Chapter One
Cam froze mid-step, squinting at the baby cradled in Tessa’s arms. “Wait. Wait. Why is there glitter on her face?”
Tessa blinked, adjusting the blanket. “What do you mean?”
Cam leaned in like she was investigating a crime scene. “Don’t play innocent. That’s sparkle. Right there. On her cheek. Oh, my God, Tess - did you let her roll in craft supplies? Already? She’s a year old. She cannot handle the arts.”
“It’s one fleck,” Tessa said, amused as she rolled her eyes. “Hardly an artistic scandal.”
“One fleck leads to rattle fireworks,” Cam shot back, throwing her hands up. “And then one day we wake up and she’s sequined the dog. This is a gateway shimmer. Have we learned nothing from the last time she got creative?”
Before Tessa could reply, the baby gave a delicate sneeze. A mist of glitter puffed into the air like a tiny, sparkling explosion.
Cam staggered back, clutching her chest. “Oh no. No no no no. Tess, she’s leaking shimmer. This is unnatural. Babies are supposed to leak milk, not magic confetti!”
Tessa, maddeningly calm, dabbed at her daughter's face with the corner of a cloth. “It’s fine. Maybe Griffin was holding her after training. His wings carry residue.”
“Residue?!” Cam’s voice cracked. “That’s not residue, that’s a rave. We need containment measures. A sparkle quarantine. She’s glowing like she swallowed a star.”
Tessa chuckled, rocking the baby as if nothing were wrong. “Cam, she’s fine. It’s just a sneeze. Remember, she's half gargoyle.”
“A sneeze shouldn’t look like a fireworks finale!” Cam groaned, pacing now. “I swear, between you and Griffin she’s doomed. One of you feeds her logic, the other drips gargoyle dust all over her, and I’m here trying to keep her mortal. This child doesn’t stand a chance.”
“On the contrary,” Tessa said serenely, pressing a kiss to the glitter-sprinkled baby’s head. “She’s perfect.”
Cam flopped into the nearest chair with the weight of true despair. “Perfectly radioactive.”
The kitchen table - technically still a kitchen table despite being buried under maps, half-scribbled battle plans, and something that might’ve once been a grocery list - groaned beneath the weight of his stress. Griffin hunched over the mess, wings faintly twitching as he muttered under his breath, scribbling, erasing, and scribbling again. Tessa had complained over and over how she missed her table, but she quickly gave up when Griffin offered to build her another table.
Cam leaned against the doorway, arms crossed. Honestly. Was this a war council or an audition for the world’s moodiest dinner host? “Careful,” she called out. “If you scowl any harder, the ink might run off the page in fear.”
Griffin didn’t look up, but his jaw tightened. “I’m working.” She always had a way to get under his skin.
“Oh, is that what this is?” Cam strolled in, plucked one of his crumpled notes from the table, and squinted at it. “Because it reads less like strategy and more like a shopping list. ‘Flank east, secure perimeter, don’t forget bread.’ I mean, points for multitasking.”
Tessa entered just behind her, lips curving into the soft smile only she seemed to get away with around Griffin. “You’ll give yourself a headache if you keep pacing in circles on paper.”
“I don’t pace in circles,” he muttered, which was objectively false. His eyes softened as he looked up at his mate. Cam couldn't help the twinge of jealously that rolled through her stomach. She didn't want Griffin, but she wanted someone who looked at her like that.
It was her turn, right?
Cam dropped the note back onto the pile and propped her chin on her hand. “You know, most men who stand shirtless in kitchens at least pretend they’re cooking. You’re just brooding over kindling.”
Griffin’s dark brows drew together. “It’s hot outside.”
Cam grinned. “Hot as in temperature, or hot as in look at me, I’m a dramatic gargoyle mate scribbling war poetry half-naked?”
Tessa pressed her lips together, fighting a laugh, but her eyes betrayed her amusement. Griffin’s wings gave the faintest twitch, which Cam decided was as close to flustered as a stone-faced gargoyle could get.
“I swear,” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair, “every time I’m focused -”
“- I appear like divine punishment,” Cam finished for him, grinning. “You’re welcome.”
Tessa moved closer, sliding her hand lightly along Griffin’s arm until his shoulders eased fractionally. Cam noticed the shift, the way his storm-cloud expression calmed under Tessa’s touch and rolled her eyes theatrically.
“Gross. Disgusting. Mating bond in action. Think of the children.”
“You are the child,” Griffin shot back, deadpan.
Cam gasped. “Did the grumpy gargoyle just… banter? Tessa, write this down. He’s evolving.”
That earned her the faintest ghost of a smile from Griffin before he sank back into his notes, muttering again - but lighter this time, as if her teasing had cracked the tension’s surface.
Cam flopped down cross-legged on the rug, a mountain of tiny clothes spilling from the basket between her and Tessa. Glitter still clung stubbornly to her sleeve, and to the baby’s cheeks, catching in the late afternoon light. The infant cooed, grabbing at a sock Cam had just folded, promptly shaking it like prey.
“See? Born feral,” Cam muttered, prying it back before the sock was drenched in drool. “You really should have kept her away from craft supplies. That’s on you, not me.”
Tessa gave her a long, unimpressed mom look as she neatly folded a onesie with maddening precision. “She wasn’t near the glitter. You were.”
Cam clutched her chest. “Wow. Attacked. Here I am, volunteering my laundry-folding expertise-”
“You don’t fold,” Tessa cut in, smirking. “You crumple into vague rectangles and pray no one notices.” She picked up a blanket and proceeded to refold what Cam had done.
“Bold of you to assume I pray,” Cam shot back, tossing a mangled shirt into the basket with exaggerated flourish. “Besides, it’s not like she cares. Look at her-” The baby sneezed. A fine puff of shimmer burst into the air, catching both of them in sparkling fallout. Cam froze. “She is leaking shimmer. This is not normal. We need an exorcist.”
Tessa just shook her head, calm as ever, plucking a wipe from the container. “Or a bath.”
“A bath? She’s basically a disco ball with lungs! What if this is permanent? You’ll have to explain to the council why your daughter is out here shedding magic like confetti.”
“She’s fine,” Tessa said, though there was a twitch of laughter in her voice.
Cam dragged a hand down her glitter-dusted face. “No one warned me about rattle fireworks, glitter sneezes, or the terrifying potential of soulbond offspring. Honestly, your whole domestic bliss thing is way more dangerous than anything I get up to.”
At that, Tessa’s smile dimmed just slightly. “The council would agree with you. They’re nervous. The flights up north are restless, and some bonds are… unstable. Rogue gargoyles don’t always come back from it.”
The levity thinned, replaced by a heaviness Cam pretended not to notice. She snagged another sock and rolled it with unnecessary aggression. “Sounds like a council problem. Not mine.”
“You can joke all you want, Cam, but you were there when Lucan took me. He wasn’t just some story.”
Cam’s jaw tensed. She remembered the chaos, Tessa's broken phone on the sidewalk, the danger that had felt a little too close. She shoved the thought away. “Lucan was one guy who lost it. Doesn’t mean every gargoyle’s doomed to explode if they don’t kiss the right person.”
Tessa looked at her carefully, eyes searching. “You really don’t believe in it, do you?”
“Believe? Sure. In the same way I believe in laundry piles breeding in the dark.” Cam waved a hand, glitter still dusting her fingers. “I’m not signing up for fate deciding my love life. Casual fun, no strings, no magic shackles - that’s more my style.”
The baby giggled then, throwing a sock at Cam’s chest like she was punctuating the statement. Cam caught it, smirk tugging at her lips.
Tessa just shook her head, quiet but certain. “One day, you might not get a choice.” She looked over at Griffin with a small smile on her lips. "Sometimes they just show up when you're not looking."
Cam scoffed, though something in her chest tightened. “Yeah, well. Until that day comes, I’m sticking with glitter sneezes and bad folding. Way safer.”
The air shifted first before a loud knock sounded at the front door. A subtle pressure, the kind that prickled against the skin before thunder split the horizon. Cam froze mid-sentence, a laugh still lingering on her lips, while Tessa’s head snapped toward the door as if she already knew.
Then Griffin straightened from his desk, shoulders squaring, the teasing ease he’d carried with Cam moments before vanishing. His voice dropped into something low and formal as he opened the door.
“General Kael.”
The name rippled through the room like a drawn blade.
The doorway filled with him - taller than she’d expected, all lean muscle and carved lines of scar cutting across a face too severe to soften. His wings unfurled just enough to catch the dim light, vast and dark, like a shadow had come alive. The storm wasn’t outside. It was him.
Cam’s pulse did something inconvenient in her throat.
Absolutely not, she told herself. Not with those eyes. Not with that presence. Not with the way her traitorous stomach flipped as though she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t.
She forced her mouth into a smirk, already composing some flippant remark to cover the fact that her knees felt unreliable.
But before she could open her mouth, the baby - sweet, glitter-covered chaos incarnate - let out a perfectly timed gurgle. A bubbling laugh that burst through the tension like it had been waiting for the cue.
Kael’s gaze flicked down at the sound, sharp and assessing, though the hard set of his jaw didn’t waver.
Cam snorted. “Well,” she drawled, grateful for the interruption, “at least someone approves of the dramatic entrance.”
The world seemed to tilt when their eyes locked. Not just attraction - something deeper, older, like stone grinding against stone, as if the air itself remembered something she had forgotten. An ancient pull thrummed under her skin, buzzing like a second heartbeat.
Cam stiffened. Absolutely not. She didn’t do destiny. She did flings, fun, maybe a little trouble on the side. Not whatever this was.
Still, her gaze dragged over him. General Kael. Tall, broad, scarred, with wings that spilled shadow and menace across the room. Hot and emotionally constipated, her brain supplied unhelpfully. Figures her hormones would zero in on the biggest broody gargoyle in existence.
Beside her, Tessa hissed under her breath. “Be nice.”
Cam didn’t look away from Kael. Her mouth quirked. “I am being nice. I haven’t climbed him like a tree. Yet.”
The baby gurgled right on cue, like even it was in on the joke, and Cam forced her lips into a grin that felt way too sharp. She could practically feel the bond - or whatever nonsense this wastrying to tighten around her ribs.
No. She wasn’t going to believe in fate, or bonds, or the Council’s whispers about mates. If there was something strange tugging at her, she’d figure it out on her terms. And if it turned out the answer was just that the general was ridiculously hot? Well. That was the kind of research Cam could get behind.
