The Griffin’s Christmas Bride
By Zoe Chant
Copyright Zoe Chant 2017
All Rights Reserved
Chapter One
Roman
From his vantage point on a rocky outcropping of Thunderstrike Mountain, Roman Calaway looked down at the snow-covered town spread out below him, and snarled.
It might have looked beautiful from way up here – and, if he had to tell the truth, it was a beautiful place, with its little stone buildings and cobbled streets, its streetlights soft in the mid-winter haze, and its huge town square with its massive, twinkling Christmas tree. But its beauty wasn’t the point.
The point was that it represented everything he had been running from for the past twelve years of his life, ever since he had first decided that to have a hope of retaining his sanity, he had to leave his clan of griffin shifters, and strike out on his own.
Griffins had always been closed off from the rest of society, and even from other shifters. That was fine, Roman thought, if you had no ambition other than to serve your clan, or to stay in the one place for the whole of your life, and never venture out to see what the rest of the world had to offer.
There had been plenty of griffins who had led perfectly happy lives and never left the little town of Skyhaven, cradled at the base of the huge mountain range. They had been born there, grown up there, had their children there, and grown old there, living out their entire lives under the shadow of Thunderstrike Mountain.
But to Roman, that had looked pretty much exactly like his idea of hell.
It’s not right, his uncle, the clan leader, had yelled at him the morning before he’d left. You think you’ll be accepted out there? You, a griffin shifter? Do you think you’ll ever discover your true nature if you have to hide what you are?
Flexing his wings and feeling the high mountain winds pulling at their long, thick feathers, Roman had to admit that in some ways, his Uncle Horace had been right.
It had been three years since he had last shifted. Before that, it had been even longer.
Living amongst humans gave him very little chance to take on his griffin form – half lion, half eagle – and soar through the skies, or even to do anything a little more land-based, like bound through the open plains. Things might have been simpler if he’d been a more common shifter type. But a lion with the enormous wings and strong talons of an eagle? That was a little more difficult to explain away, and Roman didn’t want to spark rumors of a mythological beast flapping around in his newfound hometown.
The only thing he wanted to do was tend his small veterinary practice.
That had been why he’d left Skyhaven, after all. The feeling that he could be something more – that being a shifter shouldn’t be the only thing that defined him. He had always had ambitions of being someone who could help others: a fireman, a police officer – hell, even a garbage collector helped people.
But in the end, he had settled on becoming a vet. It had seemed a logical choice: griffins, after all, could sense an animal’s thoughts and feelings, and know where their pain was located. It made him a very good vet – and Roman honestly thought he wouldn’t ever get over seeing the joy on the faces of the children whose beloved pets he had saved, or the tearful relief of a grandmother whose companion he’d healed.
His empathic powers didn’t work on humans: only on animals and other shifters. Roman honestly wasn’t sure why this was – and he’d lost any chance to learn when he’d left his clan. To be honest, there was a lot he had missed out on the chance to learn when he had stormed out twelve years ago after that last blazing row with his uncle, swearing never to return.
Maybe he should have come back and tried to put things right.
But Roman had always been stubborn. And if anything, his Uncle Horace’s final words to him – You’ll be back when you realize I’m right, boy, you mark my words – had only acted as an incentive for him to stay away, and prove that he could do it.
He wouldn’t live a sheltered life, surrounded only by other griffin shifters. He wouldn’t refuse to use his powers where they could help others. And he wouldn’t be told the only place for him in this world was here in Skyhaven.
The families he’d helped loved him and needed him. Of course, they didn’t know what he was. But Roman wanted to believe that if they did, they wouldn’t reject him.
He would still be the same person, whether or not he was a shifter.
My uncle was wrong, Roman told himself as he opened his wings, and took to the sky once more.
Shifters could live amongst humans. They could find fulfillment in human society. It had been hard, of course. He had missed his family horribly. But he had had to tell himself that it was worth it. To go back would be to admit that griffins and humans just couldn’t mix. And that, he would never do.
But now, he had come back.
He hadn’t wanted to.
But he’d had to.
Spreading his wings to their fullest extent, Roman soared, feeling the wind sweeping over his body for the first time in years.
Well – he supposed he hadn’t had to.
He could have ignored his cousin Lavinia’s email – and in fact, he almost had.
But the thought had gnawed away at his insides for days, until he knew that he really didn’t have a choice.
I don’t know if you’ll see this, Lavinia had written. Or if you do, whether you’ll even care. But my father is stepping down as clan leader. He’s put it off for years, but now he really is too old to carry on. You know what that means, and you know the rules for griffin elections. Every member of the clan has to be there, regardless of whether you want to be a part of this clan or not. Besides which, you’re his nephew and he raised you – you owe it to him to give him a peaceful old age. Please come, for that reason even if no other.
Roman had read the email through a dozen times.
His uncle was stepping down.
And that meant there would have to be elections for a new leader.
Lavinia was right: griffin tradition stated that every member of the clan had to be present to vote when a new leader was elected. If even one member was absent, the election could be challenged – it could send the entire process into chaos and infighting.
As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Roman knew he had responsibilities. He might have been stubborn, but he liked to think he wasn’t selfish.
At least, not that selfish, anyway.
Coming home under these circumstances was hardly an admission of failure, Roman told himself. If anything, he’d be proving his uncle wrong yet again, and showing that, despite the fact he lived amongst humans now, he still really did care about the clan, and the two weren’t mutually exclusive, and –
If Roman had been in his human form, he would have sighed.
Okay. So maybe his motivations for returning weren’t entirely altruistic.
But it didn’t matter.
He would do right by his uncle, and by his clan.
And then he would leave, and go back to the life he had built for himself.
As he swooped his wings and dipped closer to the town, Roman could see the brightly colored Christmas lights twinkling in the misty twilight. Strings of them ran between the trees that lined the streets, and every home was a rainbow of flashing lights and prancing reindeer.
It was even more beautiful than he remembered from his childhood.
His heart suddenly thudded in his chest, and Roman curled his talons slightly in surprise.
He hadn’t expected to have such a visceral response to being back in the town where he was born.
It was… strange.
Shifting, he alighted with his human feet onto the cobbled street outside his uncle’s house.
Although calling it a house really didn’t do it justice.
The leader of the clan lived in what could only be described as a mansion. It was the traditional dwelling of the griffins’ leader, a massive Queen Anne-style house with pointed, slate-tiled roofs, elaborate balustrades that lined the porch, and oriel windows. Just like every other home in town, it was strung with Christmas lights, flashing and twinkling against the fading sunlight. Through the large bay window that looked into the lounge, Roman could see the enormous spire of the Christmas tree, hung with balls of green and red glass, and dripping with silver icicles.
It was beautiful. It was everything he remembered from when he was a child.
And everything he had left when he had decided that he wanted something more from his life.
Taking a deep breath, he put one foot forward onto the path leading through the garden to the front porch of the house.
And then he turned and walked the other way.