unedited

Chapter One

 

It had taken Uri a lot longer to find a good location to hide his vehicle and stash his belongings. The first rule he taught his team was never to keep all your belongings in the vehicle. If it is found, then you are left with nothing. The trip here had also taken longer. He was too used to close locations and being able to fly to them. He had so many spare phones and changes of clothes hidden throughout Ontario it would be years before he found them all.

He climbed higher to take a look around. There were a lot of trees in this area, which was a good and bad thing at the same time. Good, because if he needed to land and hide, he had plenty of options. Bad, because you never knew who or what was lurking in densely treed areas.

A gust of wind sent him too far in the other direction. He was going to have to get lower and take his chances on the winds coming in off the gulf. The weather could be a mix of anything this close to the coast. Yukon and Alaska weren’t far from this spot either, so he was bound to run into a few storms and unpredictable winds.

He’d studied every map he could get a hold of to learn the area. The house he needed to get surveillance on was sitting on the coast of a small bay. He only hoped it was located near something other than water. It was hard to stay out of sight if you had to be in the air the whole time. His kind weren’t exactly known to hang out over large bodies of water. Grey owls were large in the wild, but he was even more so, and being spotted circling the water would cause all sorts of questions. His job was to be unseen, which was never without a challenge.

The temperature changed as he went lower. He circled over a treed area and looked to see if there were any buildings in them. He’d have to pinpoint on the map later where the house was he needed to watch, but for now just getting a feel for the area would have to do.

A flock of birds came bursting out of the trees, making him adjust his course. The last thing he wanted right now was to fight off something over territory he didn’t have a need for. He scanned the area as he was gliding in a wide circle. At times, he wished he could just sniff things out like the pawed shifters, but his kind didn’t have an enhanced sense of smell. Hearing and sight, however, was a different matter altogether. Right now, he could hear a group in that bush area below.

Shifting muscles, he leaned to go back up. He was going to have to take a sweep over the area to see what was going on and he preferred to do that from a higher altitude. Diving was faster, and usually, one-forms were too distracted by what they thought he was going to swoop in and kill than anything else—like he was too big for his species, or he was in an area where wild owls weren’t.

As he descended, and felt the rush. That would never get old. Moving through the air with such speed that if he weren’t covered in feathers, the winds would rip at his skin. He loved it so much that he almost forgot to look where he was supposed to be. He could make out four bodies down there. The human variety, at least in human form. He was moving too fast to pick up too much detail. 

A glint flashed, and his bird reacted before he thought to. Flashes like that were from lenses and it was best to get out of range in case they were from a weapon. They could be binoculars or long camera lenses, but his guts told him they weren’t down there bird-watching.

He circled away from the trees, moving toward the bay. The sound registered at the same time he felt something clip his mantle area—or shoulder if he were not covered in feathers. It had done damage. He wasn’t able to maneuver away from the water as it got closer.  Each movement of that wing sent pain screaming through him.

How embarrassing was this going to be? Swimming naked in what was likely damn cold water. He looked at the water as it got closer. His owl didn’t do water of any kind, ever, which meant he was going to have to shift as he hit it and hope like hell there was no one close by that would see the bird turn into a man.

A gust of wind assisted in sending him out further and he was glad for it. He wasn’t near any shore now and wasn’t going to come down on rocks when he went under. Five seconds. He winced through, pulling the injured wing in. If he was dive-bombing into the bay, he was doing it fast, so there was less chance of him being spotted. Three seconds. He reached for his owl and let him know he was shifting hot and dirty in one second.

The pain was amplified by shifting when the cold water surrounded him. That was the only drawback to being a flying shifter. Going back from a compact form to a five-foot-eight man hurt like nothing else on this earth.

He misjudged the depth he was going to fall and sucked in some water as he finished the shift and headed for the surface. The current grabbed him and took him for a swirl. The surface was now further away. He was not going out like this. He fought through the pain to push himself toward the surface.

Someone grabbed him, and he shook his head, trying to get his limbs to respond. The light from the surface was moving closer, so he stopped fighting them. Whoever it was, they were saving him from a cold, lonely death at the bottom of this bay.

They broke the surface, and Uri tried to suck air into his body but started choking on the water he’d just drawn in.

“Hold still, you idiot, or I will leave you out here to drown.” A woman hissed in his ear. “You’re acting like it's your first day with feathers.”

She was dragging him by the under the arms now.

“If you’d just glided down and landed like a normal bird, you wouldn’t have almost knocked yourself unconscious.”

Uri tried to relax in her hold, but instinct had him still flailing and trying to help her. He turned his head and saw that the dark-haired woman had the eyes of his clan, which was impossible. He knew every one of his kind.

She stopped and glared at him. “Do yourself a favor and just play dead so I can haul you to the shore, or we’re both going to drown in this freezing water.”

He blinked and nodded. He’d do as she said and ask his questions after he was out of the water.