Barely Winging It

Evernight
Publishing ®

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright©
2015
Tigertalez

 
ISBN:
978-1-77233-286-5

Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor:
Karyn
White

ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or
distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
 
No part of this book may be used or
reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names,
characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

To my three boys Liam,
Keoni
,
and Kona.
You have given me great ideas for names and
mischief that surpasses simple imagination. You keep me laughing, cheering, and
striving to better myself. You are the loves of my life.

BARELY WINGING IT

Kaska
Pack, 3

Tigertalez

Copyright
© 2015

Chapter One

Wednesday
afternoon

Phoenix Savage tightened his talons around the thin
branch he perched on, steadying himself in the light breeze that swayed him as
he watched, from nearly a mile away, his alpha’s sister, Havana, head for her
daily trip to the barn. He had been watching her make the trip every day since
the gargoyles arrived, which had been about a couple of weeks now. He suspected
she and the lead gargoyle,
Dultyn
, were mates. But
Havana was only seventeen, so Nix had noticed they were pointedly avoiding each
other, no doubt the only way not to go insane from the mating pull.

As his eyes scanned the plush forest below and around,
looking for any trouble, he sat, contented with where he was right now in his
life. He was definitely grateful that he didn’t have a mate at the moment. He had
too much baggage, along with several skeletons in his closet.

The heavy clouds promised rain soon, moistening the
air with a sticky humidity, but Nix didn’t mind it much so long as he could be
in falcon form. He was always most comfortable in his avian form. Maybe too
much, but he didn’t care if it was. The last several decades he had been unable
to shift as often as he would have liked, so now that he had the chance at
being in his flight form all day, he gladly submitted to it. As it stood now,
he only took his human form when he flew in for evening reports and sat with the
family over supper … or in the case of the gargoyles, breakfast.

Nix stretched out his wings and felt the breeze tickle
through his feathers. Giving in to his passion for flight, he leaped into the
air. He was going to do one more flight around the five thousand acre property
before heading in.

With the wind currents moving over his feathers, he
flew over the construction site
Kace
and his team
were currently finishing up. It was a small cabin near a large pond for Betty.
She was
Alphy’s
great-aunt, who had kept this
territory in the hopes it would be a sleuth, or in their case, a pack, once
again. Her mate was the Canadian shifter councilmember Tyler Ghost. They had
only recently discovered each other when
Alphy
had
invited him to witness the alpha challenge they’d had almost three weeks back. Tyler
was an eagle shifter, so Nix had company in the skies once in a while, but he
didn’t mind it so long as he wasn’t pushed out of the sky.

Nix circled in the air currents over the site. They
had the foundation finished and the walls and roof mostly constructed. They
only needed the sidings and shingles to be done on the outside, but his sharp
eyes could see there was still much to done on the inside. When he gave the
group a friendly twitter, they waved in response as he flew on.

The acreage was full of abandoned homes. One spot in
particular he favored. Even though the main pack house was in an open ten acre
area, there was a great spot that was a long strip of field that was about
twenty-five hundred feet long and maybe two hundred fifty feet wide. There were
several trees that bordered it that he loved to perch in. The field grew
wildflowers, and a small river full of fish ran nearby. Nix was hoping to get a
house built here.
Alphy
had approved this spot for
him, so he didn’t worry about another shifter taking it over, as so many homes
were planned on being built. Nix wasn’t in a hurry since he wasn’t in his human
form much, but it didn’t stop him from feeling territorial of the space
already.

After a long period of time, Nix finished his sentry
duty. He angled his body and tail and started heading back to the pack house. A
low buzzing sound caught his attention. Nix looked around for the sound. He saw
a glint of metal drop from the bottom of the clouds just east of him. It was a
plane, whose engine could be heard sputtering, proving to be in distress and
steadily losing altitude. Nix’s sharp eyes made out what looked like one female
occupant in the small DHC-2 Beaver plane.

He could do nothing but watch as the pilot dipped and
aimed for his stretch of wildflowers. He knew it was the logical and best place
for her to land if she was in trouble, so he followed her to watch the event
unfold. Further and further the plane inclined, the wings dipping and rocking as
it descended and the engine cut out a few more times. The heavy wheels fitted
to the plane were large and made for unpaved landings. Aiming for a branch on
his favorite tree that bordered the
strip,
Nix stretched
out his talons and wrapped them around the wooden perch. Shaking out his
feathers, he turned his sights on the struggling plane and watched as the pilot
expertly dipped and angled until the wheels touched the ground.

Nix watched the plane approach his end of the flower-paved
runway and wondered what the pilot looked like without the glasses and headset.
As the plane turned around at the end, he was able to make out the
identification number on the fuselage. A thin form lithely climbed from the
quieted plane. Nix’s falcon twittered at the sight of the natural black curls
crowning the head of a milk chocolate skinned angel before she moved out of sight
to the front of the plane.

Unable to suppress his urge to investigate further, he
hopped into the air and spread his wings, soaring down to take a much closer
look. Landing on the wing of the plane, he watched the woman peer into the
engine. She briefly looked up at him in surprise when he landed.

“Well, hello there. Wow, aren’t you a gorgeous thing?”
she said in clear awe.

Just the sound of the woman’s voice sent a flutter
through his feathers and prickled his skin with delight. For some reason, her
approval of his bird gave him enormous satisfaction. Catching her scent on the
twirling breeze, his body suddenly froze.
Shit!
She’s my mate! And she’s human.

Nix sat stunned as he watched her moving around. His
mind was overworked with thoughts and questions he couldn’t answer or even ask.
All he could do was watch her. She hummed a tune as she rummaged around in the
plane and came out with a toolbox, and continued to hum while taking off the
nose cover.

She talked to herself, or to him, as she inspected the
engine. “No, it’s not that. What’s in here? Nope, not that either.” He listened
to her mumble and the dinking sounds of her wrench connecting with various
metal parts. She made her way around the engine checking dipsticks, and pulling
out plugs to examine, then sticking them back. “Huh, I wonder if that was the
problem.”

He didn’t know how long it took, but he thought it was
too dark to fly once she put the nose covers back on.

Her dark brown eyes scanned over him. “You are the
strangest bird I have ever met. I’ve never seen a bird just sit there and watch
me like you did.” Nix watched the expression on her face turn sad or bereft
even. “I’m
gonna
take off now, so you might want to
fly away.” She climbed back into the plane and started doing her checklist for
flight.

Wait a minute, fly away?
Just as his brain seemed to have wrapped itself
around what she said, the engine turned over. Nix didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t
just shift and tell her to stop. If she survived the shock of him shifting, she
certainly wouldn’t handle a fully naked man added to it.

Nix leaped off the plane and flew to the top of a
large tree. He looked back to see the plane already heading down the strip, its
number almost unreadable in the dark. Nix knew he needed to remember that
number if he ever had a chance at finding her again. He repeated it over and
over in his head as the plane took flight and flew over the trees, disappearing
into the dark and low hanging clouds.

With urgency, Nix took flight again and headed back to
the alpha house. He knew just the man to help him. Even though before her
arrival he was grateful not to have a mate, now a fire burned inside him for
her, and he hadn’t wanted or would want anything more.