The next thing she knew, Tricia had bounded off the sofa and wrapped her in a back-breaking hug.
“Oh, Gretch, that’s amazing. I know it’s what you’ve always wanted.”
And the Miller, Miller-Alvarez, Miller-Sousa, and Miller-Hendrickson-Smith voices were saying things like:
“I knew it! Didn’t I know it?” Bonnie exclaimed. “I said she could bench-press more than any human woman I ever met.”
“Aunt Gretchen, are you a lynx like us?”
“Maybe she’s a badger. There was a badger on my paternal grandfather’s side...”
“How did you find out?”
“Can you shift for us now, or is it going to mess up your clothes?”
They believed her.
They had a billion questions for her, but none of them were anything close to, “Are you sure?”
They—like Cooper, like Martin, like Theo and Colby and even Keith—knew the person she was now, and they trusted her to know what she was doing. Gretchen felt like some balloon strings that had tied her down her whole life had finally been decisively cut. Most of those strings had gotten snipped while she and Cooper were on the road, but one or two had stubbornly held on. Childhood stuff was hard to get rid of. But now, seeing her family unite around her with complete trust and extremely loud enthusiasm, Gretchen felt the last of those old worries go. And she floated up, flying even without her wings.
“I’m part lynx,” Gretchen said. “I’m a griffin—part lynx and part falcon.”
That caused another eruption of questions, and answering them took up a lot of time. Then it really was faster—and better—to just go ahead and shift.
“You’ll have to stand back a little,” she said. “I’m kind of big.”
“Don’t you want to get undressed first?”
Gretchen grinned and shook her head.
“Oh, right, she’s mythic,” her brother Toby groaned, his voice ripe with envy. “Of course she gets to keep her clothes.”
“I know,” Tricia said, reaching over to pat him on the hand. “You’ve never forgiven us for tricking you into letting Katie LaPaglia see you naked in the backyard that one time.”
“I was fifteen! I couldn’t show my face in school for a week! And I couldn’t explain it, so everyone thought I just hung around your backyard naked! I never dated again.” He sighed, but then affection crept back in to sit alongside the outrage, and he wrapped his arm around his wife Anna’s shoulders. “Not that it didn’t work out.”
“Well, I’m safe from embarrassment,” Gretchen said. “Just watch.”
She melted into her griffin form, with her back paws thudding and her front talons clicking as they all hit the floor.
“Falcolynx,” Kimberly, one of Gretchen’s nieces, breathed.
“I think you can just call her a griffin, sweetie.”
Kimberly shook her head stubbornly. “You can just make it into one word. She’s like the griffin version of a labradoodle. Aunt Gretchen, can I touch you?”
Gretchen had been holding back a laugh at that labradoodle line—for all she knew, a griffin’s laugh sounded terrifying, and she didn’t want to scare the kids—and now she swallowed it down. She nodded and let Kimberly approach.
Kimberly gently laid one hand on the glossy feathers of Gretchen’s head.
“You’re so sleek!” Kimberly exclaimed.
That seemed to serve as a cue for everyone to mob Gretchen, gently touching her wings and the sensitive line of her back where feathers met fur, tapping her short tail to make it twitch, asking her to snap at something with her beak. Bonnie ran and got a tape measure to check her wingspan. The kids had to be talked out of taking photos—it was safe enough to photograph fellow lynxes, but no one would be able to explain a griffin photo that leaked out. Gretchen’s mom and dad hugged her, both of them telling her how beautiful and strong she looked.
Gretchen had to nod agreement to several promises to give the older kids rides sometime, and she was lucky she wasn’t forced into it right then and there. Instead, she shifted back.
As important as her griffin news was, she had other news that mattered just as much.
“There’s another thing,” she added. She had to admit that she was enjoying being the center of attention for once. She wouldn’t want it to happen all the time, but for right now, she was happy to bask in the spotlight. “I met my mate. He’s the prisoner that I was transporting.”
She thought she’d save the engagement news for another day so she didn’t give up all her bombshells at once.
Explaining Cooper, anyway, would probably take all night. Even though