Prince of Flight Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Prince of Flight: A Bird Shifter Novel © Copyright 2015 by Mandy M. Roth

  King of Prey Series in Order:

  Mandy M. Roth, Online

  Blurb

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Dear Reader

  Prince of Flight: A Bird Shifter Novel

  by

  Mandy M. Roth

  Prince of Flight: A Bird Shifter Novel © Copyright 2015 by Mandy M. Roth

  Cover art by Andrea Depasture, © Copyright 2014

  First Electronic Printing 2015

  Edited by: Suz G. and Jinxie

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  All books copyrighted to the author and may not be resold or given away without written permission from the author, Mandy M. Roth.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence. This book is intended for a mature audience only. Must be 18 years or older.

  Published by Raven Books

  www.ravenhappyhour.com

  Raven Books and all affiliate sites and projects are © Copyrighted 2004-2015

  King of Prey Series in Order:

  King of Prey

  A View to a Kill

  Master of the Hunt

  Rise of the King

  Prince of Pleasure

  Prince of Flight

  Mandy M. Roth, Online

  Mandy loves hearing from readers and can be found interacting on social media.

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  Blurb

  This bad-boy biker beast has met a beauty who isn't scared off by what she sees.

  Chapter One

  Human realm….

  “Sitting at the big boy table now? You normally like that back corner one that only seats two. Or would seat two if you let anyone get near you.”

  Keonae glanced up from his seat in the back poolroom of the small roadside bar he enjoyed frequenting of late. He’d been a full-time resident in the human realm for far longer than the bar had been in existence, and the bar, as obvious from its state of decay, had seen many years.

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  He did all he could to remain calm as the beauty before him spoke. The mere sound of her voice held his full attention. He could listen to her talk all day and all night. Hell, she could babble about anything and he’d hang on her every word.

  Be ice.

  That was what humans often said to one another, wasn’t it? Or was it be wet? Be sub-zero? Be Artic? Perhaps be cool? He couldn’t remember, nor could he keep track of all their slang.

  Stupid humans with their ridiculous sayings.

  He should know the human sayings well, like he knew the handle of his sword, but he did not take the time to commit them to memory. They seemed to change so very often. Humans had taken a nearly adequate language and butchered it long ago, and he had been around long enough to see it devolve at a rapid pace.

  They had a saying or slang for nearly everything, and all of it took from the beauty of the words. From their meaning. His native tongue was nothing they would ever understand, even though Latin had been born from it long ago, as had several other languages the humans used. That was in the days when they foolishly thought his kind to be angels, gods—demons even.

  Humans were not the smartest of races, that was for certain. He didn’t mind them so much. They had grown on him over the centuries. Especially the human close to him now.

  Yes. Be ice. Do not show her how she makes you feel. Do not reveal that she reminds you of the sweet summers near the edges of the springs of the Tocalie Mountains. That her scent is like that of the mavabian flowers that dotted the outer regions.

  He wanted to wax poetic with her, show her he was more than he appeared, but he didn’t dare. Romancing her wasn’t an option.

  Be ice. Be so cold your cock shrivels.

  Somehow thinking it did little to settle him or his raging hard-on. Not with her being so close. Lark—such a beautiful name for such a beautiful woman—had a way of drawing his thoughts like no other. Of making him feel like a mere fledgling, rather than a man of many centuries. He was a man of high birth, of position and of power, should he ever decide to return to his place among his people in Accipitridae.

  Sweat broke out on his palms. He’d never had sweaty palms prior to meeting her. The hold she had over him was spell-worthy. Lark had been calling to him on a baser level from the moment he’d laid eyes on her nearly a month prior. He licked his lower lip. He wanted to sample her lips, but he didn’t dare. Deep down he knew one taste would never be enough, and he wasn’t the type of man who could have something long term.

  At least not with a human woman.

  “I await friends on this evening,” he said, before clearing his throat, reminding himself his speech patterns were unusual when not tempered. “I’m waiting for the guys.”

  “Guys’ night, Keon?” she asked, seeming to prefer to shorten his name down from Keonae. He would not have tolerated such a thing from any other than her. She smiled and it was both innocent and sexy all wrapped up in one. His dick responded in kind, lengthening, wanting to be in her. His breathing increased as desire lanced through him.

  “Sweet,” she added.

  He mentally counted to twenty before speaking, worried his next words would be something along the lines of a sexual proposition, or even a flat-out decree that she bed him. While he wasn’t opposed to making them, he didn’t want to with her—not this woman. She was special. His old ways weren’t ones he wanted to go back to in regards to Lark. “Yes. One of my brothers is coming as well.”

  “Really?” she asked, easing closer, excitement aglow on her face. He lived for these types of moments. Times when she’d smile for him. “I’ll finally get to meet some of your friends and family? I was starting to think you might be making them up.”

  He pressed a partial smile to his face. He and Lark had done as he’d never done with a human before—they’d conversed on a deeper level more than once. He’d even shared some details of his friends and family—nothing about being a bird shifter from another realm, though.

  “They’ll be here soon,” he said, his voice low. He wet his lips and glanced up at her, every ounce of him wanting to make contact with her.

  She beamed. “Good. You need more people around you. You’re always alone.”

  She was a fine one to talk. He’d noticed Lark didn’t ever seem to have anyone close to her—unless he counted himself. They’d taken to going out to breakfast together when her shifts ended in the wee hours of the morning. They talked about everything and seemingly nothing at all. And they never talked about certain things. Things she wouldn’t understand as a human.

  But the one thing Keonae took note of was that she avoided discussing friends or family. She was as alone as he was. Maybe more.

  “I’d like you to meet the guys when they get here.” The statement was hug
e for more than one reason. He never let anyone meet others of his kind and he had certainly never introduced a human woman to them. At least, not since he’d taken the back-stabbing wench he’d once thought he loved before his brothers.

  Lark nodded, her long, blonde hair spilling in all directions. “Of course.”

  Keonae sipped his beer as she headed back through the doorway to the main area of the bar, leaving him to sit alone, the way he preferred it. Several minutes passed before the men he’d been waiting on arrived. He lifted his beer as fellow bird shifters took seats around him at the circular table.

  The bar was a hole in the wall, but Keonae preferred those to others. Most humans never asked him questions, and nearly all just let him be. To them, he was the brooding man who played darts or pool, who drank alone and who had the scar on his face. Very few were brave enough to ask how he got it. Those who did chance his wrath regretted their decision instantly. He wasn’t one for sharing. That feel-good bullshit he saw on television, where everyone wanted to sit around in a circle and jerk each other off emotionally, wasn’t for him. He wasn’t one of those soft men—he was a warrior, and warriors weren’t pussies.

  The bar served another purpose, beyond just giving him a place to get drunk. If a bar fight erupted, as was often the case with the place, he was able to get some fighting in. It kept his skills honed. Coupled with his workouts, he stayed fit and active, always ready should the need to fight a real battle arise. Once, in his past, he’d been ill-prepared and arrogant, a young fool full of ideas of love and romance.

  At the very thought of romance, he felt a tugging in his chest, his gaze moving to the doorway Lark had gone through. He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that one of the main reasons he selected this particular hole in the wall was its staff. Lark, in particular.

  Do not take your thoughts there, he scolded himself. She, like all women, will only bring you pain and misery.

  He touched the side of his face that bore the aftermath of his foolishness. He had a forever reminder to never go back to being that man. To never soften to anyone, especially not a woman who would only betray him in the end.

  Keonae had very few regrets over leaving the bird realm. Missing the bouts of conditioning with his brothers and the guards of Accipitridae was one of them. They’d spend hours working out on the castle grounds, sparring and training. It wasn’t easy to find anyone in the human realm willing or able to take up a sword and train with him. Most would just think he was a madman if he even inquired on it.

  He looked down at his hand. It too held myriad scars, telling something of his tale. Flexing his fingers, he thought about what it was like to hold his sword, the feel of it in his hand, the weight of it.

  “Hand hurt?” asked Rossi, his youngest brother. Rossi took a seat near Keonae. “Is it acting up again?”

  Keonae grabbed his beer and chugged it before belching and setting it on the table, extending the fingers on his hand and giving a pointed look that said all was fine, stop asking.

  Rossi snorted. “My apologies, my lord. I forgot. Everything is perfect in your world. Got it, dickhead.”

  “For someone living back in Accipitridae, you sound very human,” said Keonae with wink. “You almost sound local.”

  “Ah, well, you’re calling this place home, so take a bite out of me,” returned Rossi as he grabbed one of the unopened beers and helped himself to it.

  “I believe the correct phrase is ‘bite me’,” said Keonae with a half-laugh. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you used to spend an awful lot of time in this realm?”

  Rossi used to troll the clubs for women. He’d been quite the ladies’ man until he’d met his mate, and she’d changed him on the spot. The man now only had eyes for her. As it should be with a true mated pair. At least, that was what had been beaten into his head from birth. His father had been a firm believer in prophecy, big into chosen ones and mates. While a few of his brothers and friends had found their special someone, it didn’t mean anything to Keonae.

  He was the leper of his family. The brother who was scarred and no longer pleasing to the eye, as they all had once been. In a society where physical beauty was so prized, their father had always put such stock in how handsome his boys were. How the females adored them and men feared them. As if fate wasn’t cruel enough to leave most of his body so hideously scarred in some fashion from the attack, he had been born to the first set of multiples his mother had. He was a triplet. Two identical reminders of what he would no longer ever be, of what he once was, walked the bird realm.

  And one was king.

  No.

  While Kabril and Aeson had been blessed with mates, the fates would not give him one. The gods could not be so cruel as to hand him a woman meant for him, only to have her shriek in horror and run from him, the monster.

  He exhaled deeply, wanting the meeting to be over. He had no interest in the politics of home, yet his brothers continued to drag him into it, as if including him would make him want to return home and assume his place in the royal family.

  It would not.

  “What matters are we to discuss today?” he asked, bored already and the meeting had yet to start.

  Rossi glanced around the back room of the bar. “I vote we talk about your choice for a meeting place. As much as I enjoy coming to the human realm, this place is a dump, even for me. You should just come home. I really don’t understand what the big deal is. It has been how many decades since everything happened? Surely, you’re over it.”

  I’ll never go back and I’ll never get over it.

  The very thought of returning to the bird realm made him look in the direction of the doorway. In the direction he knew her to be in.

  Odd.

  He hoped he wasn’t growing attached to her in a way that would make him unwilling to uproot and find a new place to call home within the human realm. He long ago ceased to age, which made it necessary, after a period, to find a new location to live within the human world. They aged. They died. They’d notice if he didn’t.

  “You know why he does not return, Rossi,” Sachin said from his seat next to Keonae. “Your brother does his best to avoid setting foot upon home soil. It holds too many memories.”

  Thoughts of his dead betrothed hit him hard. She used to beg to be brought to the human realm, to be near her mother’s people, but Keonae had always refused her. He’d thought her whims foolish and her desires to escape the bird realm nothing more than something that would pass. It had not. And he’d had no idea the lengths she’d end up going to in order to achieve her desires.

  “Of a dead traitor? Of a woman who was a mix of our kind, a blend of human and shifter yet worthy of neither race? A half-breed who sought fame and wealth and who, in the end, nearly cost us you?” Rossi questioned.

  Keonae knew the words were spoken, not out of truth, but rather fear. Rossi’s mate, a human herself, was now expecting their first children. She was late in the term and had been sick for the majority of it. From what Keonae had been told by his other brothers, Rossi had taken to visiting the seers nearly daily for assurance his wife and their babes would be fine come delivery day. The weight of worry was heavy upon the man. Keonae knew what that felt like, so he made no motion to correct his brother’s offense. Rossi was right, after all. Ultimately, his betrothed had been a traitor and a blend from a human and shifter mating. The first chance she had to align with the falcons, who had promised her riches and a one-way ticket to the human realm, she took, and betrayed Keonae when he was fighting for his own life, unable to assist. He had watched her die and he had laid there, assuming he too would perish.

  Lazar, a relative newcomer to the advisory council meetings, sat up, his blond hair hanging over one eye. He appeared offended on Keonae’s behalf. “Your oversimplification does insult to your brother’s pain. It is memories of a woman who betrayed him to spy for my people, giving herself to them freely, and in the end betrayed by them and given over to vultures,
who killed her slowly.”

  Keonae tried to remain hard and detached from the words spoken. It was difficult. The wounds long since healed as much as they ever would, burned anew, the remembered pain there, just below the surface. Worse yet were the emotions—the rage, the hate, the humiliation. Feelings he never wanted to have again.

  “They were not your people,” Sachin said matter-of-factly. The man always kept a level head about him. Well, unless his mate was involved and then it was anyone’s guess how his temperament would be. “You have proven you are nothing like your brethren, Lazar. You are nothing like Latravis or those who support him in his reign of terror. Keonae realizes as much, or he would not permit you to attend these meetings.”

  “You are not your brother,” said Keonae evenly. “And while I do not condone violence against women, she made her choices. She knew the people she was getting into bed with. She knew they were not to be trusted.”

  “Half-brother,” corrected Lazar, the distinction clearly of importance to him. Keonae couldn’t blame him. Latravis was touched in the head and said to be unraveling at rapid pace, though word at the last few meetings was that he had changed his wicked ways and was trying to start anew.

  The idea made Keonae laugh.

  The Falco Peregrinus, whom Lazar belonged to, and Keonae’s family, the Buteos Regalis, or royal hawks, had been at war for centuries. Though the battles had become few and far between in the latter decades, a new war was brewing. Talk of troops moving on borders had consumed their meetings for the past year. Random raids and failed attempts at peace appeared to be the new normal.

  Why would he want to go back to that?

  Drinking in the human realm was much better.

  “I know not how you can break bread with me,” said Lazar to Keonae. “I must represent everything and everyone you hate.”