“Of course we did. We’d never seen fire condors before, outside of videos. We weren’t going to miss out on this. Out where we are, most of our cryptid rescue work is based around making sure that we’re trapping all the stray bat-winged cats and getting them neutered.”
Ros couldn’t stop herself from laughing at that.
“Bat-winged cats? Are you messing with me?”
“Don’t I wish! Just when you think you’ve got every single one in the county, someone out looking for Bigfoot reports seeing one chasing down gophers, and you know there’s a litter somewhere you need to get to before the local news does. And of course Cass is totally gone on them, so every time a new litter shows up, he wants to adopt at least one, and–”
“Oh, like you’re so innocent,” Cassidy snorted, coming over to hand Pearl a plate with a sizzling steak on it. “You’re the one who fell in love with Tripod.”
“Bat-winged kitten with three legs,” Pearl said to Ros. “She was absolutely impossible to resist. Right now, Tripod, Peach, and William are staying with Cass’s family while we’re on the road.”
Teagan handed Ros her own plate of steak and took the seat next to hers.
“I saw on the group chat that Dag got a bat-winged litter just yesterday,” he said. “Sounds like a hawk got the mom, and he’s bottle-feeding them until they get big enough to adopt out.”
Ros remembered her call with Dag, and the image shifted from the patient man bottle-feeding helpless kittens to Dag bottle-feeding flying kittens.
“Oh, that’s got to be adorable,” she blurted out, and Teagan nudged her shoulder.
“Want to go see?” he asked, even as Pearl groaned.
“That’s how it starts,” she told Ros. “You’re just going to go see, and then suddenly one starts trying to nurse off your fingers or beat up his siblings to get to cuddle with you–”
“And suddenly you’re shacked up in the mountains with a cute girl, a trio of bat-winged kittens and animal-rescue contacts all across the country,” said Cassidy, sounding enormously pleased with himself. “Pretty good deal.”
Pearl started to say something to that, and Cassidy leaned over in his chair to kiss her cheek, making her blush and laugh.
“I like your friends,” Ros whispered to Teagan, and he grinned at her.
“I talked to Cass, and he says they’re heading down our way in a few days. Want to head off after dinner and catch up with them later this week?”
His words were entirely respectable, but there was that laser-like focus in his eyes, his eagle looking out, she thought. That look told her she was the only thing in the world that existed for him right that moment, and her breath caught slightly at the weight and the reality of it.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I would.”
*
They took off a little bit after dinner. Ros was momentarily worried that they were being rude, eating and rushing off, but as Teagan told her in the car that if anyone would understand, it was Pearl and Cassidy.
“They’re true mates, just like we are,” he said. “They know exactly what it’s like.”
“Not exactly,” Ros murmured, and Teagan started to respond before she put her hand on his thigh. She could feel the shift of muscle through denim, heard the click of his throat as he swallowed.
Abruptly, he pulled them onto the access road that would take them to the highway.
“Teagan?”
“Condoms,” he said, and Ros started to laugh.
Back at the cabin, the sun had set, and the air was suffused with a soft twilight glow. The moon was already on the rise, and when Ros got out of the truck, it was to step straight into Teagan’s arms. After the events of the day and their rush into the drugstore to secure a box of condoms, she had thought that they would fall on each other, but instead there was something almost restrained about the way they kissed, solemn and thorough even as it took her breath away.
“I love you,” Teagan whispered against her lips. “God, but I love you.”
She broke the kiss, started to lead him up the steps to the house, but instead he held her back.
“I believe you made a request earlier.”
He pulled a sleeping bag out from the cab of his truck, and instead of going into the house, he led her to the backyard, sheltered from the road, open to the sky and ringed with dark trees. The grasshoppers had started up their chorus, and above them, the sky went on forever.