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HER FALCON
After spending nearly a year in captivity, Ramsey Altair needed time to heal. Although she had long dreamed of finding her fated mate, she wasn’t prepared to face the man who might belong to her so soon after being rescued. Feeling as though she had no other choice, she fled his pack before they could meet.
Aero Covey refused to be deterred. Once he realized the faint scent he’d caught in his town was his fated mate, nothing was going to stop him from finding her.
PROLOGUE
RAMSEY
Being a lone shifter wasn’t easy. After being banned from my tower, I had spent almost as much time in my falcon form as I did human. Soaring high above the trees helped ease my animal’s loneliness, but it wasn’t the safest thing to do since I didn’t have anyone to watch my back. I didn’t have a choice, though. I couldn’t keep my falcon caged inside when she longed to be free.
Moving onto territory claimed by a wolf pack helped minimize the risk. They patrolled the wilderness where I flew, and other shifters wouldn’t roam on their land without permission.
The same held true for me, which was why I’d approached their alpha when I arrived in Lake Park. I’d been lucky that he’d been okay with me staying here—as long as I kept a low profile and didn’t cause any trouble. It wasn’t exactly a warm welcome, but the offer was more than I’d expected.
Most packs would have told me that my time in their town needed to be short since I was a loner. There was a lot of distrust in the shifter world when it came to those of us who had been banned. I’d experienced it myself, running up against plenty of assumptions about what I must’ve done to get kicked out of my tower. All of them bad.
But for the past six months, I had found a certain degree of peace. The local pack members kept their distance from me, so they didn’t have many chances to dish me crap about being a loner. As a freelance wildlife journalist, I didn’t have to interact with many people, which I loved.
I also didn’t make a lot of money. Not that I needed much. I kept a room in a boarding house in town, but I spent most of my time in the forest. The precautions I took before shifting into my animal form—listening to make sure nobody was nearby and waiting an extra fifteen minutes to be doubly certain—had worked well for me ever since I’d moved to Lake Park. Until the worst day of my life.
I allowed myself to get too comfortable and let my guard down. The animals who lived in the wilderness accepted my falcon, so I used that form when I was trailing a pack of red wolves. They were a critically endangered species, with fewer than twenty known to exist in the wild. Finding a pack of six with a breeding pair and four offspring was a major accomplishment.
In my falcon form, I followed the wolves to their den and was able to observe them for several days. Knowing that I needed some photos of them to go along with my story, I finally raced back to the clothes I’d left behind so I could head into town to grab my camera from my room. In my excitement, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been as I neared my hidey hole.
My mind was on how adorable the youngest red wolf pup would look in the photos I was going to take. I didn’t notice that my clothes weren’t in the same spot as I dived toward where I’d left them. Hurtling toward the ground at almost my full diving speed of two hundred miles per hour, I was moving too fast to realize what was happening in time to save myself. As soon as my talons hit the ground, a net sprung over me.
“A-ha! Knew you’d come back sooner or later, and then I’d have you!”
A man crouched down and peered through the net, satisfaction gleaming in his beady eyes. I was still disoriented from the bownet trap being sprung, and it took me longer than it should have to realize the implication of his words. By the time it dawned on me that the human must have known I was a shifter if he’d deliberately staked out my hidden clothes, it was too late.
I didn’t have time to change into my human form before he lifted his hand and sprayed something in my face. Whatever drug was in the mist that hit my nostrils was fast-acting because my vision quickly turned dark as my falcon’s body flopped onto the ground. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a dank basement with concrete walls. I wanted nothing more than to change back, but my vision cleared before I tried to shift, and I spotted the silver bars directly in front of my face. Twisting my neck, I saw they surrounded me in a tight circle. The space was so small that my wings would touch the bars if I spread them to their full length.
I was trapped. Doubly so. By the cage surrounding me and my animal form…while my human side curled into a ball inside my falcon’s body and wept.
1
RAMSEY
Ihadn’t been able to protect my animal side from the evil human’s mistreatment. Not that I was even sure my falcon would have let me try. She’d seen how the man had treated the other animals in his basement and didn’t want to see what horrible things he would’ve done to me in my human form. Especially not after he’d told me what had happened to some of the shifters he’d sold to a group who were auctioning them off to the highest bidder.
Judging by the monk parakeet, California condor, golden eagle, and trumpeter swan locked up with me in the basement, the man was obsessed with birds that were illegal to own. That was the only reason he hadn’t sold me. Because he wanted to keep me for himself. But that hadn’t stopped him from threatening me with a fate worse than death.
I never expected to be saved. After spending nearly a full year trapped in his basement, I had lost all hope of being rescued. I was too malnourished to shift when he finally freed me from my small prison, only to butcher my falcon’s wings while trying to clip them to keep me from flying. When he shoved me right back into the cage, I prayed for my death.
Only one day later, the impossible happened. Police invaded his house and dragged him away in handcuffs, ranting and raving about how he’d get us all back as soon as he was out of jail. They sent people from animal control into the basement to check our condition, and the woman who opened the door of my cage cried when she saw the condition of my wings. As happy as I was to be freed from my prison, my falcon screeched and nipped at her for daring to come close. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I didn’t trust humans to touch me. Not after the treatment I’d endured at the hands of that man.
Afraid of what my tomial tooth could do to her soft skin, the woman slammed my cage back shut again. I stayed there, watching as the humans assessed the condition of the other animals, content to remain in my cage until a man with short ash-blond hair and blue eyes came striding into the basement. He was dressed casually in jeans, biker boots, a T-shirt, and a leather vest emblazoned with the crest for an MC called Silver Saints, but he had an air of authority about him. One that even the cops seemed to respect since they cleared the room at his request.
When the door that led to the basement was closed, he moved closer. He didn’t stop when I screeched. Instead, he quickly undid the latch on my cage before taking several steps back. I wasn’t sure why having him open the door was different than it’d been with the female who had tried earlier, but I hopped out. When I spread my wings, my falcon’s small body was wracked with pain, so I tucked them back against my sides.
His eyes were soft as he crouched down and murmured, “If I’d known about this house of horrors, I would’ve fucking killed the bastard before the cops had a chance to arrest him. Motherfucker deserves to pay for what he’s done, but jail is too good for him.”
I tilted my head, intrigued by the fury in his voice as he freely spoke about committing murder with several members of law enforcement upstairs.
“Harlowe is gonna be heartbroken when she finds out how badly he’s mistreated you all.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Fuck, I can never let her know what happened in this hellhole. She’ll want to adopt the whole damn lot of you, and she won’t care how illegal it is to own you, little falcon. My old lady will bat her gorgeous hazel eyes and expect me to find a way around the law since she knows I’ve broken more than a few before.”
Knowing that human laws didn’t mean much to this man was oddly comforting to me. Almost as much as hearing the love he had for his woman. It sounded as though she had him wrapped around her little finger, just like a shifter female would with their fated mate.
