Free Boundary Born (Boundary Magic Book 3) by Melissa F. Olson Page B

dad’s sixtieth birthday party, months ago. But my family hadn’t had any contact with him since, and for good reason. I gave Elise the same statement I’d given everyone in the family for six months now. “Yeah, we’re together, but it’s pretty casual.”
    Unlike my parents or my other cousins, however, Elise wouldn’t take my word for it. She raised an eyebrow, putting on what the rest of us called her cop face. “Is he married?”
    “What?” I cried, genuinely insulted. “Of course not! How could you even think that I—”
    “You’ve been together for like six months,” she said matter-of-factly. “Yet you barely seem to spend time with him. You act like it’s this temporary relationship, but your face gets all girly whenever you mention him.” She shrugged. “Ergo, married.”
    “No,” I said through my teeth. “He is not married. And you take back what you said about my face.”
    Elise’s probing look didn’t waver. “Is he homophobic?”
    “Of course not!” Geez. She’d managed to offend me three different ways in the space of two minutes.
    “Great, then we’ll do dinner,” Elise said with a sweet smile. “I’m camping this weekend, but maybe next weekend?”
    “Uh . . . I’ll have to check my schedule,” I said, fidgeting with my shirt and pushing my hair behind my ears. I’d been wearing it down more, now that I wasn’t seeing much of Charlie. She considered my hair her personal toy property.
    “Hey, you’re wearing the earrings I got you!” Anna exclaimed, returning from the bathroom. She pointed at my earlobes, and I automatically reached up to touch one of the little studs she’d given me ages ago, when I was home between tours. They were in the shape of tiny curled-up griffins. My cousins didn’t know about my tattoos—I wasn’t sure how my family would take the fact that I suddenly had full-on ink sleeves covering my forearms, so I’d kept them hidden.
    For a second I was this close to blurting out, “That’s funny, Sam was just talking about griffins today.” My brain caught up to my mouth just in time. “Yeah. I love them,” I said instead.
    “How come I never got a spirit animal?” Elise complained. “You only assigned one to Lex.”
    “Um, because you guys gave me shit for years for even bringing up the words ‘spirit animal’?” Anna retorted. “Besides, Lex is special. She needs a griffin more than you do.”
    Elise rolled her eyes in a dismissive, Anna’s-being-Anna way and started gathering up her jacket and bag. But I looked at my younger cousin with new interest. I’d always assumed she’d decided griffins were connected to me because of the whole army thing—in mythology, griffins symbolized courage and boldness, which was soldier stuff. Meanwhile, Sam had told me that griffins were the guardians of priceless treasures. I’d associated that with protecting Charlie. “What do you mean, I need one more?” I asked Anna.
    “We talked about griffins when we were studying heraldry—you know, coats of arms and symbols and stuff,” she said. “Griffins were drawn to powerful monsters, and they stood for military strength and leadership. I just thought you could use one.” She grinned, gesturing at my earrings. “Or two.”
    “Huh.” All along I’d associated myself with the griffin, but Anna had been barely thirteen when I’d gone to Iraq. She had hoped for a griffin to watch over me . “Thank you,” I said sincerely. “That means a lot.”
     
    It was only when I was walking back to the car that I considered the rest of her words: griffins were drawn to powerful monsters. Like Maven? Or Quinn?
    Then I remembered how good—how right —it had felt when I used boundary magic, and I shivered. Or was I the monster?
    It’s just a symbol, Lex , I reminded myself. Symbols only have the significance that we bring to them.
    Right?

Chapter 10
    I fought the commuter traffic so I could get home and take care of the herd, who were as glad