She was supposed to be watching his... narcolepsy?
Then he began to change.
It was like watching a candle burn. She couldn’t see all parts of it—the flame, the shortening wick, the melting wax—all at once. She couldn’t follow the process. It was just what it was. A transformation as stunning as fire and as natural as fire, too.
Deadly. Beautiful. Life-saving, under the right circumstances.
What stood before her was something more than a stallion in the way that any horse was more than a picture of a horse.
For starters, there were the wings.
The stallion’s coat was a glossy dark chestnut, so brown it was almost black except for where the light hit it just right. There was a blazing white star on his forehead. His mane was long and as black as midnight. His wings were the same color, but so glossy that there was a luminous look to them. They shone with little rainbows, like puddles of oil.
Even folded, they were magnificent, and she couldn’t even start to guess at their full span.
She whispered, “Martin?”
The horse inclined his head and gave a soft, horsey snort of agreement. For some reason, that made her laugh.
I had a lunchtime quickie and a romantic dinner date with a man who turned out to be a flying horse. After my workplace had a bomb threat and I got reamed out by a judge. On my first day of a new job.
She was having one hell of a day. If court had to go back in session right this minute, she’d lose her job for sure, because she’d just type “horse” over and over again. Horse. Martin.
Pegasus.
“I may still be a little brain-dead from the sex,” Tiffani said slowly, “but I’m ninety, ninety-five percent sure you just turned into a flying horse. If you just turned into a flying horse, um... toss your mane twice?”
Two mane tosses.
“Right. A pegasus. A flying horse.”
Well, I guess he was hung like a—
The stallion dissolved back into Martin.
Now that she knew about the other half of him, she could see it in this one. The dark, dark brown of his hair. His complete grace and stability.
Though now he looked so nervous. It was like he was worried she would run away from him.
She stood up without even thinking about it and went to him and wrapped her arms around him.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m not scared. You’re... beautiful.”
As if it would ever have been possible for her to think anything else. Some of the honesty must have come through in the throb of her voice, because he looked at least a little relieved.
Then she remembered the glory of his wings, which had been like nothing she had ever seen before, and a chill set in despite the warmth of his body against hers.
“All those pegasi you said were hunted for their feathers...”
He nodded. “We don’
t lose them naturally. If they’re ripped out, they don’t grow back. No shifter would give them up willingly—you’d be giving up flying forever if you did. The hunters knew that it wouldn’t do any good to ask nicely. So they didn’t.”
Tiffani thought about whole herds—whole families—of winged horses, of people, falling under arrows and swords and spears. Midnight gallops through forests would have ended with blood on the leaves.
She couldn’t even imagine Martin, as glorious and proud as she’d seen him a moment before, laid so low and hurt so badly.
Killed.