by Anna Leonard
“It’s not stylish, but you can get it trimmed once you’re safe,” he said gruffly.
Elizabeth’s hand rose to touch the ragged ends, and her head tilted from side to side, testing the new weight.
“I feel five pounds lighter,” she said, her tone wondering. “It’s...weird. My neck is cold.” She hesitated, then stood up, going to the mirror to examine her new look.
While she was occupied, Josh took a lock of the shorn hair and, not stopping to question why he was doing it, curled it into a coil and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans.
“Oh.” She was primping in front of the mirror now, pulling the strands this way and that, trying to see how different styles might look. “I don’t look like me anymore.”
“That’s the point,” he agreed. Her cheekbones were even more prominent, and her eyes seemed larger, more intense. He suspected that, rather than making her inconspicuous, he had just made her more noticeable. Hopefully, she would be fighting off would-be lovers, not...whomever she had been running from.
The thought of her being with someone else, some other man touching that hair, that skin, of some other man protecting her, some other man claiming her, made his fingers tighten around the handle of the scissors until his muscles cramped and protested. His control was totally shredded. The rut had control of his emotions; any and every female past puberty would become a trigger for him, soon, he suspected.
The legends said that he would know his mate when he saw her, that the bond would be immediate. Not all matches came from within the herd—new blood kept them healthy, vigorous. He had never wondered about that before, if a human mate would know him, too. If she would be able to accept him. What happened if she didn’t?
All he knew was that she needed to be pure, a virgin. Almost impossible, in this world, and yet he had to believe she was out there for him. Somewhere.
The coil of hair in his pocket seemed to burn, he was so aware of it, mocking him. A memento of memories he would never have, when he was an old man with foals of his own running with the herd. Or...
He slammed the door on the other possibility, refusing to even consider it. She was out there. He knew it, in his gut.
Elizabeth was talking. “Thank you. For everything. I don’t understand why you’re helping us, but...thank you.”
He got a grip on his emotions, and forced a smile. “Well, your sister called me, didn’t she?”
Her eyes looked at the carpet, where the remains of her hair were strewn. “You think we’re crazy.”
He let out a harsh bark of laughter, making her look up again, quickly. “Your sister thinks I’m a unicorn. That’s pretty crazy, yeah.”
“But she’s right, isn’t she? You were...you are.”
He stared at her until she blinked and looked away, uncomfortable. “You accept that so easily, like it’s nothing. Maybe to you it isn’t—your sister talks to animals. Who the hell are you, Elizabeth?”
She ran a hand through the drying strands of her hair, and shrugged, a quick, jerky gesture as much of nerves as anything else. “Would it be very horrible if I said I didn’t want to talk about myself? It’s not you, it’s just that Maggie and I, we need to disappear. If Jordan were to find you, afterward...the less you know about us, about where we’re going, the better I’ll feel.”
He was almost insulted that she thought he would crack under some human’s questioning, but he didn’t push it. Maggie would tell him, if he asked.
“But you...” She sat in the chair and stared at him, her earlier indecision masked by renewed fascination. “A unicorn. Are there others? Can they all change shape? Are the legends true? Are...” She laughed, breathless. “I sound like Maggie, now. You asked how I could accept it so easily. I’m not sure I can, that I have. It’s against every law of nature or science I’ve ever learned, and you have to admit, it makes us both sound insane to even be talking about it.”
Elizabeth ran both hands through her hair again, letting the strands flutter back down to caress her jawline. “But you were right. I...I have dreams, sometimes. Warnings. Might be coincidence, might be instinct, might be anything. But my sister is... Maggie is magical, in her own way. I’ve seen cougars come out of the mountains and sleep at her feet while she sang to them. I’ve seen a golden eagle land in front of her, and let her touch it, without fear or aggression. A man who changes into a horse is just the next step up from impossible.” She stopped to consider that. “Okay, two steps up.”
“I’m not a horse.” That was, somehow, worse than being called an animal.
He shouldn’t tell her anything. Shouldn’t share any more than she had shared with him, and for the same reasons. But it was so rare to find someone he could actually talk to, without denying who or what he was, and the opportunity was too great to resist.
“We’re not horses. But we’re...not human, either. Not entirely.” His voice fell, almost unconsciously, to the singsong tone the great-aunts used when they told the story to the yearlings.
“Long, long ago, more than a dozen generations ago, the herd came to this land, to the then-wild plains, looking for a place to run free. We built homes in our human forms, and ran with the wild horses in our four-legged forms, teaching our offspring how to live according to their nature, unafraid.
“The native tribes called us horse-brothers, and knew better than to try to rope us. We lived, if not in peace, then coexistence. When the white men came, our elders remembered the stories that had sent us here in the first place, and we hid ourselves from them, scattering the villages, destroying all traces of our world and hiding among mankind, living and breeding among them—but always longing for the freedom of the open range.
“Times changed. The cowboys were no friends of ours, then or now. We took the name Mustang to identify ourselves to each other, and show our sympathy for the wild horses and open spaces. And so it has been, ever since.”
Where once the herd had numbered in the hundreds, roaming the land at will, there were only dozens now, broken into homes and jobs and human forms. Only twice a year did they gather together to roam the plains, to reform the bonds that held them together, and teach the yearlings what they were. He missed it, suddenly, with a longing that was even stronger than the rut, if carved from the same root.
Elizabeth looked at him, her dark eyes enthralled, her pink lips open just enough to let her tongue peek through, an unconscious gesture that made him want to reach out with a fingertip and stroke that tip until her mouth opened for him, and he could take possession of it, plunder the sweet depths until she moaned his name, her arms and legs opening to take him in....
“So you’re saying that the legends of the shy, mystical unicorn are just so much bunk?”
He slapped the erotic image away, and tried to focus on what she was saying. “I don’t know about the legends, where they came from or how much truth there is to them, or if maybe somewhere else there’s another...branch of the family that might hew more closely to what the storybooks say.”
The stories might have become legends, but Mustang were very much flesh and blood and instinct and animal needs. Females stayed close to their dams, usually settling in the same area, but males were kicked out after puberty hit, knocking around the world on their own, looking...for what, he still wasn’t sure. The stallions who came back tended not to talk about what they’d done or seen, at least not to yearlings, and the ones who didn’t come back...well, they weren’t spoken of, either.
Instinct drove them, told them what to do. It sent them away from the older males for their own safety, and then forced them to abandon whatever life they’d had as a bachelor to return home, to find their mate.
The rut drove them like a spur, and, if his unwanted forays into erotic daydreams were any indication, resisting it led to violence, or madness. That fact he kept to himself. If she knew what he was going throu
gh, how close to the rutting edge he was, she’d probably grab Maggie and run—right into the arms of the men she was running from.
Elizabeth was still caught up in the little he had told her, however. Her eyes practically sparkled with fascination. “And you can change shape? You move from one form to the other...like a werewolf?”
“Nothing at all like a wolf,” he said, affronted. That was worse than being called a horse!
Her gaze darkened slightly. “I’m sorry, I’m just reaching... All I know are werewolves, and that makes more sense, physically, the body mass and musculature. That’s the part I’m having trouble with. The change. It just doesn’t seem possible. It’s not scientifically possible.”
Her voice was so filled with frustration, both at the impossibility and her inability to puzzle it out, that he couldn’t stay annoyed. “It doesn’t fit with the science we have in textbooks now, maybe. But that doesn’t mean it’s not actually possible.” Suddenly exhausted, he sat on the desk opposite her, and studied her face carefully. The shorter hair was starting to curl a little, now that it was dry, and she brushed at it, self-conscious under his scrutiny. “What about magic?”
“Magic?” She shook her head. “There isn’t any magic. It’s... It can all be explained. Somehow.”
“You can explain magic?” He leaned forward, curious. He had never really thought about what he did or how he did it; it simply was, like having a nose and toes.
“Not without a circular explanation of it being magic. That’s the point of magic.” She frowned at him, indignant. “You’re trying to confuse me.”
He was. She was cute when she was confused, her eyes narrowing and her regal nose scrunched up. “Some things are just naturally confusing and therefore must be taken on faith.”
“I’m not very good at faith. I never have been. I like evidence.” She sounded regretful, and he wondered what in her past had been proven to her, so harshly.
“You need evidence. And then you’ll believe?”
He didn’t know why it was so important, why he needed to see her face when she saw him, really saw him in his primal form. But he did.
Without waiting for her response, he reached inside himself for that awareness that always lingered, the sense of self in another form. And that simply, that easily, he felt his skin soften and change, the shiver of the shift taking him from two-legged to four-legged self.
He had never shifted before in front of someone who didn’t already know, who didn’t understand, and he braced himself for whatever reaction she might have.
“Oh.”
His perspective was different in his four-legged self; his eyes saw differently, he heard and smelled differently, and from a different angle. But he saw Elizabeth clearly, the wonder and awe in her eyes as she approached him. They were crowded in the motel room, caught between bed and desk and chair, and she was very close to him now, close enough that he could smell all the tiny threads of scent that made up the distinct awareness of “Elizabeth.” She reached out, running her strong hand across his withers, down his back then back up to his neck. It was a caress; the kind a girl would give to a horse, but he felt it as a man would feel the touch of a woman, and his skin shuddered, the only way he could express what she was doing to him.
“Maggie was right, you are beautiful,” she said. “That’s just...amazing. You can hear me, understand me?”
He snorted, and she clearly heard the rebuke.
“All right, sorry. It’s just...I’m taking a minute to deal with this, all right?” She moved around to stand in front of him, and he had to shift his head slightly to keep watching her, his range of vision in this form different from his human sight. Her hand reached up and, knowing what she wanted, his lowered his head slightly.
Her hand on his horn was possibly the most erotic thing he had ever felt. He felt the quiver from his hooves to his ears, and had to force himself to stay still, to not shift back to human form and take her then and there, and be damned the girl sleeping unawares not two feet away. Elizabeth didn’t seem to notice, running her fingers lightly over the tapering length, then back down to the base, letting her fingers rest on the tangled blond forelock. “You probably should change back,” she said regretfully. “Talk about not being conspicuous...”
The change back was just as swift, and Elizabeth found her fingers caught in his hair still when he shifted. A blush stained her cheek, and she tried to move away, but he caught her hand in his and, gently, impulsively, dropped a soft kiss on the tips of her fingers before letting her go. It might have been the hardest thing he’d ever done, letting go of that work-strong hand.
“So.” She sounded a little dazed, her eyes wide with what he suspected was more than unicorn-inspired shock or awe.
“So,” he echoed, waiting to see what she would do, or say. Anyone else, he would have expected her to grab the still-sleeping Maggie and run like hell out the door, no matter what else was chasing her. Normal humans were, well, normal. He wasn’t. But this was Elizabeth, who loved her sister who spoke to animals, and fought like a wild thing when captured, and let the shift happen in front of her without more than a startled gasp. Who touched him like the lover he could never let her become.
“That was...” She shook her head, and he heard the stress rising in her voice, and saw her tamp it back down again, not letting it diminish the wonder. “Either Ray was right and I’m insane, and you’re just a hallucination, or you’re a were-unicorn.”
“You’re not insane.” She might be, of course. He had no idea who Ray was or why he might have said that, but he knew that she was as sane as...probably more sane than he was right now.
“So you’re a were-unicorn. One of a pack of them, apparently, roaming the American West.”
He was, absurdly, stung by the matter-of-fact amusement in her voice, even though he suspected much of it was aimed at herself, not him. “A herd, actually. And we don’t roam, except during reunions. Most of us live in houses, with spouses and kids, and sometimes even a dog and a cat and a tank of tropical fish.”
“And you aren’t ruled by the phases of the moon.”
He shook his head. “I am a vegetarian, though.” He confessed that as though admitting to a terrible sin.
She laughed, a hiccupy sort of laugh, and shook her head, wiping the inside corner of her eye, as though a tear had started there. “Of course you are.”
* * *
Elizabeth sat back on the edge of the desk, looking at Josh, really looking at him. He seemed content to let her do so, leaning against the wall with his arms relaxed at his sides, his head tilted and his gaze steady while he waited. She had never really considered blonds sexy before, and he wore his hair longer than she liked on men, down to the base of his neck, but when she looked at it she saw the flowing mane against a sleekly muscled neck, and felt the touch of it under her fingertips as he carried them to safety, and she allowed as how, on him, the long hair was a good look.
She also remembered how wide and solid his chest was, and how strong his arms had been around her waist when they walked out of town, and her gaze dropped to the long legs hidden under worn denim, and wondered if they were as sleekly muscled as the unicorn’s, and if it was true what they said about stallions...and if that carried over to the human form.
Oh. A blush flushed her cheeks and made her want to fan herself to cool down. Bad thoughts. Worse: useless thoughts. His earlier question about her virginity had clearly showed her that much of the legend, at least, was true—a unicorn bonded to a virgin, not a woman who had been sexually active. She shrugged, mentally, trying to tell herself it didn’t hurt, it didn’t matter. He was here for Maggie, not her. And that was fine, so long as Maggie was protected. She could take care of herself, so long as he took care of her sister’s safety.
“You can’t go to the cops now,” he said, switching gears fast en
ough to make her dizzy. “Not if you think whoever’s chasing you has gotten to them first. I can only imagine the story they’re spinning—kidnapping, at best.”
Her mouth went dry. “You think he would do that?” When she had walked away from the police station, she had only considered the immediate risk of discovery, not that Ray would actively set the police on her, the way she’d been planning to use them, or worse. “No. No, he wouldn’t. He can’t. If the police get involved... That was why I was going to them in the first place. Ray can’t risk publicity, or the rest of the Elders will force him to step down for the good of the Community. We don’t have television or internet, but the news gets to us anyway, and someone would hear and start to ask questions. He can’t afford questions. Not yet.”
She wasn’t sure what Ray had planned, only that it involved her sister, and the Community, and that while there were a lot of people there who thought he could do no wrong, he didn’t have everyone in his pocket just yet, and so still had to move carefully. If he were confident of his hold on the town, she and Maggie would never have gotten beyond the town limits; there would have been no polite summons, but a knock on the door and a quiet exit, Maggie in one direction and Elizabeth...
She didn’t know what he would do with her. To her. He wouldn’t dare hurt her, not if he wanted Maggie to behave, but that didn’t mean she would be safe, either.
It had to be Maggie’s ability that he wanted, he had to have found out somehow, someone saying something while they were sick with the flu, feverish and rambling...but when she tried to understand what he might want her little sister to do, she came up against a blank wall. Calling birds? Playing with deer, and soothing the occasional black bear? A zookeeper would find it useful, but her imagination failed her as to what use it could be put to other than that. Maggie’s ability was amazing, but it was limited, and the family had always been so careful to teach her that it was wrong to “call” someone or something against their will. That was why she had apologized to Josh. Calling people—even four-legged people—was wrong. Maggie would never do anything like that....