Under His Wing Read online

  Under His Wing (King of Prey)

  A Bird Shifter Novel

  Mandy M. Roth

  Contents

  King of Prey Series

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Author

  Featured Titles from Mandy M. Roth

  Under His Wing: A Bird Shifter Novel © Copyright 2018 by Mandy M. Roth

  First Electronic Printing 2018

  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 2004-2018

  King of Prey Series

  King of Prey

  A View to a Kill

  Master of the Hunt

  Rise of the King

  Prince of Pleasure

  Prince of Flight

  Under His Wing

  Blurb

  As a warrior and prized soldier for the Royal Hawks, Gardelle is known to be fierce and loyal. This immortal bird-shifter gave up the life of a bachelor to raise his niece and now that she's mated to the future king of the falcons, he's been able to focus on his commitments to his people and the men who serve under him. He doesn't have time for dating--besides, that is something humans do. Not bird-shifters. And he spent enough time living among humans to know he doesn't want to return to it. Yet, the pull to one human in particular is too much for him to resist. When he learns she's been marked by his sworn enemies, he'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe and under his wing.

  Chapter One

  Human Realm, Six Years Ago…

  Gardelle of the Hawks flew high above the ground below, over the homes inhabited by humans, too high for them to see. The cool night air ran over his bare chest, feeling divine. As a shifter male, his body often ran hotter than that of others, and he also had the ability to warm his core temperature more should the need arise. As he preferred to be cooler rather than hot, Gardelle didn’t bother warming himself too much.

  No matter how long he’d been splitting his time between his home realm and the human one, he still could not get used to the human realm having only one moon. He was accustomed to seeing four in the night sky. One was so large it could often still be seen during daylight hours as well. That was just one thing that set his Accipitridae apart from the human realm.

  It pained him to know his niece, Sabrina, would never know the beauty of their home realm. She’d never see four moons, or the wonders of the Tocallie Mountains. She would never know the beauty of a world that was untouched by commercial properties, endless parking lots and highways.

  “It can never be,” he said faintly, his heart heavy with the knowledge his niece would never know the truth of who she was, who he was, and where they were from.

  He extended his large wings outward as he soared. He loved flying and missed being able to do so on a daily basis. Already he had to use caution when entering and exiting the portal to avoid detection from either side. If caught disobeying orders in his home realm, he’d have to stand before the king. If seen by humans, he’d cause mass pandemonium. Even at night, he risked being seen by a human. If their one moon was full enough, it was entirely possible for the human eye to catch sight of him high in the sky. But that was a small price to pay to ensure his niece remained safe and hidden away from the falcon shifters.

  When he’d whisked her away from the bird realm when she was just a toddler, Gardelle had made the decision to raise her among humans. At first, it had been difficult to assimilate enough to pass for human without drawing suspicious glances and whispers. He’d had fifteen years of practice. Fifteen years of sneaking through the portals, of lying to everyone in his life.

  While he didn’t always get slang, he was far better than he used to be. Now the humans he interacted with thought of him as an eccentric millionaire who was from a remote, tiny, relatively unheard-of country in Eastern Europe. It explained his accent, which others could not place, for good reason.

  He was born in Accipitridae—a realm full of bird shifters. They were the thing of myths and legends to humans. The bird realm was free of pollution, overpopulation, poverty. It did have violence but no more than the human realm.

  Centuries ago, the human and the bird realms had been very much alike. They both had working castles, villages, and small towns. The times were referred to as the Dark Ages in human history books. Gardelle’s people saw them as some of the best Earth years. The hunger and disease that had spread through the human realm had been an issue—one his people had to tried to help with. That had not gone as planned, and the shifters from his realm returned home, coming back to the human realm rarely, being sure to hide their true selves. And over the centuries, the human realm had continued to advance, wage war, go hungry, pollute the earth.

  As much as it had pained his kind to step back and no longer take an active role in the human realm, it had been the right choice. Humans had advanced for the better in some ways, for the worst in many others, but they’d done so on their own terms.

  They didn’t need the bird shifters to show them such things as healing techniques, or how to build structures that would last centuries, as had once been the case. They had gone through various stages, and while they had done well for themselves in terms of increasing their life spans, they lived nowhere near as long as his kind did. Kabril, the king of the royal hawks (the kingdom that Gardelle was from), was considered young in the eyes of his people, and he was centuries old.

  Perhaps one day humans would figure out how to slow the aging process. How to live longer. They might even find a way to cheat death. For now, they lived but a blink in Gardelle’s mind. They came and went so quickly.

  While he’d given little thought to this before, a lot had changed since he’d taken to raising his niece among humans. He’d befriended some humans. Most were men who worked at his company. Though one was his niece’s friend.

  Lisa Redsun.

  The very thought of Lisa’s life speeding by caused Gardelle to lose his rhythm as he flew. He began to spiral downward and had to correct himself. That was a rookie mistake. One young fledglings committed when first learning to fly—not something a man of his years and training did.

  He glanced around, already knowing he was alone in the air, but feeling the need to be sure. He was that embarrassed by his fall. There was no way he’d live down nearly plummeting to his death because he’d lost focus over a human woman. His friends and his men from his home realm would never permit him to hear the end of it.

  Continuing onward, Gardelle’s mind drifted back to Lisa and her mortality. The very idea of Lisa aging quickly and then dying twisted at his gut and his mind, nearly making him plummet again. He had seen many humans die in his long life. So many that it normally had no effect on him. The idea of it happening now—to her—had an enormous impact. So much so that he was acting like a mere babe, new to the world and new to his wi
ngs.

  Something was certainly amiss.

  “Enough,” he spat, taking in a deep breath and thrusting thoughts of Lisa’s natural demise from his mind as best he could.

  It should not matter to him what became of her.

  Yet it did.

  He could speak with the healers of his realm to see if they had anything that could extend the human female’s life span somewhat. He made a mental note to check on as much when he next returned to Accipitridae. Though he would have to inquire about it under the guise of something else. While Kabril had loosened his decree on his people going to the human realm, it was still greatly frowned upon and permission was always sought.

  Well, others asked if they could.

  Gardelle simply went, hoping to avoid detection.

  He was breaking so many rules by simply being in the human realm that he didn’t dare dwell upon it all. Besides, he’d come too far and had lied to his people too long to stop, no matter the risk.

  Somehow, Gardelle had managed to split his time between the two realms for fifteen years. He made sure to never miss anything to do with his duties as a captain in the hawk army. And he managed to run a highly successful company in the human realm. In addition, he’d raised his niece Sabrina.

  When all was said and done, he had no free time to speak of, and that was fine by him. He had no issue dedicating himself to work and to his niece. Children were such a rare gift for bird shifters that there had never been any question in his mind about what he would do when Sabrina had fallen into his life.

  While she was technically his niece, he saw her as a daughter. Her mother, Gardelle’s sister, had passed when Sabrina was just a babe. That had been the last of Gardelle’s family line. It was part of the reason he’d stolen his niece away and decided to live a lie in order to raise her among humans.

  He prayed she would never learn the truth of where she came from. Of what he was. Thankfully, she didn’t possess the ability to shift forms and sprout wings. It would have been hard to explain that away. He’d been careful to never reveal himself to her. She was curious by nature, and he didn’t need her digging too deep and uncovering the truth of it all. It would only put her life at risk.

  At eighteen, she was now considered an adult in the human realm. Since bird-shifter males lived for centuries, eighteen didn’t seem very old to him. In fact, the time had gone by in the blink of an eye.

  Sabrina’s new passion was attending university. She was excited and talked nonstop about it all. Gardelle didn’t share her enthusiasm. There were far too many men on the campus for his liking. He’d have preferred she pick an all-girls college.

  She’d refused.

  Human boys thought only with their cocks, and if any of them dared to touch his niece, they’d find themselves missing vital pieces of their anatomy. If they were lucky, he’d permit them to live.

  Probably not.

  His cell phone buzzed in his pocket, indicating it had synced back with the towers in the human realm. When he was in Accipitridae, the phone was worthless. There were no such things as cell phone towers, electricity, the internet, or anything of the sort in the bird realm. While they were smart enough to have all of it and more, they were wise enough to know the price that came with such advancements. And the steep cost wasn’t something the bird shifters wanted to pay. They did not want their world to suffer as Earth had.

  His phone continued to buzz, no doubt letting him know of all the texts, emails, and notifications he’d missed by being out of cell range.

  Gardelle began to make his way towards the home he kept in the human realm. The strangest compulsion to change directions and veer off course ever so slightly came over him, and he was unable to fight the urge. Giving in, Gardelle flew in the direction that felt right. As he did, the strangest of tugs in his stomach began, as if he were being physically pulled in that direction.

  He went with it.

  It wasn’t as if he had a choice. His body had a mind of its own and he was at its mercy.

  When the tugging stopped, Gardelle found himself landing on the side of a cliff, overlooking a huge white mansion situated on another cliffside below. He knew the home. He’d never actually been in the home, but he’d picked his niece up there enough to know who lived within.

  Lisa.

  It was the home she shared with her parents. Parents he had never met face-to-face, despite the fact his niece and Lisa had been friends for three years, spending a great deal of time together.

  Lisa was too wild for Gardelle’s liking. He knew Lisa encouraged Sabrina to act out and go against the rules. Lisa was going through something of a rebellious phase. One that had started a year or so back but was only getting progressively worse. Thankfully, his niece refused to abide by the she-devil’s requests or give in to her influence.

  Why in the world had Gardelle felt compelled to fly to Lisa’s home?

  He vaguely recalled his niece asking if Lisa could spend the weekend with them. Something about it being Lisa’s eighteenth birthday and her parents being out of town.

  Gardelle didn’t put much stock in birthdays. Not with as many cycles as he had under his belt. He’d been told more than once that he looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. Not hundreds of years old, as was the case.

  He folded his wings in and they vanished into his body. To anyone who might happen upon him (however unlikely that was with as remote as his position was), he would look like a human male who was walking about the woods, near a cliff’s edge, wearing nothing more than jeans and boots.

  He’d seen human males wear stranger things.

  For instance, he’d seen some human males wearing jeans so tight that they had to be excruciatingly painful to their cocks. That, or human males were simply not as well-endowed as shifter males. There was no way Gardelle was wearing the skinny jeans, as he’d heard Lisa refer to them before. It was enough for him to wear jeans at all. Ones that suction cupped to him held no appeal.

  He looked down at the mansion below. A huge water fountain sat in the center of a large circular drive. Spotlights illuminated it from below, changing color at timed intervals. It was very pleasing to the eye. So much so that he’d entertained having a similar one put in at his home. His estate was about the same size as the one before him. His often looked as empty as well.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked to nothing but air.

  “And now I’m talking to myself. Wonderful. Should someone I know come along, they’ll think I’ve been afflicted by the bird sickness.”

  Gardelle considered leaving, still unclear as to why he’d felt so strongly to be there in the first place. He ran his hands through his long dark hair, his muscles flexing all on their own, tight with something close to worry. He was agitated but he didn’t know why or what had prompted it. All he knew was nervous energy coursed through his veins.

  He began to pace on the edge of the cliff, causing some loose stones to fall over the ledge. It took a bit for them to hit the ground below. His sensitive shifter hearing allowed him to pick up on the sound of them landing with soft thuds. The fall was not one a human would survive.

  The homes in the area were all built upon the edges of cliffs. Trees surrounded each of them, giving the massive homes a feeling of being totally and completely private.

  That was part of the lure. The other, for Gardelle, was the area’s closeness to a portal.

  Gardelle tipped his head back and forth, cracking his neck in the process. It did nothing to alleviate his nervous energy.

  He took a deep breath and did his best to think of leaving. The compulsion to remain kept him in place. His gaze moved towards the mansion once more. He’d first thought it to be empty, but he spotted a silhouette through the curtains. At the sight of the curvy form, Gardelle’s body responded, tightening, his cock hardening.

  His breath caught, and he grabbed himself, holding his erection through his jeans, unsure what was causing the reaction. He’d had no desire to bed
a female in years. That in itself was hard enough for him to explain. It was as if someone had come along and shut off his sexual urges—his manly desires. He’d once had a healthy sexual appetite. It had vanished almost overnight.

  Evidently, someone had turned his sex drive back on tenfold.

  Gardelle couldn’t tear his gaze from the clearly feminine form. The person vanished from the window, and Gardelle nearly took flight to charge the house. It was all he could do to control the beast within him. While he was a hawk shifter, he had very little in common with the hawks from the human realm. They were small. He was very large. And very aroused.

  He continued to watch the womanly form as it moved around in the front room. The woman was doing nothing extraordinary, yet his body was reacting as if he were getting a slow striptease.

  “I wish.”

  The figure vanished from sight and Gardelle swayed, his body burning with need. He only wished his mind knew what in the hell was going on. As it stood, he was lost.

  The front door opened and when a young, blonde-haired beauty stepped out, Gardelle lurched backwards, shocked to his very core.

  Lisa?

  His body was responding to Lisa in such a way?

  No!

  Chapter Two

  She was his niece’s best friend. She was also only eighteen. That was far from old enough for him to have lustful thoughts over her. She would need to be closer to a hundred or even two hundred before he felt more comfortable with it all. Since she was human, that would never work.