Hector: Outback Shifters Book One

by Chant, Zoe

  Yeah, but this is no ordinary foal!

  Myrtle’s mind was racing.

  Okay, okay, this isn’t so weird. Australia has monotremes – mammals who lay eggs. There’s two of them, echidnas and platypuses. Everyone knows they’re born from eggs. They’re the only two egg-laying mammals in the world.

  Well, make that three, apparently.

  She supposed the horse did have wings, though… would that make it at least part bird?

  Myrtle shook her head, trying to calm her racing mind. No, she couldn’t think about this right now. Because if she thought too hard, she’d realize she knew exactly what this creature was.

  A pegasus.

  She didn’t need to be an expert on mythical animals to know what she was looking at here. A winged horse? Obviously a pegasus.

  Yes, obviously, she thought. Except for how, you know, they don’t exist.

  The baby pegasus blinked at her. Myrtle didn’t know if horses could express indignation, but that was definitely what this one was expressing right now.

  “Meeee-eeeh!”

  “Okay, okay, you exist!” Myrtle murmured, as the baby opened its wings, stretching them out. The feathers were so delicate they were translucent on the tips, the rachis as thin as a needle.

  Beautiful.

  That was the only word in Myrtle’s head as the creature wobbled to its feet once more – and this time stayed there.

  All right, adorable and oh my God were on high rotation as well. The tiny pegasus flexed its wings once or twice more, took a few wobbling steps – and then launched itself into the air.

  “Oh no! Baby!” Myrtle raised her hands, waiting to catch it if it fell. The baby pegasus wasn’t exactly a skilled flier – which was understandable, since it’d only been born a couple of minutes ago – and it dipped and bobbed in the air, wings fluttering, legs churning, until it came to rest gently upon Myrtle’s shoulder.

  “Mee-eeh?”

  Myrtle scarcely dared to breathe.

  “Okay, baby – oh – ouch.”

  She could feel its little hooves scrabbling against the burned skin of her shoulders, and she bit her lip, trying not to swear in front of it.

  “Maybe – maybe you could just –”

  As gently as she could, Myrtle lifted the pegasus up, cradling it in her hands. It didn’t resist at all. In fact, it seemed perfectly content to be held by her. It sat in her palms and blinked once more, long silver lashes sweeping down and then up.

  “Well, well, well,” Myrtle said, looking down at it. “Just where in the world did you come from?”

  Maybe Hector will know, Myrtle thought. Quickly followed by, Oh, shit! Hector!

  “Hector!” she called out, moving across the room. “Hector, I think you better come out here!”

  The pegasus made its small whinnying sound once again, as if asking her, Who’s Hector?

  Hector’s the guy who better have some damn answers for me! Myrtle thought as she moved across the room, moving the baby pegasus onto her arm like she’d used to do with her mom’s cats back when they’d been kittens and she’d needed to shift them so she could vacuum.

  “Hector! Or Officer Richardson? Whichever one it is, you better get out here! Right now!”

  And that was when he opened the door, looked down at her, and his eyes went wide.

  “I didn’t touch it, I swear!” Myrtle blurted out when she saw Hector staring down at what was in her hands.

  Well, that’s pretty obviously untrue, Myrtle thought.

  “I mean, I only touched it after… after…”

  After it hatched.

  “Oh. Shit.” Hector’s voice was low and shocked.

  Myrtle stifled the obviously ridiculous impulse to cover the baby’s ears.

  “I suppose that just about sums it up,” Myrtle said. “I didn’t know you had pegasi in Australia.”

  Hector looked at her, and seemed to hesitate a moment. Then, he appeared to make up his mind, and shook his head. “We don’t. Nowhere does. They’ve been extinct for centuries. Or so everyone thought.”

  Myrtle looked up at him, eyes wide.

  “Extinct?” she asked, hearing her own voice as if from very far away.

  Hector nodded, and she looked down at the little creature she was holding, which was now resettling in her hands, folding its legs beneath it. The pegasus gazed up at her again, its large, beautiful eyes filled with… trust?

  Myrtle shook her head. She was a scientist. She knew better than to assign human emotions to animals. It didn’t mean they were any less deserving of all the love, care, and affection that humans could give them, but they just didn’t feel things the same way humans did.

  “Well, I suppose there’s at least one of them in the world.” Myrtle bit her lip as the creature whinnied again. Desolation swept through her chest.

  Are you really all alone?

  Myrtle frowned.

  But that can’t be right. Someone had to have laid that egg…

  “Maybe you’d better sit down,” Hector said. “I think I’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “Just a little.” Myrtle walked across the room, sitting down on a small metal crate that didn’t seem to be any kind of high-tech piece of equipment. The pegasus settled on her lap, looking up at her.

  I better not get too attached, she thought. But at the same time, when she went to lift the pegasus off her lap to move it back to the nest, she found her hands completely unwilling to move.

  “Bear in mind I don’t have all the answers myself,” Hector said, sitting across from her. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, looking at the pegasus foal. It regarded him with something Myrtle thought looked like mild distaste.

  Clearly, pegasi have no taste in men, she thought, her eyes roving over his body before she could stop them. Her stomach turned over, her insides feeling like they’d turned to Jell-O.

  Hot fucking damn, but he was attractive. She’d never really thought she was susceptible to male beauty, but clearly, she hadn’t known what she was talking about.

  And then there was the fact that he was just so… manly. He was tall and broad and muscled, of course, with a chiseled jaw covered with a light dusting of stubble, but that wasn’t it. It was something about the way he carried himself, the confidence in the way he stood. He’d handled the car – in the pitch dark! – with skill and competence.

  And the way he was sitting now – loose-limbed but with an undeniable power just behind the apparent casualness – was making her mouth water.

  Okay, stop! Myrtle shook her head. You want answers! Not his hot, hot body!

  Though, she was forced to admit, I probably wouldn’t say no to his hot, hot body as an add-on to some answers…

  Focus goddamnit!

  “You said the egg was a fake.” Myrtle realized if she didn’t start talking now, she was liable to start drooling. And that wouldn’t do any of them any good. “Did you expect it to hatch at all?”

  Hector shook his head. “No. To be honest, I’m as surprised as you are. I didn’t sense anyth– well, I mean, when I looked at it, it seemed like it wasn’t real.”

  Myrtle’s eyes narrowed as she noticed his slip. He didn’t sense anything? What does that mean?

  “You probably get now why that egg is so valuable, and why I’m concerned that those bikies – and whoever was going to buy it from them – might be interested in getting it back,” Hector continued. “Since it is real, then what you’re holding there is the last living pegasus in the world, as far as anyone knows.”

  The pegasus shuffled on her lap, spreading and then folding its wings. It let out a small squeak.

  “Then… who laid the egg?” Myrtle asked. “There has to be at least one other one left.”

  Hector shook his head. “It’s possible. But not very likely. Pegasus eggs can lie dormant for decades – maybe centuries – before they hatch. It might be that this little fella was hidden in a cave for who knows how long before he was discovered.
His mum and dad are probably long gone.”

  An orphan.

  Myrtle looked down at the creature. Sadness welled up inside her.

  The poor thing is all alone.

  “Does anyone know how to look after a pegasus bab– uh, foal?”

  “A little. I brought what I needed here just in case the egg did turn out to be real.” He gestured to the nest. “But since no one’s seen a real pegasus in centuries, it was all based on guesswork. And we don’t have his mum here to feed him. There’s old stories of horses raising pegasi, but they’re very different animals.”

  “Well, yeah,” Myrtle said, glancing at the broken pieces of egg under the heat lamp. “What do pegasi eat? I mean, I’m guessing we don’t have any pegasus milk on hand.”

  Hector stood, the movement fluid and easy.

  “No problem there – not in the sense that we have any pegasus milk, but in the sense that we probably don’t need it.”

  He leaned over, opening a minifridge sitting on the floor beneath a shelf and getting out a series of small bottles.

  “That’s baby food,” Myrtle said, confused. “Human baby food.”

  She should’ve been able to recognize it by now – after all, her older sisters between them had an army of babies she’d helped feed at one point or another. There’d been a time when she thought if she’d smelled pureed yams one more time, she’d throw up.

  “Yep.” Hector laid out the bottles on the table, taking the lids off one by one. In her lap, the pegasus stirred, its nostrils flaring as it clearly scented something that interested it. “All the records we have say that pegasi can drink horse milk, but they can handle mashed-up fruit and veg as well. Their mums used to crush apples for them to feed on.”

  “Meee-ehhh!”

  The pegasus whinnied insistently, standing up on Myrtle’s lap.

  “You want some?” Myrtle asked it dubiously.

  It looked up at her, its tiny front hooves pawing a little at her thigh.

  Carefully, Myrtle lifted the pegasus from her lap, placing it on the table. Its hooves made tiny tap tap tap sounds as it made its way over to the bottles of food, much more steady on its legs now than it had been before.

  “We got you a variety,” Hector said, gesturing at the food, his eyes intent on the foal. “What’ll you have?”

  The pegasus hesitated, moving its head to look at him, before looking at the food once more.

  “Go on,” Myrtle coaxed it, her voice soft.

  Her words seemed to overcome whatever misgivings the pegasus might have, and it trotted forward, going to the first bottle.

  “Oh, sweet potato and peas. Not my first choice, but you may like it,” Hector said.

  Evidently, the pegasus did not, as it took a moment to delicately sniff at the food, before shaking its head and prancing backward.

  Next up was carrots, which got much the same reaction, to Myrtle’s slight surprise. Weren’t horses supposed to like carrots?

  Avocado too was rejected. And mixed berries.

  Myrtle was just about to ask Hector if he’d heard any other legends about pegasi, when the foal came to the last bottle in the line: pureed apple.

  The tiny creature gave it a skeptical sniff, nose wrinkling, before it paused for a moment – and then stuck its whole nose into the open bottle, snuffling up the puree with a ridiculous snorting sound.

  “Looks like we have a winner,” Hector said, sitting back. “Just as well. I was just about to get out the Vegemite.”

  “I guess that’d be a way to get it to eat literally anything else,” Myrtle muttered.

  To her surprise, Hector burst out laughing. “That’s all right – more for me.”

  She felt a small smile tugging at her own lips. She couldn’t help it – Hector’s relief that the pegasus was finally eating was obvious, and his laugh was so genuine and unguarded. She’d been so intent on watching the pegasus, worried that it would reject all the food Hector had brought for it, that she hadn’t noticed how tense he’d been.

  But then, she supposed having charge of the last living specimen of a creature everyone had thought was extinct – or, as she’d thought until about twenty minutes ago, never extant in the first place – was pretty stressful.

  She felt her heart speed up a little, thumping against her ribs.

  “I really hope you’ve got something else to eat around here aside from Vegemite,” she said, shuddering at the horrible memory of the one and only time she’d tried to eat it. It had been like swallowing a sack of salt stirred into a vat of sump oil to form some kind of horrible goo. “That’s got to be against some kind of Geneva Convention, surely?”

  Hector laughed again. “You keep insulting my national dish like this and it’s gonna be pistols at dawn.”

  “Bring it on.”

  Hector glanced at her, his dark eyes seeming golden in the glow of the heat lamp. “Sure you can handle it?”

  Myrtle swallowed.

  Is he… flirting?

  Surely not.

  Myrtle had always been terrible at telling when people were interested in her. It so rarely happened, and the couple of boyfriends she’d had, she’d been set up with by match-making friends.

  And neither of those ended well, she thought gloomily.

  Unsure how to respond, she looked back down at the pegasus, biting her lip. There was an awkward silence, broken only by the sound of the foal snuffling up its food, its head getting deeper into the bottle the more it ate.

  Hector cleared his throat.

  “Well, at least he really likes apples.”

  “I guess I should have known,” Myrtle impulsively blurted out, still feeling awkward. “I played enough Shadowrun in high school.”

  Hector shot her a mildly confused look. “Shadowrun?”

  “It’s, uh, a tabletop game. Like DnD.” Myrtle felt herself flush. For God’s sake, he doesn’t want to hear about your nerdy past.

  She swallowed.

  Although what would you tell him about instead? Your nerdy present?

  Myrtle had felt even more overlooked in high school than she had during college. All her sisters had been popular and beautiful, with boys trailing after them waiting to do their bidding. Poppy and Bryony had been homecoming queens and had later modeled, and Lily had been a track and field star. Her brother Thorn was at this moment attending college on a football scholarship.

  Myrtle had distinguished herself with her academic record, but her school had been more focused on its athletics program. Looking at Hector now, Myrtle couldn’t imagine him as anything other than a gym class hero – effortlessly athletic, devastatingly good-looking, the star quarterback… did Australia have quarterbacks?

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” she said quickly. “It was just… you know, a game I used to play. But the pegasus in the game ate apples.”

  “Seems like whoever came up with the game knew what they were talking about,” Hector said, as the baby continued to eat. “Do you think we should stop him at some point?”

  “Um. Probably,” Myrtle said.

  God, who knows? Myrtle felt totally at sea. But then, what else was she supposed to feel? She was taking care of a baby pegasus! And with the hottest guy she’d ever seen!

  “And should we give him a name? We can’t just keep calling him ‘him’,” Hector said.

  Myrtle hesitated. She knew the dangers of getting too attached.

  But this is different, she thought. This isn’t a lab animal, or a specimen I’m helping tag and release. She’s the only one of her kind left in the world, and right now, we’re the only ones she has to take care of her. She needs a name.

  Myrtle shook her head. She?

  Hector had been calling the foal a he, but somehow, Myrtle knew that wasn’t right. She ducked her head as the pegasus switched its tail happily, taking a quick look.

  Yep, definitely a girl. And you’re too pretty to be a boy, anyway.

  The little pegasus lifted its head to look over its shou
lder at her and whinnied, as if to convey its approval. At the same time, a warm feeling washed over her. It was a comforting feeling, affectionate and sweet.

  She blinked. Did that come from the pegasus?

  “Maybe we should,” she said. “Give her a name, I mean. Something mystical, like Eurydice or Odine.”

  “Too fancy for me,” Hector said, shaking his head. “What about Bruce?”

  Myrtle shook her head. “I’m pretty sure she’s a girl.”

  Hector cocked his head, but didn’t argue. “Girl Bruce, then.”

  “Ruby,” Myrtle said firmly. “That’s got some of the same letters in it. It’s my final offer.”

  “All right, Ruby it is.”

  They sat in silence together, watching as the tiny pegasus – Ruby – lifted her head from the bottle for what seemed like the final time, her pink tongue darting out over her pure white muzzle, which was absolutely covered in apple puree.

  “Oh boy, looks like you really made a mess of yourself there, Rubes,” Hector said, laughing lightly. “Need a hand?”

  Ruby – Myrtle refused to think of her as Rubes – shook her head, snorting delicately and sending tiny spatters of mushy apple across the tabletop.

  Hector stood up, crossing the room to the tiny kitchenette tucked away to the side, so small Myrtle hadn’t noticed it until he’d gotten the baby food from the minifridge. He tore off a square of paper towel and ran it quickly under the faucet.

  “Come here,” he said gently, reaching out with the damp towel. “Come on Rubes, that’s it…”

  Ruby pranced backward, shaking her head, her hooves tapping lightly on the tabletop.

  “Meee-ehh!”

  “I don’t think she likes that,” Myrtle said, as Ruby tossed her head, evading the towel once again.

  “She’ll like having crusty old apple puree stuck to her face even less,” Hector said, as he gently tried to approach her for a third try. “C’mon – this is for your own good –”

  But Ruby wasn’t having it. She sidled away, snorting indignantly.

  “Here, let me help,” Myrtle said, laughing. She reached forward, corralling Ruby with her hands, not giving her anywhere to go when she tried to prance away from the towel again.