Page 90 of Griffin Food

“I will give you no conflict,” I say. “But what about this turning of me you mentioned before? Is this you accepting I’m nothing besides a man?”

His smile is confusingly enigmatic. “As you have already pointed out, you are not a direwolf shifter. You’re Rafe. A soldier. The man who loves Violet. We each have a destination. I have the greatest faith that you will get where you belong in your own time.”

“That’s very fucking cryptic,” I grit out.

He grins. Claps a hand on my shoulder and releases me again. “Take a step at a time.”

Got it. A step at a fucking time. I gesture to the line of griffins and Lark, “What is with the parade… and what the fuck happened to Fenix?”

Fenix looks shifty when I call him out.

“They are here in witness… and Violet happened to Fenix,” Atlas says dryly.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Is he saying she’s mated him? Gods, my head hurts.

“Fenix is an indication that she is indeed destined to be the Cairnborn Pride Queen. Put simply, Violet is… griffin nourishment.”

My head is spinning. “Fuck,” I say inadequately. “You always knew this?” I gesture at Fenix. “That she would do this to you.” Fenix the bastard will not meet my eyes. I cannot believe he would mate her before Atlas and still have his head attached to his shoulders, but something has gone down. My fists clench again. “She had better have been fucking congenial.”

“Settle, human.” The bark in Atlas’s command makes every griffin stiffen and shuts me right up. He tempers his tone before he speaks again. “Fenix is a lot of things, many of which are questionable,” Fenix grunts on the far side of the room. Atlas shifts a warning glare to him. “But he is not worthy of such an accusation. Only a weak man would force himself upon an unwilling woman, and an unwilling woman does not make a griffin glow.”

Well, alright then.

He clasps his hands behind his back. “You asked me why the pride members were here. They are here to stand witness to my decision. Once more, I remind you that you may leave. But if you stay, you must adjust, as we all must. You have lain with her. But that taught you nothing about your true self. An omega is worthy of worship, but now you must learn to stand beside her. You are and always will be her mate, but now you must move beyond the mere urges of the flesh.”

My throat is dust-fucking-dry. I nod. I understand what he is giving me, and what he is not. She is now a griffin mate. He said she had chosen him. And something has already happened between her and Fenix. And then there is his second, Darrion, whose wings are also out and on display. He’s a part of this, too. This is already in motion. It has been in motion from the day we saved her from that damn runaway horse.

Lark is on the inside.

I am yet outside. These decisions, these changes are my pathway to acceptance. I may see her, but I cannot be with her again as a man and a woman until this is resolved. And I don’t have a clue what resolved looks like. Maybe it is a mental state. A physical one, like Lark. Or something else.

He is not denying me my place as a mate. He is telling me I may leave if I choose, knowing I never will. Perhaps that in itself is the test.

I will stand by her side. I will do anything and everything I need to do to ensure her sister is defeated and never threatens her again. Violet has ever been drawn to griffins. I’m not one to think about fate, but I believe her being here is fate. It was no mistake.

“You want my words,” I surmise, my gaze passing over the griffins and Lark. “Before these witnesses, I agree to your terms that are yet as clear as mud.”

“What you will go through, in some ways, will be far harder than what Lark had to go through,” Altas says bluntly.

I believe him.

Transformation is coming for me, but it feels quieter, slower, and more complex. I know this much with a clarity that does not waver—whatever they intend to shape me into, I will meet it head-on.

“And yes,” he continues. “I need your words.”

“I thought I made myself clear when we first arrived,” I say, voice carrying over the room. “But I will say it again, before these witnesses, so there is no misunderstanding. I am staying.”

“Good,” he says, and now his smile is rueful. “You will get some idea what it was like for us, for me, these past weeks.”

I believe him on that count, too.

A challenge is coming, perhaps the greatest, most important of my life. I fucking miss her already, a pain in the center of my chest.

Let the challenge come.

Chapter Thirty

Fenix