Under His Wing

Chapter One

Gardelle of the Hawks flew high above the ground below, over the homes inhabited by humans, too high for them to see. The cool night air ran over his bare chest, feeling divine. As a shifter male, his body often ran hotter than that of others, and he also had the ability to warm his core temperature more should the need arise. As he preferred to be cooler rather than hot, Gardelle didn't bother warming himself too much.

No matter how long he'd been splitting his time between his home realm and the human one, he still could not get used to the human realm having only one moon. He was accustomed to seeing four in the night sky. One was so large it could often still be seen during daylight hours as well. That was just one thing that set his Accipitridae apart from the human realm.

It pained him to know his niece, Sabrina, would never know the beauty of their home realm. She'd never see four moons, or the wonders of the Tocallie Mountains. She would never know the beauty of a world that was untouched by commercial properties, endless parking lots and highways.

"It can never be," he said faintly, his heart heavy with the knowledge his niece would never know the truth of who she was, who he was, and where they were from.

He extended his large wings outward as he soared. He loved flying and missed being able to do so on a daily basis. Already he had to use caution when entering and exiting the portal to avoid detection from either side. If caught disobeying orders in his home realm, he'd have to stand before the king. If seen by humans, he'd cause mass pandemonium. Even at night, he risked being seen by a human. If their one moon was full enough, it was entirely possible for the human eye to catch sight of him high in the sky. But that was a small price to pay to ensure his niece remained safe and hidden away from the falcon shifters.

When he'd whisked her away from the bird realm when she was just a toddler, Gardelle had made the decision to raise her among humans. At first, it had been difficult to assimilate enough to pass for human without drawing suspicious glances and whispers. He'd had fifteen years of practice. Fifteen years of sneaking through the portals, of lying to everyone in his life.

While he didn't always get slang, he was far better than he used to be. Now the humans he interacted with thought of him as an eccentric millionaire who was from a remote, tiny, relatively unheard-of country in Eastern Europe. It explained his accent, which others could not place, for good reason.

He was born in Accipitridae—a realm full of bird shifters. They were the thing of myths and legends to humans. The bird realm was free of pollution, overpopulation, poverty. It did have violence but no more than the human realm.

Centuries ago, the human and the bird realms had been very much alike. They both had working castles, villages, and small towns. The times were referred to as the Dark Ages in human history books. Gardelle's people saw them as some of the best Earth years. The hunger and disease that had spread through the human realm had been an issue—one his people had to tried to help with. That had not gone as planned, and the shifters from his realm returned home, coming back to the human realm rarely, being sure to hide their true selves. And over the centuries, the human realm had continued to advance, wage war, go hungry, pollute the earth.

As much as it had pained his kind to step back and no longer take an active role in the human realm, it had been the right choice. Humans had advanced for the better in some ways, for the worst in many others, but they'd done so on their own terms.

They didn't need the bird shifters to show them such things as healing techniques, or how to build structures that would last centuries, as had once been the case. They had gone through various stages, and while they had done well for themselves in terms of increasing their life spans, they lived nowhere near as long as his kind did. Kabril, the king of the royal hawks (the kingdom that Gardelle was from), was considered young in the eyes of his people, and he was centuries old.

Perhaps one day humans would figure out how to slow the aging process. How to live longer. They might even find a way to cheat death. For now, they lived but a blink in Gardelle's mind. They came and went so quickly.

While he'd given little thought to this before, a lot had changed since he'd taken to raising his niece among humans. He'd befriended some humans. Most were men who worked at his company. Though one was his niece's friend.

Lisa Redsun.

The very thought of Lisa's life speeding by caused Gardelle to lose his rhythm as he flew. He began to spiral downward and had to correct himself. That was a rookie mistake. One young fledglings committed when first learning to fly—not something a man of his years and training did.

He glanced around, already knowing he was alone in the air, but feeling the need to be sure. He was that embarrassed by his fall. There was no way he'd live down nearly plummeting to his death because he'd lost focus over a human woman. His friends and his men from his home realm would never permit him to hear the end of it.

Continuing onward, Gardelle's mind drifted back to Lisa and her mortality. The very idea of Lisa aging quickly and then dying twisted at his gut and his mind, nearly making him plummet again. He had seen many humans die in his long life. So many that it normally had no effect on him. The idea of it happening now—to her—had an enormous impact. So much so that he was acting like a mere babe, new to the world and new to his wings.

Something was certainly amiss.

"Enough," he spat, taking in a deep breath and thrusting thoughts of Lisa's natural demise from his mind as best he could.

It should not matter to him what became of her.

Yet it did.

He could speak with the healers of his realm to see if they had anything that could extend the human female's life span somewhat. He made a mental note to check on as much when he next returned to Accipitridae. Though he would have to inquire about it under the guise of something else. While Kabril had loosened his decree on his people going to the human realm, it was still greatly frowned upon and permission was always sought.

Well, others asked if they could.

Gardelle simply went, hoping to avoid detection.

He was breaking so many rules by simply being in the human realm that he didn't dare dwell upon it all. Besides, he'd come too far and had lied to his people too long to stop, no matter the risk.

Somehow, Gardelle had managed to split his time between the two realms for fifteen years. He made sure to never miss anything to do with his duties as a captain in the hawk army. And he managed to run a highly successful company in the human realm. In addition, he'd raised his niece Sabrina.

When all was said and done, he had no free time to speak of, and that was fine by him. He had no issue dedicating himself to work and to his niece. Children were such a rare gift for bird shifters that there had never been any question in his mind about what he would do when Sabrina had fallen into his life.

While she was technically his niece, he saw her as a daughter. Her mother, Gardelle's sister, had passed when Sabrina was just a babe. That had been the last of Gardelle's family line. It was part of the reason he'd stolen his niece away and decided to live a lie in order to raise her among humans.

He prayed she would never learn the truth of where she came from. Of what he was. Thankfully, she didn't possess the ability to shift forms and sprout wings. It would have been hard to explain that away. He'd been careful to never reveal himself to her. She was curious by nature, and he didn't need her digging too deep and uncovering the truth of it all. It would only put her life at risk.

At eighteen, she was now considered an adult in the human realm. Since bird-shifter males lived for centuries, eighteen didn't seem very old to him. In fact, the time had gone by in the blink of an eye.

Sabrina's new passion was attending university. She was excited and talked nonstop about it all. Gardelle didn't share her enthusiasm. There were far too many men on the campus for his liking. He'd have preferred she pick an all-girls college.

She'd refused.

Human boys thought only with their cocks, and if any of them dared to touch his niece, they'd find themselves missing vital pieces of their anatomy. If they were lucky, he'd permit them to live.

Probably not.

His cell phone buzzed in his pocket, indicating it had synced back with the towers in the human realm. When he was in Accipitridae, the phone was worthless. There were no such things as cell phone towers, electricity, the internet, or anything of the sort in the bird realm. While they were smart enough to have all of it and more, they were wise enough to know the price that came with such advancements. And the steep cost wasn't something the bird shifters wanted to pay. They did not want their world to suffer as Earth had.

His phone continued to buzz, no doubt letting him know of all the texts, emails, and notifications he'd missed by being out of cell range.

Gardelle began to make his way towards the home he kept in the human realm. The strangest compulsion to change directions and veer off course ever so slightly came over him, and he was unable to fight the urge. Giving in, Gardelle flew in the direction that felt right. As he did, the strangest of tugs in his stomach began, as if he were being physically pulled in that direction.

He went with it.

It wasn't as if he had a choice. His body had a mind of its own and he was at its mercy.

When the tugging stopped, Gardelle found himself landing on the side of a cliff, overlooking a huge white mansion situated on another cliffside below. He knew the home. He'd never actually been in the home, but he'd picked his niece up there enough to know who lived within.

Lisa.

It was the home she shared with her parents. Parents he had never met face-to-face, despite the fact his niece and Lisa had been friends for three years, spending a great deal of time together.

Lisa was too wild for Gardelle's liking. He knew Lisa encouraged Sabrina to act out and go against the rules. Lisa was going through something of a rebellious phase. One that had started a year or so back but was only getting progressively worse. Thankfully, his niece refused to abide by the she-devil's requests or give in to her influence.

Why in the world had Gardelle felt compelled to fly to Lisa's home?

He vaguely recalled his niece asking if Lisa could spend the weekend with them. Something about it being Lisa's eighteenth birthday and her parents being out of town.

Gardelle didn't put much stock in birthdays. Not with as many cycles as he had under his belt. He'd been told more than once that he looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. Not hundreds of years old, as was the case.

He folded his wings in and they vanished into his body. To anyone who might happen upon him (however unlikely that was with as remote as his position was), he would look like a human male who was walking about the woods, near a cliff 's edge, wearing nothing more than jeans and boots.

He'd seen human males wear stranger things.

For instance, he'd seen some human males wearing jeans so tight that they had to be excruciatingly painful to their cocks. That, or human males were simply not as well-endowed as shifter males. There was no way Gardelle was wearing the skinny jeans, as he'd heard Lisa refer to them before. It was enough for him to wear jeans at all. Ones that suction cupped to him held no appeal.

He looked down at the mansion below. A huge water fountain sat in the center of a large circular drive. Spotlights illuminated it from below, changing color at timed intervals. It was very pleasing to the eye. So much so that he'd entertained having a similar one put in at his home. His estate was about the same size as the one before him. His often looked as empty as well.

"What are you doing here?" he asked to nothing but air.

"And now I'm talking to myself. Wonderful. Should someone I know come along, they'll think I've been afflicted by the bird sickness."

Gardelle considered leaving, still unclear as to why he'd felt so strongly to be there in the first place. He ran his hands through his long dark hair, his muscles flexing all on their own, tight with something close to worry. He was agitated but he didn't know why or what had prompted it. All he knew was nervous energy coursed through his veins.

He began to pace on the edge of the cliff, causing some loose stones to fall over the ledge. It took a bit for them to hit the ground below. His sensitive shifter hearing allowed him to pick up on the sound of them landing with soft thuds. The fall was not one a human would survive.

The homes in the area were all built upon the edges of cliffs. Trees surrounded each of them, giving the massive homes a feeling of being totally and completely private.

That was part of the lure. The other, for Gardelle, was the area's closeness to a portal.

Gardelle tipped his head back and forth, cracking his neck in the process. It did nothing to alleviate his nervous energy.

He took a deep breath and did his best to think of leaving. The compulsion to remain kept him in place. His gaze moved towards the mansion once more. He'd first thought it to be empty, but he spotted a silhouette through the curtains. At the sight of the curvy form, Gardelle's body responded, tightening, his cock hardening.

His breath caught, and he grabbed himself, holding his erection through his jeans, unsure what was causing the reaction. He'd had no desire to bed a female in years. That in itself was hard enough for him to explain. It was as if someone had come along and shut off his sexual urges— his manly desires. He'd once had a healthy sexual appetite. It had vanished almost overnight.

Evidently, someone had turned his sex drive back on tenfold.

Gardelle couldn't tear his gaze from the clearly feminine form. The person vanished from the window, and Gardelle nearly took flight to charge the house. It was all he could do to control the beast within him. While he was a hawk shifter, he had very little in common with the hawks from the human realm. They were small. He was very large. And very aroused.

He continued to watch the womanly form as it moved around in the front room. The woman was doing nothing extraordinary, yet his body was reacting as if he were getting a slow striptease.

"I wish."

The figure vanished from sight and Gardelle swayed, his body burning with need. He only wished his mind knew what in the hell was going on. As it stood, he was lost.

The front door opened and when a young, blonde-haired beauty stepped out, Gardelle lurched backwards, shocked to his very core.

Lisa?

His body was responding to Lisa in such a way?

No!

Chapter Two

SHE WAS his niece's best friend. She was also only eighteen. That was far from old enough for him to have lustful thoughts over her. She would need to be closer to a hundred or even two hundred before he felt more comfortable with it all. Since she was human, that would never work.

The young woman also derived immense pleasure in riling him every chance she could. It was as if she enjoyed his ire.

Maybe she did.

Right now, his body viewed her as a viable bed partner. A woman to sink deep into and lose himself.

Not his niece's best friend. That was simply unacceptable. She was not an option at all.

No way.

No how.

Yet his cock didn't seem to agree with his head. Neither did the rest of him, which tightened with the fierce need to fly to her, whisk her away, and take her to a cave in the mountains, as legends of old told of how bird-shifter males used to do when they found their mates.

Mate?

Lisa was not his mate.

She couldn't be.

For one, she was human.

For two, she was Lisa—he'd known her for a few years. He'd surely have figured out by now if she was something more to him than his niece's friend. Wouldn't he?

The fierce compulsion to go to her was too much for him to take. It didn't matter that he was a trained soldier and warrior. Nothing could have prepared him for the reaction he was suddenly having to Lisa.

He stumbled and fell to one knee, the intense demand to go to the young woman beating at him from within. He shook his head and fought against the bizarre urges coursing through his veins. He dug deep, in search of his willpower.

It was virtually nonexistent.

He was behaving as if he'd barely seen twenty full cycles under his belt. In truth, he'd seen hundreds. Far too many to be this out of control over any woman— human or not.

"Pull it together." He wiped his hand over his face to remove some sweat. "Fly home. You have no reason to be here."

While the words came out, his body didn't obey. It remained in place, watching as Lisa got into her sports car, put the top down, and then sped out of the long drive. From his vantage point, he would be able to see her driving some distance. He could still recall two years prior, when she'd shown up in his driveway in the convertible, having only just gotten her driver's license, wanting Gardelle to permit Sabrina to go riding about the town with her.

He, of course, had said no.

Lisa had then spent the day at his home, making rather obvious comments about him and his "ruling with an iron fist" and "dictator-like behavior." She was nothing if not dramatic.

She was also breathtakingly beautiful.

And far too young for him.

Her long blonde hair blew about wildly but she didn't seem to care. She also didn't seem to mind driving with the top down at night. The woman drove horribly. Worse than Gardelle had years ago when he'd first learned to do so. She also went far faster than the posted legal limits, swerving and just narrowly missing going off the road.

Did the woman have a death wish?

The roads in the area tended to have steep drop-offs. If she lost control of the vehicle for even a second, she could plummet to her death.

The idea of such a thing occurring made him break out in a cold sweat. There was the smallest of pinches in his back before his wings burst free from him. He wasted no time taking flight and following Lisa as she drove in the direction of his home. He stayed high in the air, hoping the darkness blanketed him from view.

Lisa turned down a road that led to town, rather than his house, and he followed. She pulled into a petrol station and parked near a pump. Her cell phone rang, and she grabbed it from her bag on the passenger seat.

"Hey, babes, yes. I'm headed to your place right now. I need to fill up first," Lisa said, the very sound of her voice making Gardelle's body respond more.

What the hell was wrong with him? His body went from not working to going into overdrive—all over the wrong woman. Did it not understand this one was too young and off limits?

He circled high above the petrol station, observing Lisa below as she spoke on the phone.

"Sabrina, you need to stop trying to mother me. I have one of those and she does fine on her own. In fact, she called me not even an hour ago, lecturing me on not already being at your house. I know she and my dad don't like the fact they have to be gone this weekend, but I really do not need her guilt making her call me every few hours. Ohmygod, she wanted to have a cake and an entire event planner sent over to your place for me. I had to talk her down from that. I told her you were making me a cake and we were having a small, private party."

Gardelle watched as Lisa got out of her car and began to fill it with fuel while talking on the phone to his niece.

Movement from the far edge of the petrol station caught his eye. There was a human male there, in the shadows, wearing black from head to toe.

The man simply stood at the edge of the station, his face hidden beneath a hooded sweatshirt. Gardelle clenched his fists, his focus remaining on the man. There was something about the human that set Gardelle on edge. Evil radiated from the man, making the air reek of it. He was up to no good. That much was clear.

Lisa continued to talk on the phone as she finished putting fuel in her car. "Craving anything that's terrible for you but oh so yummy? I can get some candy for us while I'm here. I could try to buy beer. I have a fake ID with me." She grunted. "You are no fun. So what if your uncle were to catch us drinking? Maybe he could have one and loosen up. He's sexy but, man, is he uptight."

She laughed, and the sound hit Gardelle right in the gut, making need slam through him. He had to fight to stay in the air. Cursed Magaious, the woman was going to make him plummet to his death before the night was out.

"Okay, let me go stock us up on junk food. Your uncle is going to give me that disapproving look he likes to give me," said Lisa with a half-smile. "Even when he's scowling at me, he's still hot. Seriously, Sabrina, your uncle is like an eleven out of ten. I really wish he'd walk around the house without a shirt on or something. You can tell he's ripped."

Gardelle had little time to think about what she'd said as she made her way into the petrol station and the human male came forth from the shadows.

The man ran quickly to Lisa's vehicle and leapt over the side, into the backseat. There was a high chance Lisa would never see him when she returned to the car.

Fury consumed Gardelle as he dove at the male. His wings flapped as he reached out, snatching hold of the man's arm, and ripping him from the vehicle.

The man screamed but Gardelle ignored the sound, flying quickly in the direction of the cliffs once more. Once he reached them, he threw the man, letting him hit the ground as Gardelle landed with ease on his feet.

He stalked towards the man, who rolled and looked up at Gardelle with nothing short of terror on his face.

"W-what are you?" the man managed, the smell of piss filling the air.

It was then Gardelle realized the man had wet himself.

"I am your worst nightmare," said Gardelle, his voice barely above a whisper. He had faced down fierce warriors in his time. The human male did not frighten him. "Tell me what you planned to do to the female."

He already had a fairly good idea but wanted to hear the male acknowledge as much.

As the man's plan fell from his lips, Gardelle shut off. What he'd planned to do to Lisa had been vile and, from the sounds of his confession, she would not have been the man's first victim.

The man would never lay a finger on Lisa or any other woman ever again. Gardelle would see to that. He let talons emerge from the tips of his fingers. He knew the sight he presented to the sick human and he took great comfort in the man's fear.

"Now. You die," said Gardelle, his tone flat, his mission clear. "And it will not be fast. It will be painful and slow."

He attacked the man with a rage that he could not explain. One he didn't want to attempt to cage. True to his word, he made sure the man suffered before he ended him. Hiding his body was easy enough, considering Gardelle could fly to places not easily accessed by humans.

When he finished, he flew in the direction of his home. He spotted Lisa's sports car in the drive and let out a breath he'd not realized he'd been holding.

She was safe.

Good.

Gardelle landed on the balcony outside of his bedroom, drew his wings into himself, and entered through the double doors. The second he stepped inside, he caught scent of Lisa. She always smelled like lacine berries and the flower dormiturus, which were both native to the bird realm and not something found in the human one.

Dormiturus was favored by the healers from home. It had various medicinal purposes. He'd known several of his soldiers who had begun to suffer from nightmares after battles. Healers often gave the men a mixture of dormiturus and something else to help them be dream free.

Whatever helped his men was fine by him.

Lacine berries were similar to strawberries. Though they were known to be an aphrodisiac. He wasn't sure if strawberries helped or hurt one's sex drive, since he'd not exactly had a sex drive to speak of for years.

Until now.

He inhaled Lisa's scent once more and groaned, his hand going over his clothed cock. Blessed Epopisdeus, the young woman had otherworldly powers. That was the only explanation for it.

He groaned and went straight for his master bathroom shower. He washed away any specks of blood from the man who would have harmed Lisa if given a chance. Partway through the shower, Gardelle found himself turning off the hot water and showering only in cold, in hopes it would help to alleviate his hard-on.