But then she thought of Kav, and her previous mating gone so wrong. She wanted Tyr, she wanted him more than anything, but was she really ready for everything that went along with it?
“How did you pick your name?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Terry was similar enough to my real name that it didn’t feel odd to have people call me that, and for the Raines part...” He shrugged a little. “It was raining when I left the island. I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“It was also raining when I left.” She glanced at him; they shared a little smile.
But it wasn’t raining today. Cela glanced up at the sky, brilliant blue overhead.
“What about Sky?” she asked. “Can I be Cela Sky?”
“Sure, if you like. Maybe put an ‘e’ on the end so it looks more like a name. Cela Skye?”
“Cela Skye,” she repeated, and felt her griffin stir in her chest, pleased.
“People might joke about it, just so you’re prepared for that.”
“I don’t care,” Cela said firmly. “I like it. My griffin does, too.”
She took another bite of her burrito. She liked that, too.
Life on the outside was starting to look pretty good to her.
TYR
During the next week,their routine settled yet again. Peyton came by in the mornings to take Cela to work, and then Tyr picked her up at noon and they had lunch.
The house felt strange and empty without her, but he was kept busy with the twins. Taking the playpen outside so they could be near him while he worked on the greenhouses went well enough. But he found himself wanting to spend time with them. It had been ages since Austin was this small, and he’d missed most of Lissy’s babyhood, which he deeply regretted. He felt as if he was making up for lost time with these two.
As young as they were, their personalities were emerging distinctly. Aven was the bolder of the two, loving to climb on things in his lion cub shift form. Ayra was shyer and less outgoing, and spent most of her time as an owlet, flapping her stubby wings as if hoping to fly.
Tyr had heard of situations like theirs, where the griffin shift form could split itself, and a child might come out one or the other. But he had never seen it like this, with the twins dividing it between the two of them. Like all twins, theyseemed deeply connected, babbling (or chirping, or purring) to each other as if communicating on a more intimate level than anyone else understood them. They were also very precocious even as human babies, perhaps due to spending so much time in their shift forms. Aven was already starting to crawl, and both of them babbled continually when they had human mouths to babble with.
The following week, Tyr got up early to drive Cela to work. While Cela got ready in the downstairs bathroom, hastily doing her hair with the door open, Tyr gazed at the peacefully sleeping twins and considered the logistics of getting them up and bundling them into their car seats. Then he wondered if they really had to.
“What if you fly to work?”
“What?” Cela’s voice was indistinct. She emerged from the bathroom with a hair tie clamped between her teeth and both hands behind her head, bundling up her silvery hair into a messy bun. She was rapidly learning the hairstyling techniques that other women in town used; Tyr gathered that Gaby had been teaching her.
“I’m thinking you could shift and fly. It’s still dark out, and you’re a mythic shifter, so you’ll take your clothes with you. Very few people will be up this early. Just stay low and land behind the bakery.”
Cela took a minute to finish arranging her hair, but there was a thrilled light in her eyes. All shifters felt the urge to shift grow in them the longer they went without, and he hadn’t seen her shift since she got here. “Is that all right?” she asked. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
“It’s probably less dangerous here than most places, since there are so many shifters in town. There’s always a risk, and I don’t mind driving you. But I thought you might like to.”
“I do.” Her eyes sparkled. She started to reach for his hand, then jerked her fingers away, remembering. The brightlook fell a bit. Then she got a considering expression. “Tyr—do you think the curse still works when we’re shifted?”
He hadn’t thought of that. Trying to clamp down on the rush of hope to avoid being disappointed, he said, “Why don’t we find out?”
Leaving the twins asleep, they went out on the porch. The light was the gray twilight of early morning, with a streak of dawn on the horizon and a few stars still glimmering in the west.
The flowering trees had bloomed themselves out, and by now the branches were thick and green with young leaves. The air had a fresh crisp smell of new growing things.
Cela descended the porch steps and turned to look back up at him. “Is this an okay place to do it? Should I get out of sight?”
“There aren’t any close neighbors. You’re fine.”
She took a deep breath and, without further ado, shifted.
