CHAPTER FOUR
Texas
Beverly stood with her newly minted husband on the edge of a cliff, and gazed appreciatively as the setting sun turned dusty sage bushes and mesquite into flaming candelabra and gilded the river snaking through the valley floor. It was June, but the air was rapidly cooling as the sun sank.
“It is beautiful out here,” she murmured. “But why aren’t we back at your parents’ place, dancing with our guests?”
“This can’t wait, my love.” Linc’s features were transformed to stern bronze by the low sun. Her laughing, happy bridegroom of an hour ago was gone.
“What is it?” she asked softly.
His big hands cupped her face. “I love you more than life itself, darling. I brought you out here to share my phoenix with my bride.”
“I thought that was what I got this afternoon when I said ‘I do’.”
His face stayed austere. “This gift is different. Hold out your hand, sweetheart.”
Beverly gave Lincoln her left hand. The broad gold band he had pushed over her knuckles six hours earlier, nestled against the huge ruby he had put there at Christmas. Both rings flashed in the waning sunlight. Linc gave her a hazelnut-sized egg the color of flames. She flinched as heat scorched her palm.
“Don’t drop it,” he entreated. “Grasp it. It is my pledge and my gift to my bride.”
Bev cupped the egg with her hand. Flames flickered about the egg, but although it remained hot, her skin adjusted to its searing heat. “What is this?”
“The Egg of Immortality. If you accept it, you will become a phoenix like me.” His big hands cradled hers so that the flames licked them both.
“Immortality? I don’t know if I want to be immortal. You didn’t say anything about this before.” Her voice shook.
His voice was grave, level, hard. “Phoenixes aren’t precisely immortal. We can regenerate, but we cannot do it indefinitely. We just live longer than mortals. Take my heart and share my gifts, Beverly.”
His hands sandwiched hers. The egg glowed through his fingers like the sun now sinking behind the hills.
“Can’t I think about this?” she demurred. “It’s a big decision.”
Linc shook his dark head. “Once the sun goes down, it will be too late.”
“Why did you wait so long to tell me about this?” she wailed. “This is huge.”
“Because, I miscalculated. And right now, there isn’t time. The magic will only work while the sun is up. But whether or not you become a phoenix today, you will still be my own true love.”
“I’ll turn into a bird?”
His lips curved. “Whenever you will it.”
“I’ll be invisible.”
“Not exactly. You will just be hard to detect. Humans can’t see the ultraviolet component of phoenix plumage. But other birds get out of our way, so they seem to be able to.”
Bev shook her head and tried to step back. Linc’s hands tightened so she stayed in place. “I don’t think I want to live forever,” she said.
“You won’t. The oldest phoenixes in my family are centenarians, not ancient relics.”
“Can I change my mind, if I don’t like it?” she asked.
“Nope. But you don’t have to choose rebirth. Lots of phoenixes don’t. You know that my brother Harrison’s wife died.”
“Oh. Didn’t she become a phoenix?” Bev asked.
“She did. But she and her boys were killed by a drunk driver just the same.”
“Why did she choose death?” Bev wondered.
He shrugged. “Who knows? Rebirth isn’t automatic, you have to choose. And you have to be able to choose.”
“Have you regenerated?” she asked.
Linc nodded. “In Afghanistan. We took a direct hit. Most of my team was killed outright. I was nine parts dead.” He cupped her shoulders. “I became fire, and then took phoenix. And then a man.” There was a shudder in his voice.
“Not a baby?”
“No one is ever reborn as an infant. Just as a perfect version of who they were before.” His voice was flat and hard, not coaxing. Plainly he wanted her to make a free choice.
“What do I do with the egg?” she asked.
“Swallow it.”
“In its shell?”
“That’s the way the magic works.”
“Magic?”
“Yup.”
“Is this about us having phoenix babies?” She voiced her suspicions.
“Nope. I told you our kids will be phoenixes. There have been a few marriages in my family where the gift was declined. The children were still phoenix shifters. But I have always dreamed of flying with my mate.” His hand tightened over hers. “Marry me and share my fate.”
“Where did you get the egg from?”
“I’ll tell you later. The story is too long to tell before the sun disappears. You must choose before nightfall.”
Her hand wriggled in his. He let her go. She peered at the flaming egg and touched it with her forefinger. “Why doesn’t it burn me, even though it’s on fire?” she asked.
“Is that what it looks like to you? On fire?”
“Yeah. It’s glowing like a coal.” She met his hot blue eyes. “What does it look like to you?”
“Like a white-hot coal surrounded by a halo of colors there are no words for.”
“You want me to swallow a live coal? What happens if it all goes wrong?”
“It won’t.” Linc’s voice was confident. “You will become the bride of the phoenix and we will have our nuptial flight here in above the desert.”
Bev opened her hand. The egg seemed to pulse. The sun dipped lower. The orange desert faded to gold. Did she trust this man? She did. Lincoln was the other half of her heart. Did she want to be an enormous bird with paranormal powers? Might be cool.
She put the egg in her mouth. Her whole being filled with light. She swallowed. Beside her Linc glowed and pulsed as the egg had done. She shook convulsively.
Linc caught her in his arms and kissed her. “You better take off your clothes,” he said against her throat. “You can’t fly in them.”
He backed away from her and began to strip. The sun dropped suddenly behind the hills and the desert sky turned black sprinkled with dots of light.
The transformation happened without any fuss. Beverly could not see herself, but Lincoln had turned into a six-foot-tall bird with long, trailing tail feathers that flashed a forked rainbow of dazzling light. A corona of flames crowned his head.
His beak was a terrible golden hook. He stretched his neck to the sky, puffed out his blazing breast feathers, and began to sing. Bev recognized the melody as the song she had heard morning after morning last winter. Unconsciously, she tipped her head back and matched him note for note.
She cautiously lifted her feet. Bronze scales gleamed above razor-sharp talons that made walking difficult. She had become a deadly predator. And yet, like a songbird, her mate was serenading her with a melody so hypnotic she had no choice but to join in. Her throat ached to sing, and her instinctive harmony poured out in counterpoint to his. The cliffs rang with their joy.
When their duet was only an echo, Lincoln bowed to her. He preened his breast plumage and pulled out a single plume. He laid this tiny, glowing feather before her and signaled to her to do the same. In the center of her breast a downy feather burned more fiercely than the others. She plucked it out. The pain was unexpected and devouring. But she set her feather alongside his.
The tiny scraps of down flared up as if their proximity fueled their fire. Involuntarily, Beverly jumped backward. But Lincoln pecked at the incandescent specks and picked hers up in his beak. His ruby eyes pleaded with her to do the same. His feather wasn’t hot to her beak. She had no words to describe the feeling. She watched her husband – her mate – tip his head back and swallow her feather. She did the same to his. Going down, it burned worse than the Egg of Immortality.
Linc bowed low to her. He spread his immense blazing wings and soared straight off the cliff. Even though it was dark, and the trees and bushes had lost all color, his feathers glowed as brightly as the noonday sun. She had no words for the paranormal colors.
Beverly followed her mate. Her outstretched wings were lifted by the heat still rising from the hard baked ground. Automatically, she followed Linc’s lazy circuit, matching him wing dip for wing dip. Swoop for swoop.
In her head, she heard his voice as clearly as if he were speaking, telling her where to go and how to use her wings.
‘Trees to your left. Dip and swerve.’
She protested this invasion. ‘You can’t just waltz in and out of my mind. You didn’t tell me about this!’
‘It’s only when we’re in phoenix together, beloved. Don’t think. Act.’ Linc floated away.
His leisurely circles became a death-defying sequence of high-altitude athletic rolls, followed by a plunge toward the river. Bev unthinkingly followed his instructions, avoiding the grasping branches of the mesquite and angling her wings to catch thermals to lift her again from the river’s silver ripples. Cool.
Above her, the sky was dark blue velvet studded with intense specks of light, as if the stars were larger and brighter tonight. The moon was a dazzling boat that illuminated the world. The desert was crisply defined to her new eyes – every tree and bush gilded by moonlight.
Beside her, above her, below, her mate was a glorious potent beacon. Hot, sexy, enticing. Bev felt turbocharged. Reborn. Strong. Female. Desirous. Happy. She was flying in tandem with her mate. Their minds yoked together by love. This was indeed a gift worth having.
<<<<>>>>
I hope you enjoyed this short taste of my new Alpha Phoenix series and would like to read more about Phoenix shifters and their curvy fated mates. Phoenix Aglow is only the first in what I intend to be many romances in the Alpha Phoenix series.
If Phoenix Aglow intrigued you and left you wanting more, the next full length, standalone story is now out on Amazon. is the story of Lincoln’s younger brother Pierce and his fated mate Diana.
Pierce D’Angelo is a fabulously rich, and much-decorated Air Force hero who is proud of his posting to Special Forces. But the phoenix shifter was wounded in action and diagnosed with PTSD. He heads to his family retreat in the high Arizona desert to lick his wounds.
BBW nurse Diana Lowry has made a fresh start in Arizona after an unhappy teenage marriage to a domestic bully. She’s got her dream job, a nice apartment, good friends. She is not looking for a man – especially not a handsome, take-charge guy like Alpha Male Pierce.
How will Pierce get BBW Diana wooed and won, and persuade his reluctant fated mate to swallow the Egg of Immortality?