Page 2 of Flock This

The only truly impressive thing was the sprawling land it sat on. The house remained near the road, but behind it was over a hundred acres of pristine desert landscape, no doubt so they could run to their furry little hearts’ content on the full moons. The entire pack would come here to enjoy the open space during those times.

We walked to the back of the house, to the patio set on a large wooden deck. The place had a phenomenal view at night, and I’d been caught a time or two sneaking in just to stargaze. I could still remember the first time, when Galen had caught me and growled out a warning that breaking into a werewolf’s home was a death sentence.

Of course, that had only made me want it more.

I cursed my troublemaker passenger, and I could swear she laughed back at me.

“You should be more careful,” Galen said as he gestured for me to sit on the couch outside.

I flopped down on the spot, then put my feet up on the table. “What’s the point?”

“The point is that I kept you alive once and I’d rather not have you waste that.”

His words took me back to that time, to when everything had first happened, to my confusion. “The anniversary of that night just passed,” I said.

“Five years.” At my look of surprise, he chuckled. “You really think I’d forget? How many evenings does a man pull a crow from a tiny air vent? A crow that turns into a girl?”

That reminded me of the cold of the concrete when I’d fallen, when I’d taken human form again, shivering and scared and completely confused about how I’d just been a fucking bird.

I still recalled the blood on him, the massive body of the werewolf he’d killed on the ground—quite the welcome to that strange, violent world. It had been yet another bad-luck moment that had led to the ugly situation.

Just a week after I’d become—whatever I was—before I’d realized what that meant, before I knew how it had truly changed me, I’d run into the last person I should have. A stray werewolf with a taste for blood, who had chased me into a closed store. In trying to avoid him, I’d found myself changed into a crow, no idea how that had happened or why.

Not that I truly understood any of this now better than before.

“Is this it?”

Galen nodded toward the skyline. “No. If you wait another two hours, there’s one hell of a sunset.”

I turned my head toward him. “I’m serious. Is this it? After everything that’s happened, everything that’s changed, what was the point of it all? I was saved, I survived, but for what? For werewolves to force me on joke deliveries? To bring date requests from one vampire family to another because they don’t want to risk getting rejected in person? I mean, come on, Galen, there has to be more to all this?”

He met my gaze for a long moment before returning to the skyline. He was always slow with his words, careful. Maybe that was one reason we got along so well, because I said whatever came to mind with very little filter and he gave me the space to do so. Finally, he sighed. “There isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason to life, Grey. I know you want me to tell you this all happened for a reason, but if it did, I don’t know it. Even if it did, does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

He lifted his eyebrow in that ‘oh really?’ way that probably worked out perfectly if he were a Dom with an unruly sub. Not that I expected that from him. The man was far too strait-laced for such frivolous pleasures. “Let’s say I became a werewolf for the purpose of saving you five years ago.”

“In that case, I think it matters a lot,” I muttered.

He kept speaking as if I hadn’t interrupted. “But other than that one night, other than that moment of fulfilling that purpose, what of the rest of my life? There are hundreds of years where I lived, that I had to fill, that had nothing to do with that predestined purpose. Even if life is a split second of fate, there is so much more to it.”

I blew out a breath, annoyed as always with how good his advice sounded and how little I wanted to take it. It usually came down to him wanting me to do things I didn’t want to, like not annoying werewolves, cutting down on my swearing and mostly getting my life in order.

How boring.

“Well, if there is some great purpose for me, it’d better show up soon. I’m getting tired of waiting.”

I wouldn’t know it then, but that was where it all went wrong.

It’s never a good idea to annoy fate.

* * * *

The huge building in front of me used magic to hide its truth from mortal eyes, so to any human walking by, it appeared just another boring office building in downtown Palm Springs. I knew better, though.

It stretched up and into the sky, at least thirty stories tall, and had old Victorian architecture. In fact, little else screamed vampire like this monstrosity. It lived up to its unofficial name of the Castle.

It was also, hands down, my least favorite place to deliver anything. I’d take a good old werewolf dildo delivery over stepping foot here.

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