Taming the Queen of Beasts

Chapter 396 – Monster

Here\'s praying the added exposure will bring us a lot of new friends to share this journey! (This message added after publication so you aren\'t charged for the words)

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GAR

Gar was just about to ask Rika whether she thought the tools her team had would let them track their flight, when the sound of faint hoofbeats pricked his ears and he turned quickly to face them, to hear better.

"What is it?" Rika whispered.

He shushed her and tugged her behind his back, searching his head quickly. Tarkyn was a lion, but most of the guards were equines. Yet he\'d planned to bring a team of disformed as far as Gar knew, so there wouldn\'t have been any shifting.

And besides, an Anima would be silent in the forest. Or at least quiet enough that he wouldn\'t have heard them from that distance.

He sank slightly on his knees, half-crouched, peering through the trees. Rika slipped closer to his side, but didn\'t lean on him. He wasn\'t sure if was impressed by her courage, or grieving that she still held herself at a distance. But there wasn\'t time to analyze it because his lion eyes caught a flash of pale fur deep in the woods and he tensed.

Her hearing wasn\'t sharp enough for him to breathe to her what he was seeing, to warn her. It was strange for an Anima to stay in animal form when they were moving as slowly as this horse was, and that made him nervous that he didn\'t understand what was happening. Was it a distraction? A ploy to get him looking in the wrong place?

Gar raised his head, nostrils flaring, trying to catch the scent. There was a very light breeze, but it blew in the wrong direction—directly from them to the horse. A normal horse would have fled at the first hint of his scent, so this was no Silent One.

Yet an Anima that was friendly would have taken human form and likely called out.

That left an unfriendly anima, but who among the horse tribe would approach Gar as an enemy? Unless—

Suddenly, the bushes parted ahead of them, still thirty or forty feet away. But the animal, its pale head low, looked straight at them, ears pricked.

It seemed to look at Rika first, then at Gar, and it stopped standing square, it\'s nostrils flaring to catch their scents. But no alarm showing.

It was a creamy color from the tip of its ears, all the way down to the feathered fur at its fetlocks. Its hooves were midnight black, but dainty. Gar couldn\'t see from this angle whether it was male or female. Only its neck and shoulders, chest and front legs were out of the bushes, the rest of its body obscured. It was large for a horse, but not scarily so.

Was it some kind of silent one that lived nearby so it wasn\'t afraid of his predator scent?

"Be careful, Rika," he murmured as she stepped forward, her eyes wide. "It might be—"

"Pegg!" she shrieked and slapped away from Gar\'s outstretched arm, running past him. "There you are!" she laughed with joy and Gar straightened, confused.

His mate had a horse?

The animal whickered and tossed his head, stepping out of the bushes, shaking its mane and dancing as the rest of its body was revealed.

For a moment Gar was so focused on Rika, on whether she was safe, all he registered was some kind of wide blanket on the horse\'s back.

But when she reached it and threw her arms around its neck, babbling at the creature about how much she\'d missed him and stupid jealousy flared in Gar\'s chest, his breath was stopped too as his eyes finally communicated to his brain what he was actually seeing.

Where a normal horse\'s shoulder met the base of its neck, the withers, two thick nubs rose out of this horse\'s skin and… and then it took one more step forward an the blanket was finally clear to Gar\'s confused eyes.

It had wings.

The fucking horse had wings.

Gar\'s mouth dropped open.

"Rika! What is—"

"This is Pegg!" she called back excitedly, rubbing his neck and scratching his face as the horse whickered and huffed, clearly happy to see her and rubbing against her hand and arm. "He followed me into Anima and… we\'ve been hanging out!" she said happily.

Gar was floored.

Still uncertain whether she was safe, he stepped forward cautiously. The horse lifted its head and met his eyes, snorting from wide nostrils. But its eyes were bright and ears forward.

He\'d seen the guards pissed off enough to know what a mad horse looked like, and this wasn\'t it.

But a fucking horse with wings?

"What do you mean, he followed you here?"

"We were friends before. Back in… in my world," she said carefully. "When I decided to come through I think he was worried about me. He came through the gateway with me."

"That thing crossed the traverse?"

"Is that what you call it? Yes, I guess so."

"The voices… didn\'t they… attack it?"

"No, they were only interested in me." Rika\'s voice had gone suddenly cold and Gar wanted to smack himself. He understood the voices and what they could do. She\'d been through enough tonight, she didn\'t need him reminding her of that.

But Gar was floored. He\'d never seen a creature like this before, and hadn\'t heard that they existed in the human world—But then he reminded himself, the humans seemed to have endless varieties of animals, but nothing else. No Anima. No shape-shifters of any kind.

He\'d spent time over there, but of course they would have creatures he\'d never heard of before.

Shrugging it off, Gar let himself breathe. If this was her pet, or an animal she worked with, she was likely safe with it.

But was he?

He approached cautiously. The animal watched him, following his every move, dropping its head a little, but it\'s ears never went back.

When Gar reached her side, he lifted his hand to let the horse smell his skin. The animal snorted, and Rika laughed.

"I know, he\'s a big scary predator," she said, but her voice quavered in a way that made Gar sad. "You two will have to get used to each other if we\'re going to stay here."

Gar\'s heart soared. He was about to pull her into a hug and beg her to reassure him that she meant what he thought she meant, when another voice sounded from behind him.

"I hate to break up such a lovely scene, but… what the fuck, Gar?"