Page 18 of Bound to the Griffin
I leaned into his chest when he pulled me close, my breath hitching. He smelled like woodsmoke and wild air, like comfort wrapped around something sharp and dangerous. I wanted to linger there, but I knew we needed to do this. If we waited any longer, I might get nervous again, and that I couldn’t allow. Like I told him before, I needed to see this, be part of this. After we’d had utterly mind-blowing sex, it was even more important that I saw this side of him. If it was real. And I was pretty sure that it was.
His fingers were warm, the pads calloused, as he brushed the side of my jaw and tipped my chin up. His eyes gleamed golden, too golden to ever be called brown. His kiss was tender, steadying, and over too soon. I inhaled deeply, drawing his scent into my lungs as he stepped back. A cold shiver ran down my spine, but wrapped in warm clothing, I knew it was just because I missed his nearness.
He lifted his arms slightly out to his sides, like a magician about to perform a trick. There was that edge in his grin again, sexy, alittle mysterious. His eyes danced with confidence and a hint of something mischievous.
“Here?” I asked, half disbelieving. “In my backyard?” I glanced around uneasily at the sagging fences that surrounded the snow-covered, empty flowerbeds. The next house over on either side was separated from mine by more yard and fence. One had no occupant; the other’s windows were all dark. I had not seen any light on there, except one window at the front. Still, those windows felt like eyes, anyone could be staring out of them.
“No one’s watching,” Jackson said simply, calmly. “Not unless they’re standing at your window. And you’d know if they were.” He jerked his chin at the windows at the back of the B&B, and instead of feeling reassured, I felt more unease shiver down my spine. It was not something I needed to picture, eyes staring at us from inside my own home.
I barely had time to brace before it happened. Light—golden, fierce—burst around him, searing bright, then collapsing inward. My breath caught in my throat as he… changed. Where Jackson had stood, now crouched something magnificent, impossible.
Four great paws pressed into the frost, heavy with muscle and fur the color of tawny, sunlit stone. A lion’s body, but rising from it: vast wings, bronze and gold feathers catching the faint moonlight, shifting with silent power. His head was sharp-beaked, an eagle’s gaze blazing at me from eyes that were still so achingly, unmistakably his. A long lion’s tail swayed low, tipped with a tuft of dark fur.
He was enormous. Beautiful. Terrifying. He was real. I raised my hands and rubbed at my eyes; I needed to make certain I wasn’t imagining this. He towered over me, tall as a horse, wide as... well, as a lion, I supposed. There was suddenly so much of him, and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that.
“Jackson…” His name was barely a whisper. I wasn’t sure if he could speak like this, but I didn’t need him to. I only needed to look into his eyes to know that it was him. Eagle eyes, gold in such a way they never could be called brown. Maybe they were lion eyes too. Didn’t lions have gold eyes? I just knew that I saw that same steadiness, the fire of a protector, and the kindness he’d always shown me.
Slowly, he lowered himself in a bow—regal, almost ceremonial—before lifting one mighty wing. Then he lowered that feathered, beautiful head and touched his sharp beak to the snow. Yeah, a bow, but something more, too. Ceremonial? Try ritual. This was… I gasped, pressing a hand to my mouth. “You’re inviting me…” He gave the smallest huff, air gusting from his beak, and tilted his head toward the curve of his back.
Still trembling, I stepped closer, and it definitely wasn’t nerves in my stomach now, I felt nothing but awe. My fingers brushed his feathers: impossibly soft, layered in rich gold and bronze, warm beneath my touch. I stroked down along his side, tracing the shift from feather to fur, the ripple of sheer muscle under his skin, marveling at the strength coiled there, contained, but ready. He might be a blend of two creatures—impossible—but he was all predator.
When he dipped lower, patient, I placed a foot against his side and swung up, clutching fistfuls of feather to steady myself. Mywhole body vibrated with adrenaline, fear and awe mingling until I couldn’t tell them apart. If childhood me had known she’d one day ride on the back of a myth, she would have been so eager—believed it was possible, eyes wide open.
He started with a walk, his paws soundless against the frost. Massive as he was, it did not crunch beneath his wide paws the way it would beneath our boots. I gripped him tighter, my cheek pressed against the warmth of his neck, and eyed the trees he circled away from. When we faced the fence and empty yard of the abandoned building next door, his wings stretched wide—the sweep of them stole my breath—and with a powerful downstroke, the ground fell away.
The air caught us, lifting, carrying. My stomach dropped, then soared, like I had gotten on a roller coaster ride—yet not. Below us, Hillcrest Hollow lay tucked in for the night, lights winking only in the windows above the General Store. In the dark, you couldn’t see how much of the town was boarded up, empty; it looked peaceful. Then Jackson banked left, and the woods stretched endless and dark, fields blanketed in silver frost, the river a ribbon of reflected moonlight.
Wind whipped through my hair, cold on my cheeks, but I barely felt it. I felt lighter than I had in weeks, the weight of fear and suspicion torn away in the rush of flight. So this was what the town had been hiding, and now I was part of it. This was what had been protecting me, and I had no doubt that a simple burglar, after some dusty money, was no match for it.
Clinging to him, I laughed; wild, breathless, amazed. This wasn’t just him showing me what he was; it was him carrying me into it, tying me to him in a way that felt unshakable. Trust. Wonder.Delight. And somewhere deep down, I knew this moment was binding us, stitching something permanent between us under the winter sky.
Sitting astride the wide, warm back of a beast straight out of a story, I was alone with my thoughts. Jackson was there, carrying me, but he couldn’t speak to me, at least, I didn’t think he could. There was also something about being high up but safe, overlooking all these tiny buildings and trees, that turned my thoughts inward.
All my life, I’d been fighting with the norm because I was different, I didn’t quite fit. I certainly didn’t fit my mother’s mold. Somehow—though I’d never met him—I took after my father: independent, a little rebellious, and searching for real connections, not these shallow things my mother was after, or capable of. Money was an afterthought, not a constant pursuit. And appearances? It was a struggle to make myself care about that, most of all.
Coming to Hillcrest Hollow, a name that was apt, as the town really was nestled in a hollow between hills, had freed me. Cool as my reception had been, it was a choice I’d made for myself—not to do as others wanted, or to rebel in some way, but to do something I genuinely desired. I’d come here to carve out a true home, and I’d found it. I knew I had. The thought of that thrummed inside my chest, tightening what was between Jackson and me. I felt it, like a tangible thing. For the first time in my life, I belonged somewhere.
Chapter 16
Gwendolyn
I don’t know how long we’d been flying when the black horizon began to soften, paling at the edges. At first, I thought it was just the moonlight shifting, a trick of the eyes. But then the faintest streak of color—rose, then amber—threaded through the darkness. Dawn was creeping over the horizon with a colorful brush, and I was seeing it from the back of a griffin.
The cold bit hard at my cheeks, my fingers stiff where they clutched his feathers, but I couldn’t stop staring. The whole sky was opening, painted in fire and gold, breaking into something new. It made my chest ache, made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
As the light grew, I could see Hillcrest Hollow below—not just shadowy outlines anymore, but a handful of rooftops and streets. From up here, it looked peaceful, almost innocent. The layer of snow that covered the B&B’s roof also hid its imperfections, though I could still see some of them. I winced at the sight of the crumbling, crooked chimney and the drooping, damaged gutters. So much work to be done. I hoped Jackson was up for it, like he said. It was the one job I knew I could not do, but unlike me, he could fly. He didn’t need to fear a fall.
We banked wide over the forest, the griffin’s wings catching the rising sun. I saw roads spiderwebbing below, some properly paved, others little more than snow-packed dirt, winding between stands of pine. A handful of remote cabins dotted the landscape, some neat and sturdy, others weathered and crooked.Smoke drifted from some of those chimneys, thin and gray against the sky, but most stood empty and cold.
Then my gaze snagged on something strange: a bridge, half-buried in snow, sagging precariously over a frozen stream. A thin coil of smoke rose nearby, but I couldn’t see a house. Just trees, silent and bare, and what appeared to be a hill of pristine snow between them, from which the smoke was coming. My skin prickled. It felt like someone was living there, but whoever it was, that was no conventional house.
We climbed higher, the forest growing denser the farther we got from town. It was not exactly hilly, but this was definitely higher terrain, overlooking the town, farms, and other cabins. That’s when I saw it: a house, bigger than any of the others, perched on a ridge like it owned the view. Glass walls reflected the forest and town below. A stretch of road had been cleared all the way up to its wide garage, where two gleaming cars sat like trophies. Not quite a mansion, but not some cozy mountain getaway either. Whoever lived there had money, and wanted everyone to know it.
Jackson’s wings angled sharply, carrying us down toward the road. He landed hard, claws digging into packed snow, and I felt the tremor of unease ripple through him. His head stayed locked on the glassy house, sharp beak pointing. I could not see his eyes from behind him, perched on his wide lion’s back, but I knew they were sharp and focused. Whoever lived there, it did not seem like Jackson trusted them.
Then he lowered himself, a slow sinking through his paws until he was belly-down in the snow. My boots could now touch the ground—barely. That’s how big his chest was in this shape: allwarm, tawny fur and muscle, moving like bellows between my thighs. It felt a little illicit—a thrill—when I thought of it, and that made me clumsy when I dismounted, staggering to my feet, boots crunching in the frost.
A flash of gold seared my vision, and then he was just… Jackson again, standing solid and sure in his clothes as if the griffin had been nothing but a dream. I blinked, taking in his wide shoulders beneath his tan sheriff’s jacket. The gold star gleamed on his chest, catching the light and winking. His hair, blonde and short, was a little tousled from the wind, hat missing, but probably because he forgot to put it on before we went outside, not thanks to this transformation thing he could do.
