at the foot of the mountain, all Cooper’s hopes shattered along with him.
Gretchen stroked Cooper’s feathers. She leaned forward, lying against his neck, touching him as much as possible.
“It’s all right,” she said. Her voice was the only thing that could have broken through the icy panic that had frozen him in place. “You caught him. Everything’s okay.”
He came back to himself at the sound of her. He knew he always would.
21
“It’s good to be home,” Gretchen said.
Cooper looked around the bustling, chaotic office. “It’s good to be anywhere, really. But is it always like this?”
The two of them were currently serving as the still center to all the hubbub. Theo was submitting a glowering Phil to the kind of thorough, creative tongue-lashing only a dragon could give another dragon. Martin was in the middle of bulldozing straight through any attempts to take Cooper back into Stridmont’s custody, even for the night: it seemed to involve a lot of yelling. Colby had decided that the one thing everybody needed right now was comfort food, so he’d set up shop in the office kitchen and was now making grilled cheese sandwiches, intermittently calling out to ask if anyone wanted tomato or bacon on theirs. Keith was blissfully quiet, zonked out on the office sofa and oblivious to all the noise. He still had a bandage on his head.
“There’s usually less shouting,” Gretchen amended. “And normally you couldn’t pay Theo to dress somebody down like this. But it’s pretty spot on for Colby.”
“Then I like Colby,” Cooper said, just as Colby came around the corner bearing two grilled cheeses. They were displayed with a kind of deli-style neatness, each surrounded by chips and a pickle spear.
“Thanks,” Colby said, handing their sandwiches over. “I like you too. Any mate of Gretchen’s is a friend of mine.” He leaned over and kissed the top of Gretchen’s head.
She swallowed down the lump in her throat. Seeing the team rally around her and Cooper had already made her cry three times in the last hour. She didn’t want to make it four.
“Wait until you find out what my new shift form is,” she said.
“Wait, what?” Pure delight lit up his face, making him immediately look like one of her kid brothers. “You can shift now?”
“I’m a lynx-falcon griffin.”
There was a pause where she could see Colby mentally drawing a picture of this in his imagination, and his grin only got wider—right up until it comically deflated. “Wait, now I’m the only person in this office who can’t fly?”
Gretchen reached up to pat him on the shoulder, but she couldn’t get much higher than his arm. She patted there instead. “Lots of people can’t fly, Colby, and they still live perfectly fulfilling lives.”
“Sure. That’s what all you flying people want me to think.”
“You’re not going to take our grilled cheeses back, are you?” Cooper said tentatively.
He sounded so cautious, and it made Gretchen’s heart ache a little. He had relaxed with her, of course, but she was his mate. She could see how hard it was for him to joke around with a relative stranger, and she knew how risky it must feel for him to open up his life again. His last group of friends had kicked his heart around like a soccer ball.
Gretchen had been so much luckier than he had been. She could look back on her life now and see that her childhood had left her with more scars than the one on her shoulder—she had spent a long time feeling small and defensive. But she’d never doubted her family’s love for her, and she’d spent her whole adult life surrounded by people who thought the world of her.
And she thought the world of them, too—something that was particularly vindicated as Colby handled Cooper’s joke lightly and deftly.
“I would never deprive someone of the opportunity to experience my world-class grilled cheese. But I’ll expect to be heaped with a lot of praise. It’s the only way I’m going to console myself for being stuck on the ground.” He tipped them a little salute and returned to the kitchen, slinging a dish towel over his shoulder as he went.
Cooper now wore the shyest, most beautiful grin Gretchen had ever seen.
See? You’ll do just fine now that you’re with the right people. You’re one of us now.
He took a bite of his grilled cheese and instantly made a face she hadn’t seen since their all-too-brief roll around Ford’s bed.