Prince of Flight by Mandy M. Roth Page A

you’re hurting me.”
    His grip was iron-clad. She tried to pry free, but that only served to make him tighten his already tight grip.
    “Ouch.”
    His gaze snapped to her and he blinked, coming out of whatever hold he’d been under. He released her quickly and took a step back. “Lark, I didn’t mean to.”
    She remained in place, watching him closer, a sinking feeling coming over her. He shouldn’t have been able to keep her in place. He shouldn’t have been able to inflict pain on her. Yet he’d done both with ease. The only people in her life who could do something similar weren’t really people at all. They were monsters. “ How did you hurt me?”
    Puzzled, he simply stared at her. “I held you too tightly.”
    “That isn’t what I meant,” she said, easing closer to him. She looked him up and down, noting his size, how incredibly fit he was—how fit they all were. It was there, niggling at the back of her mind, so close yet just out of reach for her.
    Think, Lark.
    All of her instincts kicked in and the hair on the back of her neck rose as she began to put the pieces together at an alarming rate where she’d been blind to them before. She wasn’t a fool. She knew there was more to the world than most humans understood. She knew very little was as it normally appeared to be, yet she’d had blinders on with Keonae for weeks. She’d let her pull to him outweigh her better judgment.
    His inhuman strength, their accents, their ability to drink in such quantities without seeming affected in the least, and their sometimes strange speech patterns. Not to mention their size.
    Giants.
    How could she have missed it all when her life depended on her being alert? She’d never missed signs before. She always recognized the demons that hunted her.
    Always.
    But not with him.
    Not with Keonae.
    “I know what you did. What I don’t understand is how you could hurt me. How did you have enough strength to cause me pain, Keonae? What are you? Are you something more than human?” she asked, desperate for him to dispel what she was fast beginning to believe was true.
    He was one of them.
    The bird men.
    He shook his head. “I do not understand.”
    Lazar sniffed the air and gasped. “Smell. It is so faint it almost isn’t there.”  
    Sachin took a deep breath and his gaze snapped to her. “You are as we are? You are of the bird shifters?”
    Lark’s heart sank and she took a giant step back from them. She was an idiot and her stupidity would cost her life in the end. “I’m nothing like any of you.”
    She turned to run, but Keonae caught her, lifting her effortlessly, holding her to him. “Let go of me!”
    “Lark?” he asked, sounding hurt and perplexed.
    She didn’t struggle, even though she knew she could put up a good fight. She’d done so many times in her life with the birdmen. How had she let him get so close to her? Why hadn’t she noticed he was different? More to the point, why wasn’t she terrified of him?
    Why do I want him to fuck me?
    Sachin eased closer slowly. “Old friend, she is as we are. Do you smell it on her? It is so faint I would have missed it had Lazar not caught it.”
    Rossi gasped. “Cursed Magaious, she’s a shifter?”
    “Yes, bring down the wrath of the bird gods upon us for taking their names in vain,” snapped Sachin. “That is sure to make it all better.”
    “What? I slept on a hard stone floor, have had nearly no sleep, and my wife may or may not let me in our bed again because I impregnated her. To top off my day, I find out my brother’s woman is a bird shifter masquerading as a human.”
    Keonae lifted her high off her feet. “She is no such thing. Stand back.”
    Sachin remained in place. He did his best to appear as though he was no threat. “We mean her no harm, Keonae. She is afraid of us . Do you sense that upon her?
    “She was hurt and in pain,” he said, sounding bewildered. His pain reached through her, as if it were hers, as he’d described