations of human sight that it took him a moment to recognize Hayley’s living room.
Hayley herself was curled up on the floor next to the couch, within arm’s reach of him. She was still wearing the same floral top and black leggings she’d worn yesterday. From the dark circles under her closed eyes, Griff guessed that she had to have been awake most of the night.
His eagle and lion both stirred at the sight of their mate, yearning toward her even in their poisoned, weakened state. Griff’s jaw tightened. He brutally chained his beasts back down again, binding them so tightly he could barely feel them in the depths of his soul.
Got to keep a tight leash on them. This can’t happen again.
Which meant other things couldn’t happen again.
Griff forced himself to look away from Hayley. Moving very slowly so as not to wake her up, he levered himself to his feet. His left knee screamed in protest as he tried to put his weight on it. He remembered that it hadn’t hurt, for those few magical minutes last night after he and Hayley had succumbed to the pull of the mate-bond…but it was definitely back to its normal state of wrongness now. His knee joint felt as though someone had been hammering rusty nails through it.
Oh well. It’s not like I’m not used to it.
Leaning on the wall for support, he managed to limp his way to the kitchen. He halted in the doorway, startled by the shards of glass scattered across the tiled floor and the scorch marks on the walls.
“What in God’s name happened here?” Griff muttered to himself. His dry voice rasped like sandpaper in his throat.
*I am afraid that I did,* Ash’s calm, quiet telepathic voice said in his mind. *I was in something of a hurry.*
Squinting out the broken window, Griff caught sight of Ash perched at the very top of the tree outside. The Phoenix’s fire was dimmed and controlled, but he still burned brighter than the sun rising behind him.
“Thank you,” Griff said out loud, wishing that he could communicate back telepathically, to show Ash the deep and sincere gratitude in his mind. “So Hayley did manage to contact you?”
*Just in time.* The Phoenix swooped down to perch on the windowsill, his sweeping tail feathers brushing the ground outside. Griff could feel the heat radiating from the massive, eagle-like form even from six feet away. *Hugh said that a minute later, and there would have been nothing he could do.*
Griff picked his way across the broken glass to the sink. He splashed cold water on his face, then drank from his cupped hand, too parched to waste time finding a cup.
“I owe Hugh an apology,” he said, when he emerged again. Catching sight of his cellphone lying discarded in a corner, he bent to pocket it. “That can’t have been pleasant for him, having to touch me right after Hayley and I had…ah, well, you know. Must have given him a splitting headache.”
Hugh was remarkably tight-lipped about the nature of his shifter animal…but there was no hiding such things from Griff’s eagle. He’d long ago worked out exactly what Hugh was, though he respected Hugh’s desire to keep it a secret even from the rest of Alpha Team. Griff couldn’t blame him for it. Hugh’s species was meant to be extinct, every last one hunted down and slaughtered way back in the Middle Ages.
If I was the main ingredient in a potion that’s meant to grant eternal youth, I’d be pretty damn secretive about my existence too.