I glanced at Tiff. “I got a phone call.” I spoke as quietly as I could while she ran around the desks making oooooh noises.
Maddox picked up on my reluctance to talk around Tiff. “Hey, Tiffany, do you want to see the jail cells?” he asked.
She squealed in excitement and jumped up and down. “I just cleaned them,” he whispered to me. “No prisoners here, and I’ll unlock the locks so she can explore.”
I nodded. He walked to one of the doors leading off the office area. I followed into a room with two cells and old-fashioned iron bars. Tiffany loved watching an old TV show about a country police officer and his bumbling deputy with her grandfather. This looked so much like that show that she recognized it immediately.
He opened the doors. “Here,” he said. He propped the doors open with a couple of chairs. “Now she can’t even pinch her fingers if she tries to close them.”
“Is this where you keep the bad guys?” she asked with wide eyes.
“You got it. They stay here until it’s time for them to go to a bigger jail or if they’re not really all that bad, they get to go home.”
Tiffany nodded somberly. “Wow.”
“Go see,” he said, and waved her toward the two cells.
She skipped forward and the first thing she did was push the button on the toilet to flush it in the first cell. “You cleaned those well, right?” I asked with a curled nose.
He chuckled. “With bleach. The worst thing that’ll happen is they might not be totally dry, and she’ll get bleach on her clothes.”
I could’ve lived with that. While Tiffany spun circles inside the cell with her arms out, I told Maddox about the phone call.
Maddox’s arm went around me from behind as soon as I started talking. A bit of comfort, and I was glad to have it.
“Don’t worry. I’m not a lawyer yet, but I’ve been researching it, just in case. They don’t have a case.”
Tiffany ran from one cell to the other and ignored our talking completely.
“Just in case they do, we can call one of the names I gave you, okay?” He squeezed my side.
I gladly leaned my head on his shoulder. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“In the meantime, let me have the number of the gal that called. She absolutely shouldn’t have contacted you that way. She was supposed to send you a letter, preferably certified.”
I nodded and pulled it up on my phone with my head still on Maddox’s shoulder. If Tiffany noticed her Mommy being held by a man that was supposed to just be a friend, she didn’t seem to care.
“We’ll go to the lawyer’s office together. I’m by your side on this, okay? All the way.”
I handed him my phone and wrapped both arms around his waist. How had I gone so quickly from not liking him very much to being so relieved to have him here with me? I wasn’t sure when that had happened, but however and whenever it did, having someone on my side fully was an enormous comfort.
“Everything is going to be okay,” Maddox said. “I promise.”
For whatever reason, the tension inside me melted nearly away. And I fully believed him.
14
Maddox
Flying with Artemis was always some of the most centered and focused times for me. Things seemed to fall away, and worries disappeared. We focused on the air and the smells of the forest, of going as high as we could, then diving down until the treetops brushed his belly. Everything was about adrenaline and ecstasy.
But not today. Today, I kept thinking about California and Bethany. I knew she’d get through the custody battle without losing Tiffany. There was no doubt in my mind, so though that was going to be a headache and definitely would be stressful for Bethany, I wasn’t worried. We already had a good lawyer who had agreed to take the case. Sometimes having the last name of Kingston was a real boon. As soon as I’d called, he agreed. That was fine with me because he was the best.
What worried me was losing her once I told her I was considering law school several states over. But while we were shifted, it was all too possible to project thoughts, which wasn’t what I wanted to do, so I tried to think about other things and focus on the flight.
It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. Artemis kept us in the air for a long time, though, and by the time we landed in the woods near the manor house, I did feel somewhat better. I’d been avoiding shifting and flying anywhere but our family land where we were extremely unlikely to find any humans wandering. Not only did we have no trespassing signs posted everywhere, but there was also something about the dragon and wolf territory that humans shied away from, especially human males. They would feel uneasy hiking in areas we frequented and would naturally find themselves heading away and back to their comfort zones. It was a rare thing for a human to stumble across dragon or wolf land, and here in Black Claw, we had both. Our agreement with Carlos and his wolf pack meant they roamed the land while we roamed the skies. It worked out very well for all involved.
I shifted back to my skin and walked out of the woods to find my grandfather leaning against the small outdoor shower he’d built just for us to use when shifting. We had a place for our clothes, showers, and everything we needed to clean up if we had a messy shift. Plus, it gave us some modesty.
“Son, you’re projecting some pretty deep thoughts, you know,” Grandpa said.
I nodded. “Let me get dressed.”
“I’ll be on the porch if you want to talk.”
As I pulled my clothes back on, I considered how much I wanted
