Born to be a unicorn and desperate to be anything else, she tries to hide from a hunter and ends up in a slow seduction.
The moment that the horn first appeared, Ystella hated it. She learned how to hide it from her family and the herd, but it involved time in the shop every few weeks. Grinding off a unicorn horn also made for some interesting side effects, and taking care of the magical residue became a frenzied event.
With her family prodding her toward any available stallion, Ystella has to obey the rules while completely avoiding them. Her technique has kept her from any entanglements, but her mother is catching on.
Magnus is a hunter sent to find the anomaly in the area. There is a mythical shifter where no mythical shifter should be, and it is his job to identify it and bring it to the council, whether it wants to go or not.
New magic was dangerous and needed to be indexed, catalogued, and identified. Magnus has never been so willing to throw himself into the path of danger. He has a hard side. He can take it.
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Bright Side
Copyright © 2018 Zenina Masters
ISBN: 978-1-4874-2034-5
Cover art by Martine Jardin
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Bright Side
Shifting Crossroads Book 47
By
Zenina Masters
Chapter One
Ystella focused on her image in the mirror while she plied the grinder to her forehead. The glitter and bone flew around the room while she worked.
She paused between grinds to listen for anyone with curious ears, but she seemed to have timed it just right.
She filed it again and then checked with her fingers to see how raised the bone plate was. She exhaled with relief. The plate was flush with her forehead, and the skin was healing quickly.
Ystella quickly swept the remains of her horn up, stripped off the sandpaper and took the whole mess to the burn barrel. With a deep sigh, she tossed the mess into the flames and watched as the glittery dust was destroyed by the heat.
She was safe for another few weeks until the damned thing grew back again. Now, it was time for her baseball hat and her chores.
* * * *
Magnus walked through the shifter guild hall and headed for the shamans’ domain on the upper floor.
He knocked politely on the doorframe and waited until the invitation was called out.
“Come in, Magnus. Elder Killian is out, but I have been briefed on the situation.” Shaman Alberta Kenziac stepped out from behind one of the trees that were providing shadow and support to the room.
He met her at the bank of cushions and the steaming tea set on one side of the room. Magnus waited until the shaman waved at him to sit, and then, he took the cushion across from her.
Folding himself into a comfortable position took some doing, but the shaman was working herself around her swollen belly, so it took her just as long to get relaxed.
Kenzi looked at him, and she huffed. “You know, if he wasn’t sharing my aches and pains, I would probably kill my mate.”
Magnus inclined his head. “I have heard that it is one of the side effects of the balanced mating.”
She grunted, and her belly shifted under her shirt, something moved under her skin. “Balanced my ass.”
He didn’t grin. He forced an expression of concern on his features. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, but, thank you. Well played.”
He smiled slightly. “I did mean it.”
“I know, but I am also a shaman. I can see things that most shifters wouldn’t dare to dream. Now, as for the reason you are here...” She muttered softly and lifted her hands.
Between them, a map began to form.
“We have seen signs of a new mythical in the world.”
Magnus leaned forward. “You are joking.”
“I am not. The magic grows, flares, and then disappears for weeks before the cycle begins again. It dropped off the map again yesterday, and we need you to find the shifter before the signal peaks and disappears again.”
He watched the golden mark pulse, flare, and then fade to nothing, over and over again.
“How long has it been on the radar, so to speak?”
“We have been watching it for six months. The power grows with each cycle, and whatever is going on could be critical in a matter of months. We don’t want that power exploding all over the human realm.”
“Right. Do you have the area narrowed down?”
She snorted, and the map pulled out. “It is in a few hundred miles, each and every time.”
“Do you have any idea if it is male or female?”
Kenzi waved off the map. “My guess is female.”
“Why?”
“Males don’t try to hide power as a general rule. There are always exceptions, but they are exceptions. Women have far more to lose from exhibiting power or anything outside the norm, and this is definitely a qualifier.”
He nodded. “How long do I have?”
“As the occurrences are getting slightly closer together, I would say you have less than two weeks. You are the only hunter on this case, and I need you to do this fast, Magnus. Find her, bring her in.”
He rose to his feet. “I will do it as quickly as I can. How will I know that I have found what I am looking for?”
“Look for an angry or frightened woman with a magical abnormality. Extra arms, claws, horns, you name it.”
Magnus cocked his head. “What if she doesn’t want to come with me?”
“Make her. She needs to be assessed. We haven’t seen power of this type in centuries.”
“So, she could be dangerous, and you want her here for an exam?”
“She or he is exceptionally powerful, and we would like to speak with him or her about joining the guild.” Kenzi wrinkled her nose. “If she is a new mythical, we need to record it so that future generations will know what to look for.”
He snorted. “Why can’t you just leave her be?”
Kenzi sobered. “Because if she is left out there on her own, she could become prey at the drop of a hat. Artifacts from a mythical shifter are expensive, exotic, and rare. If the black market were given free rein to capture them, they would have an exclusive offering to sell them off whole or piece by piece.”
Magnus shuddered. “Right. Got it. I am going in search of your mythical mythical.”
“Good. The sooner you get started, the sooner you will find her. Oh, this will help.” She moved slowly across the room and found a small stone. “Keep this with you, and it will warm up when the mythical energy is near.”
“Wait, h
ave you sent anyone else out after her?”
Kenzi wrinkled her nose. “No. I waited until you were off your last assignment and put in a request for you.”
Magnus took the small pebble and rolled it between his fingers. “Why me?”
“Because you can do a fast job as slowly as necessary. I trust you with this, Magnus. Go and do your job.” Kenzi waved at him, and then, she slowly made her way back into the greenspace that the shamans called their office.
Magnus blinked as she disappeared between two trees. He was dismissed. He had better get to work.
* * * *
Kenzi grunted as her baby kicked again. It wasn’t a fan of her going to work this far along, but with the elder down with the flu, she had to step in.
She huffed as she took a portal home. Another species of shifter had gone extinct that month. The hamsters were not a common shifter, but they had been cute and added a fun aspect to life in another shape. Kenzi hoped that they would be reborn as randoms at some point and time, but she knew it would take time. The shifter magic in the universe was mourning the loss of the little fluffballs.
Once a species was lost to the shifter world, the only thing that was left was to hope that chance would intervene to bring them back. It hadn’t worked for the dinosaurs as far as she knew, but there were woolly mammoths in a few places on earth. She was crossing her fingers that the new creature was one of those who had gone missing in myth and legend. The paperwork for something genuinely new was a headache.
Chapter Two
Ystella finished putting on her dress and fluffing up her hair. Tonight was the night that the herds got together and the single stallions went looking for mates. Ystella had promised her mother that she would attend.
When her deadly heels were in place, she strode down the hall and out into the common space of their huge ranch house. Her mother was waiting to make sure that Ystella was making an effort to be presentable.
Her mom was speaking softly to her dad when she entered the room. Her voice went silent as Ystella stood in the centre of the space to let her get a nice long look.
“Well, Ystella, you went all out.” Elantha smiled at her. “Thank you. Now, promise me that you will dance with anyone that asks you.”
Ystella sighed and nodded. “I will.”
Her father gave her a wink but didn’t say a thing. He rarely did. She nodded to both of them, grabbed her purse, and headed out.
She got into the farm truck and checked the gas gauge. Damn. There was plenty to get her into the next county and back again.
She fired up the engine and buckled up. It was time to go to a dance. She hoped her forehead makeup would hold. The skin was currently hot pink and humming slightly. It served her right for choosing to buzz it off that morning.
She drove down the mile-long drive to the main road and took a right. It was better to get the dance over with, and then, she could go back to trying to figure a way out of her situation.
Every six months all of the mares from local shifter herds got together and had a dance, inviting any single stallion who would answer the invitation. It was matchmaking at its most basic. The women showed how well they could move, and the men took the bait.
Ystella hated the dances. That was no secret in her family and the families around hers. She was not one for socializing, despite being born into a family of horses. It was her father’s fault. His alter ego as a bobcat was a definite factor in her personality. Her parents had met and mated at the Crossroads, and their families had to accept it. Ystella sometimes dreamed of finding her own mate there, but with so many stallions looking for healthy wives, she had no excuse to leave the farm and go looking elsewhere.
If she could hold out for two more years, her father’s family would send her to the Crossroads as a spinster gift. Her grandfather disapproved of the horse methods of finding a mate. He felt the Ystella should stalk her mate in the tradition of her father’s line.
Ystella put on some classical music and drove the hour to the Abert Herd community centre, aka, the barn.
She parked the truck next to others and ran her hands over her beaded outfit. She was dressed in a flapper-style dress that covered her from upper thigh to knee in a fringe of swinging beads.
Her hair was up and twisted in a graceful bun, and the beaded headband concealed the plate where her horn grew. It was a safeguard against her makeup slipping.
She walked as briskly as she could over the sliding gravel. The music and light were streaming into the night. Great. Nothing like a bunch of horny horses to make her night.
She quirked her lips as she entered the barn. A horny horse was exactly what she was.
* * * *
Magnus felt that this party was the best chance he had to listen to local gossip and observe the shifters in their natural habitats.
The formulaic dancing of the horses boggled his mind. They kept one foot on the ground at all times while they moved in their human shapes. For Magnus, it was hilarious.
He watched the dancing while he chatted with a few locals. The stallions were there to find mates, and the lesser males were taking the ladies through their initial paces.
Magnus was amused that the stallions preferred to watch, but he didn’t say anything. He watched the men and women around him and looked for anything that stood out. The moment that the woman walked through the door, he knew that he had something extraordinary to look into. To hell with the mystery shifter, this was far more interesting.
He made his way toward the entrance where she had just been standing, and he looked around. “What the hell?”
She was gone.
* * * *
Ystella moved into the shadows and breathed shallowly. She was having to conceal herself and her sparkly outfit, and the strain was intense. The stallions were still in their ogling frame of mind, which meant that her mom had tampered with her clock. Normally, she was able to time it so that she arrived just after they had left, or at least after they had picked their bedmates for the night.
She had promised her mother that she would dance with anyone who asked. Not being seen was a great way to make sure of it.
She hid in the shadows near a post and bale of hay. Without her horn, maintaining her invisibility was going to be tricky, but she wasn’t hooking up with a horny stallion. She had other plans for her life, she just didn’t know what they were yet.
An hour after she arrived, she was nearing panic. Not only were her shoes trying to kill her, but there was a stranger sniffing around, and he was drawing near to her hiding spot.
She watched him. He wasn’t sniffing, precisely. He was walking, pausing, and stepping toward her again. At times, it seemed he was moving slowly, and then, there would be a moment when she blinked, and he was ten feet closer.
The stallions were slowly leaving with their chosen partners for the night, but Ystella couldn’t join the ladies on the dance floor. She was a few feet away from a man who wasn’t a horse shifter and moved with a lazy elegance that she found hypnotic. It was as if he carefully planned out his steps before he took them.
“You know, I have never run into that particular brand of magic before.” He smiled, and his gaze was near her but not at her. She took in his brown hair, tanned skin, and hazel eyes, combined with a shirt that was so dark green it was nearly black, dark jeans, and boots. He looked like he could go on a date or start flinging hay.
There was a scar on his face that ran from his left cheek, down his neck. It had faded with age, but she could still make it out.
Ystella carefully moved back a step, away from his path. The slight movement was a miscalculation. His head turned toward her, and his long and slightly hooked nose focused in on her. He smelled like a shifter but no shifter she had ever met before.
“Ah, there you are. I didn’t hear you until you moved and that is quite a trick in that dress.” He leaned against the post and looked right at her.
She blinked a
nd took a slow step to one side. His head tracked her motion. “Damn.”
He grinned. “You have a lovely voice. Will you do me the honour of this dance?”
The pounding beat wasn’t going to allow for much contact, and she did promise her mother that she would dance if asked.
“Fine.” She stepped forward and let the wrap of shadows drop.
He blinked and straightened. “I only caught a glimpse of you when you came in. The still picture looks far more amazing than the distant shot.”
She smiled. “Thank you. It took considerable effort.”
He held out a hand, and she took it, letting him walk her around to the dance floor.
“Are you up to breaking the rules?” He raised his dark brows and waggled them.
“I think the evening calls for it.”
She held his hand lightly, but his skin was dry and warm, she really wanted a better grip.
The dancers had thinned considerably, which gave them plenty of room to face off as the music shifted into some upbeat techno violin.
“This is going to be trickier than I thought.” Ystella faced him, and his stance was that of a tango.
He just smiled and said, “Just let me lead.”
She looked into his dark hazel eyes, and she nodded. “Better make it good.”
The gleam in his eyes indicated challenge accepted, and they started to move.
The gathered mares looked on as Ystella and her new companion twisted, hopped, and flew around the room.
Nothing that she wanted to do was off limits. He extended his arm and kept it rock steady while he twirled her around, and she paused on her toes to change direction. He wrapped his arm around her torso and lifted her up to drape back over his shoulder before sliding down his body and into his arms.
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