“Dominance display. Usually one or the other throws some sparks, the other backs off, life continues.”
“But that wasn’t a few sparks.”
“No. That looks like the typical squabble got a little heated, no pun intended, and it might escalate. They don’t usually, and where these birds live, it’s not too dangerous. It’s hard to set rocky mountainous steppes on fire most of the time.”
As they watched, the female on the clothesline decided she had had enough and winged her way back to the deck, only for the one on the grill to scream in offense. This time, both of the birds went up at once, bigger and brighter.
Teagan swore, grabbing the hose and soaking the situation down before it could get too bad, but then he had to beat a hasty retreat back indoors as two of the males hissed and came for him.
The two soaked matriarchs screamed angrily, but they separated, and Ros realized that she was hanging on to Teagan’s arm, as if afraid he would run back into danger. He might have to.
“You can’t keep this up,” she said.
“I’ll have to, until my friends get here. Pearl said they were eight hours out. That’s not pleasant, but it’s doable.”
Ros started to reply, but then she saw the little juvenile male sitting on the deck. He seemed completely immune to the chaos. Once or twice he glanced almost shyly towards the door. He didn’t have a dead rabbit to offer her this time. Maybe he felt too embarrassed to show up without a gift. Good manners, Ros’s grandma would have said.
“Ros?”
“So what you’re saying is that we need to keep the fire condors occupied until your friends get here. What about distracting them and getting them closer to your friends?”
She could see the wheels turn in Teagan’s mind. She saw thenocome up automatically. If she was being fair, she got it. If he had actually gotten shanked by one of the fire condors when he went out to douse them, she had no idea what she might have done.
She also saw him glance out at the birds on the deck. One of the matriarchs had already started to smolder again, wisps of smoke rising from her head. The trees beyond the yard looked particularly flammable. It hadn’t rained in weeks.
“So if I grab Junior out there, would they follow me?”
“To Hell and back, most likely. They’re fiercely clannish and–No. I can’t believe we’re thinking about this.”
“But we are. If I have Junior, they’ll follow me, won’t they? And if they’re following me, they’ll be too busy to set those dry trees on fire, right?”
Teagan looked a little like he had swallowed a frog: uncomfortable, dismayed, and unsure of how things had gotten this bad. He started to speak twice, managed it on the third.
“Are you sure?”
“Always,” she said, and he shook his head. He took her hand and looked her straight in the eye. It made her breath catch, how deeply he looked at her, as if he wanted to see every single bit and love it.
“Sweetheart. You have to understand I would never ask this of you. If I have to be out there with a hose for the next eight hours, if I have to go out in eagle form and play keep-away to make sure they don’t start lighting up at each other, that’s fine. What’s not fine is you taking a risk because you think there aren’t any other options.”
“But I think I have the best one. And you do too, or you wouldn’t be asking me this.”
Teagan leaned in until his forehead rested against hers. For all they had done already, it was a curiously intimate pose. She could smell a faint hint of woodsmoke on him. His hands on her arms were still damp.
“If anything happens to you–”
“It won’t,” she said, and then he did kiss her, a hard fierce kiss that took her breath away and filled her with a kind of wild elation that made her think of flying, of skies that never ended and a joy so big her heart couldn’t contain it.
Neither one of them wanted to break the kiss, but at a shrieking battle cry from the birds on the deck, they drew apart reluctantly.
Teagan straightened, and something in her warmed at the fact that he didn’t ask her if she was sure again. Instead, he looked determined, even as he took her hand and held it tight, bringing it up to his lips for one last kiss.
“All right,” he said. “I’m going to make a few calls, and then we’re on.”
Chapter Eleven
∞∞∞
The worst part was that when he called Cassidy and Pearl, they thought this was a brilliant idea. If he were being honest with himself, Teagan was sort of hoping they had something else, anything else. Instead, they set the meeting place, he got the route mapped out, and then there was nothing else for it.