Chapter Two: Jared
Jared couldn’t take his eyes off the woman sitting across from him.
He hadn’t even recognized her when he’d come to her aid. All he’d seen was some thug pressing someone against the wall in an alley. He’d have intervened no matter what—as a shifter, he was stronger than humans, and he healed much faster. As far as he was concerned, that made it his duty to help when he could.
Of course, then the thug had run, and he’d gotten his first real look at her.
His mate.
His mate, here, in a sleepy little French village. It seemed impossible.
As a griffin shifter, one of the rarest mythological shifters, Jared had never met another of his kind. He’d never really dared to share his fears with anyone... But the only reason he could see for why griffins were so rare was that they didn’t have mates, or only rarely.
The thought was too painful to dwell on, especially for someone like him who’d dreamed of a huge family of his own since childhood. So he’d forbidden himself to dream of it. He’d focused on his work instead.
And there was always work. As one of the messengers of the council of elements, he worked closely with shifter communities all over America.
He rarely took holidays. He didn’t spend much time in his house in the beautiful town of Mountain View where he’d grown up. He didn’t even date, because why bother when his griffin immediately knew that his date wasn’t their mate?
But here she was. Gorgeous, a little shaken after the attack—but absolutely real.
Within him, his griffin spread his wings in delight.
“You said that he was weird,” she said after a long moment of silence.
He hadn’t even realized how much time had passed. It was incredibly hard to keep himself from staring at her.
She had shoulder-length, straight hair that was currently dyed purple at the roots, with blue mid-lengths and a light green for the ends. She wore long, golden earrings, which chimed musically every time she turned her head. There was a choker of black velvet around her throat with some sort of arcane symbol he didn’t recognize at the front. In addition, she was wearing bracelets with little charms as well.
And all of that was topped off with sensible hiking pants, a purple t-shirt and chunky hiking boots.
She looked a bit like a witch on a hiking trip. The cutest and most charming witch he’d ever seen.
Not that he’d ever seen a witch before, outside of Halloween.
“Weird,” he echoed, trying to remember what he’d seen the split second before instinct had taken over and he’d driven her attacker off. “I didn’t get a good look at him. But something about him felt off.”
She wasn’t a shifter, he could feel that. And the man who’d attacked her hadn’t been a shifter either, which was what made this so weird. Because there’d definitely been a strange power at work. The darkness that had filled the alley hadn’t been natural. In fact, it had felt frighteningly familiar...
Steele. The darkness tasted like shadow—like the shadow when Steele had attacked Sky Home.
But that was impossible. The man who’d attacked Chiara had been human. A human couldn’t use this unsettling shadow power. It had nearly consumed Steele, and he’d been one of the strongest fire dragons.
Chiara stared at him. She bit her lip—and then she sat up straight.
“You’re going to laugh at me,” she said, “but that’s all right, I’m used to it. And it doesn’t make this any less true. The man who attacked me—Lou—he wasn’t human. Not completely.”
Jared stared at her, surprised. Did she know about the shifter world? “What do you mean?”
“There’s lots of weird things out there,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Werewolves. Vampires. Aliens, probably. And demons like this guy. When he a
ttacked me, his face turned into shadow. I was staring straight into darkness. Absolute darkness. A Nothing. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Definitely not human.”
“Wait, wait... did you just say aliens?”
Jared’s head was reeling. For a split second he’d thought that she knew about shifters, which would have made everything so much easier.
But then she’d followed it up with vampires and aliens...