But as his talons closed in around the hilt of my sword and I abruptly realized what he was trying to do, my brain blanked.
I forgot all my training. I lashed out in instinct alone. I opened my mouth and tried to bite the man-bird's face.
My teeth didn't even make contact. I expected to slow him down, or be a nuisance long enough to retrieve my prized possession, orsomething. Instead he shrieked and swatted me away like I was nothing. I fell to the forest floor as he took to the sky, flying away—and taking my sword with him.
2
Cloud
What a perfect day it was!The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and there wasn't a single cloud in the sky...
Except me, of course.
Life was good. There was an incident a few months ago involving my twin brother River getting kidnapped by poachers and all, but all's well that ends well, and oh boy, didthatend well. River now had a fated mate, a beaver shifter named Castor, and a baby girl named Annabelle, also a beaver shifter. Unusual species, sure, but I of all people couldn't say anything. I was a harpy, after all.
I felt bad for my brother River. He was the only mer in the world, that we knew of. I wasn't quite so unlucky—there wasoneother harpy we knew, but we weren't exactly similar. He was an air spirit, and I was... well, I was just a guy who happened to be blood-related to a spirit a few generations back.
Man, our family was complicated.
Not me, though. Aside from being a rare harpy shifter, I took pride in being one of the simplest, normal-est, most un-complicated guys in our family. All I wanted was good food to stuff my face with, a warm nest to sleep in, and a blue sky to fly in.
Would it be nice to share my simple life with a mate? Sure. But I wasn't the type of person to whine and complain about what I didn't have.
Cough-River-cough.
Well, not that River actually did that anymore since he found his fated mate.
Must be nice.
Yikes, is that a tinge of jealousy in my inner monologue? Get rid of that shit.
Unfurling my wings to the tips of my feathers, I banked in the sky. The cool, clean air in my face helped clear my head, which I apparently needed. I always tried to look on the bright side and harboring a flicker of envy towards my twin wassonot aligning with my personal identity.
And it didn't really help that my cousins—Zak, Quinn, and Ashe—had fated mates, too. The only ones without a fated mate yet were my female cousins, Lupa and Starry, and me and cousin Leveret. Hell, we weren't sure Leveret evenwanteda mate. He was always sort of an odd duck. Er, hare.
Okay, maybe I was a little more jealous than I wanted to admit. But seriously, who could blame me? I was surrounded by pairs of fated mates, engulfed by them everywhere I looked. The wildlife preserve was practically drowning in fated mates.
Except me.
I did a barrel roll midair and flew upside-down for a while.
Whatever happened to seeing the glass half-full?I asked myself, annoyed at this sudden shift in mood. I didn't brood. I just didn't. That was River's job, thank you very much. Mine was to fly around and talk people off figurative ledges and make them laugh and be a good friend and—
"Wait a second," I mumbled out loud, righting myself and squinting at a blue-cream blur in the distance. "Is that... Mistral?"
That was a harpy, all right. It was hard to misjudge the wings, scaly forearms, and talons as anything else. And seeing as Mistral was the only other harpy I knew, it had to be him.
"Hey!" I called as I flew closer. "Mistral!"
I saw him tense up suddenly, look over his shoulder, then turn around. If I didn't know any better, I’d say he was pretending not to have heard me. But that didn't make any sense. Why would he ignore me?
"Hellooo," I called.
Was it just me or was Mistral flying faster?
"Um, I'm literally right behind you?" I said over the sound of the rushing wind.
Mistral balked, then his shoulders sagged in a defeated way. He finally stopped flying and hovered in midair as I caught up with him.
