I always knew Lark was special, set apart from other women in a way I couldn’t pinpoint. I thought it was because her graceful movements on stage remind me of my own body. How I move, how I fly, but now I see it’s so much more than that.

She soars across the pale pink sky. The sun is just beginning to set over the desert and she looks so graceful, fragile, and beautiful with the pastel hues behind her. I feel my heart expand as I watch her fly for the first time. I know my hawk brothers sense it too.

Right now, it isn’t about how sexy she looks in a leotard or the way her body opened up to us when we made love. It’s not the physical lust that we feel for her that makes our hearts beat hard, our chests ache.

Right now, in this moment, it isn’t about sexual desire or chemistry.

Right now, as we watch her, flanking her as we fly toward home, what I feel is love.

How do you love the woman you barely know?

I can’t answer that, but I do. Maybe love isn’t something that has to be built over a lifetime. Maybe it’s something that either is or isn’t.

This is.

This is love.

I don’t know everything about Lark, but the truth is, she doesn’t know either. Who her parents are or why she can fly and why a ring on her finger makes her magic.

But it does, and I do and maybe that is enough.

There are crazier things in this world than falling in love with a bird.

I don’t want anyone to press me on what those things are at the moment, but I know there is scarier and crazier shit than falling in love with a woman who makes you believe in the impossible.

Who shows you the impossible is possible.

Here we are and here she is, and this is love.

I don’t tell her this now. The last thing she needs right now is a heartfelt confession. This day has been long enough and hard enough as it is.

Her mother is gone and a fucking eagle tried to strike her with lightning. Fires burned beneath us and with her arms stretched wide, she flew for the first time in her life.

That’s more than enough for one day. My words can wait.

Right now, she doesn’t need any of the hawks to tell her anything. Although I can sense we are all feeling the same thing. I see it in the way we fly around her, trying to shield her from whatever is out there trying to get her. It’s no longer about a job Gaia gave us. It’s about our loyalty to Lark.

I look at Vaughn, North, Sawyer, and Arrow. We’ve flown together all our lives, but I don’t think we ever felt so much fear as we did today. The eagle was vicious and filled with a power I’ve never witnessed. And he must be even more powerful than I realize for Gaia to intervene.

Lark didn’t seem to realize the danger she was in. She couldn’t have. Her heart has been broken into a thousand pieces. I’m just grateful that in her shattered heart she knows her mother loved her. And she knows she loved her mother.

That’s more than I ever had, more than any of us hawks ever had.

As infants, we were found in a nest and rescued by Gaia and given the ability to shift. She found us a place to live in a shifter community, but it wasn’t hawks we were sent to live with. It was bears. And we never belonged.

We were different, hawks living without a family, yet somehow, we managed to survive.

We didn’t have a mother or father. For better or for worse we had one another.

In the past, I think we all believed it was enough. All for one and one for all.

But now I know that’s not true. It’s not enough.

Now, we need Lark.

We came here to protect her, but I want more than that.

I want to love and support her. I want to be there for her, through thick and thin.

It’s crazy, those words coming from me.

Me, a man who slept with more women than I probably should have. Me, the person who has caused more problems in this group than anyone else.

Yet right now, I can’t imagine life without any of them. All I want is to stick it out together, the six of us. Forever.

I watch Lark fly toward her neighborhood with her wings outstretched. The six of us moving through the trees is a thing of beauty. She has brought us together and made us feel like we belong together after we’ve spent our lives on the outside looking in.

She is more than a bird, more than a woman, a daughter, a lover, a friend.

She is the love of my life.