Under His Wings

by Naima Simone

  “I think mine will do,” he murmured before brushing her ear with his lips and slowly easing out of her death grip. “I want to introduce you to someone.”

  Reluctantly, Tamar released him but remained glued to his side. She’d have to let him go one day soon, but not tonight.

  “You know of these three, but you haven’t met them yet.” He waved toward the small group on his left. “Lukas, Adon and Dorian.” Lukas, the dark-haired olive-skinned one, winked at her. “And this,” he cupped the shoulder of a tall, very blond man with a vicious scar running down the side of his face, “is Bastien.”

  Tamar jerked her gaze up to Nicolai. The surprise winging its way through her chest echoed in her voice. “The Bastien?”

  “I like the sound of that,” the blond drawled. “Take note, boys. The Bastien.” He stepped forward, ignoring his friends’ snickers. Taking her hand in his, he bowed low, the move as smooth as any medieval nobleman and at complete odds with his modern speech and dialect. “You must be Tamar.” He straightened, a faint twist to his mouth. His green eyes narrowed and slid to Nicolai. “And you’re human.”

  Chapter Nine

  The low-burning flames in the fireplace of Nicolai’s bedroom flickered over Tamar’s sleeping face and body. Though the calendar read June, the nights were much cooler in the high altitude of the mountains. While he didn’t need the heat the fire provided, Tamar did, her human system not able to regulate its temperature like he could.

  Nicolai stroked a bent knuckle down her cheek, her skin as butter soft as it appeared. The fire lent her dark-wheat curls a reddish tint as if the fiery spirit that danced inside her had made its way outside to rest on her lovely spirals.

  He lifted a thick coil and entwined it around his finger. His hippogryph sighed deep within him, sated, pleased to be next to the woman both man and beast loved. When she’d dashed across the yard earlier and thrown herself against him, both sides of him had growled one word. Home.

  It didn’t make sense and yet while he’d hurried back to her, Bastien at his side, Nicolai had decided to stop trying to find reason in something that defied logic. He’d fallen in love with a human. He’d connected with her on a level that transcended sex, tradition and intellect.

  He’d bonded with her in a way that exceeded the love he’d had with Pria.

  It saddened him to admit that—it seemed to trivialize what he and his wife had shared when nothing could be further from the truth. He’d loved his wife, adored her. But the consuming, primal cleaving that defined his link with Tamar was different from that love—and stronger. It was…necessary.

  He’d dreamed of Pria.

  But Tamar was his dream. His everything.

  Beside him she shifted, the movement agitated, twitchy.

  He frowned, allowed her hair to slide from his grip and studied her squirming figure. She whimpered, flipped from her side to her stomach and curled her arms under her chest. The scent—the human and other scent that had confused him since meeting her—shimmered from her skin like heat waves from a sidewalk in the middle of summer. Alarm flared in his chest and he reached out to wake her.

  He halted, his hand in midair.

  Her skin rippled.

  As he stared in rapt fascination, the muscles along her back flexed, contracted and fucking rippled. As if a living being writhed beneath her flesh, struggling to break past the barrier of her skin.

  Shocked and horrified, Nicolai threw back the light blanket he’d pulled over her earlier. He leaned closer until his nose almost brushed her spine. Tamar moaned, shuddered, but didn’t awaken. Crooning softly to her even though he doubted she could hear him, Nicolai examined the smooth expanse of her back.

  Holy shit.

  Trembling, he prodded a hard ridge that protruded next to her spine. It swelled and thickened under his fingertip then contracted, disappearing beneath her flesh.

  A wing blade.

  The thin, bony row was identical to the line of muscle and tendon where Nicolai’s wings emerged when in human form.

  His heart set up a thunderous beat, like the pounding of the surf against rocks, drowning out everything but the terror that crawled through him. Sliding lower, he inspected the backs of her thighs and calves. Tamar was a fit woman. Her daily exercise regimen kept her body toned and defined.

  But no amount of training could produce the elbow-like joint that jutted out of her calf.

  A mare’s hock.

  He stiffened, a sickening realization dawning on him even as he fought the truth that couldn’t be denied but was too impossible to accept.

  Nicolai stumbled from the bed and dragged on the jeans he’d dropped on the floor. With jerky, uncoordinated hands, he drew the cover back up around her shoulders and carefully tucked it around her sleeping form.

  The implications of what he’d witnessed drove him from the room and down the stairs. Horror ripped through him like a devastating storm, leaving nothing untouched. Not his thoughts, his emotions or his heart.

  Snapshots of her contorting body flashed on the screen of his mind. What did it mean? It just isn’t fucking possible. It must be something else. Something that made sense because the road his suspicion skipped down defied reason.

  He snatched the back door open and stalked onto the porch. Shoving his hands in the rear pockets of his jeans, he paced to the end of the deck, head lowered.

  Tamar. He ground his teeth together. What have I done?

  “Can’t sleep?”

  His head snapped up and whipped toward the opposite end of the porch.

  Bastien reclined on the wooden swing, one foot propped on the back of the seat and the other on the floor. His green eyes glittered out of the shadows like jewels.

  Damn. Nicolai scrubbed a hand down his face before kneading his neck. He hadn’t even noticed the other male when he’d come outside.

  “No,” Nicolai said, sounding weary to his own ears. He crossed the deck and sank to the railing, his spine pressed to one of the wooden posts. With a tired sigh, he locked his arms over his chest and stared at Bastien’s bare foot.

  “Care to share with the rest of the class?”

  Nicolai lifted his head and met his friend’s gaze.

  Slowly, Bastien’s leg lowered from the top of the swing and settled on the floor next to its mate. All hints of lazy nonchalance evaporated as he straightened from his sprawl. The indolent smile fell away and his face hardened. His gaze sharpened and focused on Nicolai with scalpel-like precision.

  “What’s wrong?” he murmured.

  The words jammed in Nicolai’s throat, a huge fist of denial. Maybe if he didn’t voice his fears, they wouldn’t be true. Putting his suspicions out there, having them hang in the air like a fucking Pop-Up Video would make what he’d seen upstairs a fact.

  “Nicolai,” Bastien urged softly.

  “Shit,” he said, turning his head and peering sightlessly across the dark yard and into the silent forest. Anxiety and regret coalesced in his chest, swirling into a great ball of pressure, building and building until it forced the confession up his throat and out of his mouth. “I think Tamar is turning into a hippogryph.”

  When silence greeted his admission, Nicolai shifted, facing Bastien again. Instead of the condemnation or disbelief he’d expected, he encountered a contemplative expression from the healer.

  “Start from the beginning.”

  The calm, clinical statement steadied him. Without hesitation, he poured out the entire story. Beginning with the dreams he and Tamar shared to Evander’s attack to Tamar’s troubling symptoms, and ending with his discovery tonight.

  Throughout the telling, Bastien listened without interruption, his head bent and tilted to the side. When Nicolai finished, the healer remained quiet and Nicolai could imagine his friend’s brain processing and recycling the information. Again, the attentive reflection soothed him. Bastien was a gifted healer and a friend, and Nicolai trusted him with this problem and the life of the woman he loved.

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nbsp; “You’re right,” Bastien finally said, his tone matter of fact. “She is changing.”

  The discordant twang of hope dying reverberated in Nicolai’s soul.

  His arms dropped from his chest and his fingers curled around the railing, sharp talons ripping past his fingernails to dig into the wood. He clung to it as if his desperate grip was the only thing keeping him weighted to the ground.

  “How?” he asked, the question no more than a hoarse, pained rasp.

  “You’ve mated with Tamar. Bonded with her.”

  Nicolai shook his head before Bastien had finished his sentence. “No,” he whispered. “That’s not possible. She’s human. We can’t mate with humans. And I had my bondmate. Pria.”

  “That’s not exactly true. We don’t mate with humans. Very different from can’t.”

  “Fucking semantics, Bastien,” Nicolai growled and fought the urge to choke the other man. Tamar’s life was on the line and Bastien squabbled over words like they were worth thirty damn Scrabble points.

  “The law against mating with humans was established to prevent us from doing it not because we cannot. The reasons are very valid—their mortality, fragility, inability to bear our children. But there’s another cause. One your father wouldn’t want our people to know—and why your Tamar would be executed if her existence were discovered.”

  Nicolai’s breath snagged, faltered, and then he exhaled.

  “Tell me,” he demanded, feeling as if he teetered on the edge of a great precipice.

  Bastien leaned forward, propped his elbows on his thighs and balanced his chin on top of his clasped hands.

  “About one thousand years ago when my father was still the healer, a hippogryph bonded with a female human. Her mortal body couldn’t accept the transformation.” Bastien paused, his unblinking gaze pinned to Nicolai’s face. “She was ripped apart.”

  “No.” Nicolai launched to his feet, fists raised as if he could fight Bastien’s words with quick jabs and punches. Bleak despair and helplessness pressed down on him. His beast roared inside him, clawed to be set free and meet this enemy who threatened Tamar. But there was nothing to battle or destroy. He, who had faced and defeated countless adversaries, was powerless.

  “There’s more, Nico,” Bastien said. “Father confided in me though the king forbade him or the male from speaking of it. Apparently the king believed if our people knew other species could be converted, it would be bad politics.” His mouth twisted into a wry, humorless smile. “Father admitted that while the male had mated with the human, she hadn’t accepted the bond. The woman was psychic—they shared the same ability to call the storm—but he didn’t know. By falling in love with a woman with the same gift and spilling his seed in her, he kick-started the bonding process. But the male hid from her who—or rather what—he was. When he realized what was happening, he finally revealed his hippogryph form to her and she ran from him, horrified. But it was too late…and she died.”

  “But we’ve only had sex twice,” Nicolai objected, desperately clutching at any thread of hope. “And one of those times we used protection.”

  “The dreams, Nico.” Bastien rose from the porch swing and tucked his hands in the pockets of his pants. “From what you said she’s been dreaming about you for three years and you’ve been together physically in them over the last six months. If she truly is a dream-walker, the mating process could have started then, when you became lovers in the dreams. The male and human I told you about had been together a year before he noticed the changes.”

  Bastien shrugged. “I wish I could give you more definite answers, but there’re simply not enough precedents. My best deduction is when you had unprotected sex in real life instead of the dreams, it accelerated the process that had already begun. What we do know for certain cannot be refuted, though. When a male hippogryph bonds with a human who has the same gifts, his seed will trigger a physiological and biological change. Her beast will emerge as if the female is of our race instead of human.”

  That killed the protest on Nicolai’s lips. He could no longer deny the truth. Their shared gift. His hippogryph’s reaction toward her.The scent she carried that was human, yet not human. The soul-deep primitive need to protect and touch her.

  Somehow, in spite of already having mated once in his life, he’d bonded with Tamar.

  “One more thing.”

  Nico’s bark of laughter rang in the night, bitter and ragged. “More?”

  “It’s about Pria.” Bastien stepped forward. “I’ve been thinking about this since seeing Tamar’s stunning resemblance to your wife.” His emerald eyes narrowed, his unwavering regard turning speculative. “You said you dreamed of Pria prior to meeting her.”

  “Yes,” Nicolai said, nodding. “It’s how I realized she was my mate.”

  “Right,” his friend murmured. He freed a hand from his pocket and tapped his bottom lip. Nicolai recognized the thoughtful gesture. Bastien had retreated to the methodical, analytical section of his mind. “But unlike with Tamar, you never mentioned whether or not you and Pria shared dreams. It stands to reason that if Tamar dreamed of you, then Pria would have as well. Did she?”

  “Yes, of course. I—” Nicolai stopped. “She was a dream-walker.”

  “I don’t believe so.” Bastien prowled several feet away then retraced his steps. “After Pria died and you took up the role as Dimios again, I investigated Pria’s lineage.”

  Nicolai gaped at him, stunned, but the simmer of anger brewed in his gut. “Why?”

  “Because it was unheard of for a hippogryph to lose a mate and not chose to either die with them or go into nepenthe. You were the first.”

  “So…what?” Nicolai snapped. “I became an experiment for you? One of your scientific trials?”

  Surprise lifted Bastien’s brow. “What? No.” His face lost the “doctor” detachment and he glared at Nico, looking offended and ready to throw a punch. “I wanted to discover the truth for you. If there was any way to alleviate even a portion of your suffering, I hoped to find it. And I wondered if the answer might lie in your behavior.”

  Bastien threw him another glower. “I learned Pria’s parents were bondmates so the gift she inherited was passed down through both paternal and maternal lines. Pria’s parents were not dream-walkers but pyrokinetic. Pria couldn’t have been your bondmate.”

  Shock, sickening and paralyzing, somersaulted in Nico’s stomach like a gymnast on speed. He couldn’t have heard Bastien correctly over the din roaring in his ears.

  “I’m sorry,” Bastien said softly. “I wanted to tell you but it would have caused you more pain, not comfort.”

  “That’s not possible.” Damn, he sounded like a broken record. Those three words should be branded on his forehead. “I dreamed of her. She was…”

  Nicolai allowed his mind to traveled back five hundred years to a time he had purposefully avoided. Seeing Pria for the first time in the open-air market. The joy that had leapt in his heart when she smiled shyly at him. When Nicolai had told her he loved her, confessed he’d dreamed of her, Pria had thrown her arms around him and hugged him tight.

  “I’ve always dreamed of this moment,” she had whispered.

  Oh shit.

  “Your bondmate, Nico,” Bastien murmured. “You dreamed of your bondmate. But not Pria.”

  It took several long moments before the gravity of Bastien’s statement sank into Nicolai’s head. Disbelief, anger, joy—the emotions rioted through him. He was swept up in a whirlwind of confusion, and when its chaotic winds ceased he would be forever changed.

  “Tamar.” He stared at his friend, his voice as rough as the gravel that seemed to line his esophagus. “I dreamed of Tamar.”

  Bastien dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “Tamar doesn’t look like Pria—Pria looked like Tamar, your future bondmate.”

  Nicolai back-pedaled several steps and sank onto the swing Bastien had vacated. He peered into the darkness beyond the porch, his thoughts once more returning
to the past.

  Pria and her family had come from a small community in northern Italy. Her parents had been flattered and proud when the prince of their people had courted their daughter. He’d assumed Pria shared his gift because he’d dreamed of her and she hadn’t disabused him of the idea. Even told him she’d dreamed of the moment…

  But what if she’d meant envisioned, not literally dreamed? And he, in his delight at finding his mate, had misinterpreted her words? Because he’d wanted a mate—his bondmate—so badly. He’d been tired of being alone. Of witnessing others finding their companions. Of watching others mate, bear young. He’d yearned for someone’s face to light up when he came home. He’d craved the intimacy, the sharing. Longed for his other half.

  And now, staring the truth in the face, he wondered if his assumption—not to mention his status as royalty and Dimios—had made it difficult or too intimidating for Pria to confess her deception. Of course he would have eventually discovered her dishonesty when her hippogryph didn’t emerge. As there wasn’t a definitive time when a female experienced the change, maybe Pria had hoped by the time Nicolai realized she’d lied, love and forgiveness would’ve trumped his fury.

  The what-ifs were numerable and irrelevant. At this moment he couldn’t even summon the anger or a sense of betrayal over Pria and her family’s duplicity.

  Not when his true mate—the woman he’d fantasized about for five hundred years—lay sleeping upstairs. Awe filled him. Tamar—fierce, brave, beautiful Tamar was his bondmate. The other half of his soul.

  And her death could be days away.

  Terror capsized the joy. How fucked up was it that while he’d vowed to protect her from Evander, he was the true threat to her life?

  “So we can save her,” Nicolai said, lifting his gaze to Bastien. Desperation raked at his chest, squeezed his throat. “If Tamar accepts me, chooses to mate with me, she’ll survive the change?”

  “Theoretically, yes. But Nico…” Bastien paused, the beat of silence heavy with concern, “mating is about full acceptance—physical, emotional and with the soul. She may love you, is definitely attracted to you, but is she willing to surrender her all, including her humanity, to bond with you and your hippogryph? The body—that’s biological. But submitting her life to yours? That’s a choice.”