My Raptor: An Erotic Shapeshifting Paranormal Romance by Cara B. Connor Page B

the falcon there everyday when she came back from work. Now whenever she opened her bedroom door, her eyes instantly darted to the far window facing the balcony, just to see her feathered friend.
    She always smiled when she saw him. His presence made her happier than she had been in forever. His elegance, intensity, colorful feathers and wide wings always impressed her. She began to silently wish that she had all his freedom. To spread her wings and fly; free to go wherever she wished. What a wonderful life that could be!
    Herself, if she were the falcon, she would have chosen any other town. The best there was, anywhere but here. But here was this elegant creature,  choosing to return each day from all its adventures to spend time with her, to stay right there with her, and to share in her company. She couldn’t believe her amazing luck that the falcon seemed to look forward to her company as well.
    They were indeed quite a pair. The falcon always looked into her window and she, at his spot on the tree branch, every now and then. But then one night he wasn’t there when she came home. She went out to the balcony to look at all the other branches in the tree right by her bedroom; perhaps he had chosen another position on the tree to roost that day.
    She timidly went out on the balcony that night and scanned the entire tree for him and then all the surrounding trees too, but the falcon was not there. “Where is he?” she wondered aloud to herself.
    This turn of events worried her a lot, but she went back inside her apartment, took her seat inside her room and waited and hoped that he would soon come back. Perhaps he was going to be late… or maybe something out there had delayed him. Maybe he was just out hunting… who knows for sure. Still, she waited for him to return until she fell asleep on the bed.
    When she woke up hours later, the entire room was dark and Carol realized that she had fallen asleep on her watch. She switched on the balcony light and checked for him again, but to her disappointment the falcon still had not returned. So she fixed her dinner and went to sleep that night, sad, wondering where her feathered friend was. And hoping that he was alright and would return soon.
    Then, the next day after work, she hoped she would come home to see that her falcon had returned. She nursed the hope that perhaps, it had ventured far off and needed the extra night fall hours before it could make its way back home to her. How she hoped that he would have returned safely by now. She was more than willing to forgive him for spending the night out on the town, but when she arrived back at her apartment that day she found out that he still wasn’t there.
    Still, she couldn’t help but worry about her feathered friend while she was at work. All day long, every shadow in the air or every flutter of wings she noticed had her almost fighting to get to the windows fast enough to see if it was her falcon. But it never was.
    Her second day at work after he went missing, she was far from coordinated and found it hard to concentrate on her job. At the close of the day, as she sorted the books on the desks and re-shelved them, she was worried and largely distracted by the worry and fear that he may have come to some kind of harm.
    While she hoped that she would get home to find him back in the tree beside her balcony, she also didn’t want the hurt of realizing that her hopes were wrong while looking off that balcony into an empty tree.
    Carol then came back to the present, when her supervisor, who was also arranging the books on the shelves, called her to attention. “Carol, can you come here please?,” she asked, as she continued to stack books in rows, waiting to be shelved.
    Carol was so distracted thinking about the falcon that she was making lots of mistakes and was shelving some books in the wrong classification entirely. Then she realized her supervisor was saying something and instantly came back to the present.