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.