Dead Heat

“Pretty horse,” he said dryly. “Tippy ears.”

Kage choked back a laugh. “Dad said you’d do that.” He looked at Anna. “Gives a compliment that you know is an insult. Right now the Saudi billionaires are bolstering the Arabian market. They don’t care about bodies or legs, but they pay a lot for a pretty head.”

“Not just the Saudis,” grunted Charles. “The judges are rewarding longer and longer necks, taller and taller horses. If you reward the extremes, that’s where the breed heads.

“Long necks”—he nodded at the chestnut—“usually mean long backs. A lot of taller horses just have longer cannon bones, which weakens their legs. The Arabs I rode herding cattle with your father in the fifties and sixties would do a full day’s work for twenty years, seven days a week, and retire sound.” He snorted. “The drive now is for pretty lawn ornaments. The Arabian horses were originally bred as weapons of war, and now they are artwork. Those old Bedouins are rolling in their graves.”

“Nothing wrong with artwork,” growled Kage, really offended now.

Charles was doing it deliberately, Anna thought. Goading Kage into what? She narrowed her eyes at her husband, who looked back at her blandly.

Kage reached over and snagged a halter from where it hung on the wall next to the stall door. “Yes, he’s got a pretty head and neck, and that makes him valuable. Like those little tippy ears you’re so annoyed with. But you can have your cake and eat it just fine.”

Anna backed out of the way as Kage slid the stall door open and brought the two-year-old stallion out to stand in the broad aisle under the lights. She was watching the man, not the horse, though. He’d been wounded, she thought, from what had happened to his wife today. Stoic, but wounded. The anger burned all that away.

And her husband said he wasn’t good with people.

“You tell me that those old-time, round-barreled, cow-hocked Arabs had anything over this horse,” Kage growled as he somehow cued the colt to freeze in place and stretch his neck out and up. The irritation he’d demonstrated dropped away as he looked at the colt, too. Anna thought he couldn’t hold anger and the way he felt about the horse at the same time.

Passionately, Kage said, “This one would take you over the desert sands, sleep in your tent, and stand guard over your body. You look at him and you tell me his back is too long or his legs are weak.”

The horse looked spectacular to Anna, but she was no judge. The young stallion’s copper coat gleamed even in the artificial light. Large, dark eyes looked at them with arrogance, a healthy dose of vanity … and humor, she thought.

His body looked balanced to her and he had a nice slope to his shoulder that was echoed in his hip. His mane was pale and thick and emphasized the arch of his neck, and his tail would have reached the ground if it hadn’t been braided and wound up in a bag.

“What’s with his tail?” asked Anna. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“No,” Kage said with a wary look at Charles.

“Because even in a stall, a horse will rub and wear down his tail to a useful length instead of letting it grow long enough to trail behind him like a bridal veil,” Charles told her, but his real attention wasn’t on his words but on the horse. “Judges like a tail dragging the ground in the show ring.”

He paced around the horse slowly, stopping to pick up a foot. The longer he looked, the more smug Kage was. When her mate finished his examination, what Charles said wasn’t a judgment, but a question. “You’re taking him in the ring at the big show?”

“That’s our intention,” Kage said. “We didn’t show him last year because he was still going through the yearling fuglies. His butt was four inches higher than his withers. This year … he’s got a good chance. He certainly won’t look outclassed in his age group.”

“I don’t know about Arabian horse judging,” said Charles, raising a hand in surrender. “But I do know horses. This one is seriously good—assuming he has a brain between those tippy little ears.” He smiled at Kage. “Tragic if he ends up a lawn ornament or a piece of artwork brought out to make a rich man’s guests ooh and ahh.” He gave Kage a long look. “You’ve successfully defended him and your breeding program. Feel better?”

Kage gave him a sharp look, hesitated, and then said, “You picked an argument with me so I’d feel better?”

“Yes,” Charles said. “I also picked an argument with you so you could quit treating us like customers and talk to us about Chelsea. Your mother is pretty sure you won’t talk to Hosteen about her, and she thinks you need to talk to somebody.”

Anna couldn’t help letting her eyebrows climb up. Charles had gotten a lot of information from no more than two seconds of voiceless communication with Maggie.

Kage frowned at Charles. “She does, does she? I am very grateful to you for saving Chelsea, Mr. Cornick. But I assure you I’m fine.”

“Chelsea isn’t,” said Anna.

“Chelsea,” Kage said. The stallion butted him with his head, and he rubbed the horse’s forehead. He looked around and lowered his voice so that the people working around them wouldn’t hear what he said. “Her mother taught her that her witch blood taints her. And Hosteen never lets up about it. The idea that she’s a werewolf now and has to obey my grandfather, with whom she has been painfully feuding for eight years, hasn’t caught up with her yet. But it will. She is never going to forgive me.”

“If that’s the only problem, you’ll do okay,” Anna said. “If she honestly can’t stand him, then move. There are other packs.”

“And with your reputation you can get a job in any Arab barn in the country,” added Charles.

“Maybe so,” Kage said. “But she’s very big on being independent. I just changed her life without consulting her.”

“There was no way to bring her into it,” Charles pointed out. “I tried that first. If she really didn’t want to Change … It’s a lot easier to give up, Kage, than it is to fight for your life.”

“She’s not going to buy that as an argument,” said Kage, but at the same time, for the first time since he’d picked up his cell phone and heard his wife’s messages, he looked like he’d caught his balance. “You think that she would have made that choice herself? I didn’t force it on her?”

“If anyone forced it on her, it would be I,” corrected Charles. “But no. If I thought she really didn’t have a choice in the matter, I would not have done it even if you begged me to. She chose to die for her children, and she chose to live for all of you.”

“What about my dad, then?” Kage asked. “By that argument you couldn’t Change him unless he secretly wanted it. Which we all know he doesn’t. So why is Hosteen still after you to Change him, anyway?”

“Because he believes that he saw my father force a man through a Change. That man wasn’t unwilling, just unable, which is different. He thinks that I can do the same,” Charles said.

“Can you?”

“Chelsea needed a little help, but I did not force her,” Charles answered. “She saw a chance for survival and she wanted it.”

He wasn’t lying, Anna knew. But there was a sick feeling in her stomach. That was what Justin had said when she’d survived the Change—as if she’d wanted what was done to her and all that followed.

“Use that,” she told Kage, “to comfort yourself, because it is true that she had to fight to live. But don’t tell her that. Tell her you love her and need her. Tell her the kids need her. Tell her you tried to make the choice she might make. Tell her that you thought she’d want us to find the fae who did this to her so he couldn’t kill anyone else. But don’t tell her that her survival means that she really wanted this.” When she said “this” she motioned to herself. Werewolf, she meant, werewolf and all the things that went with it.

Kage’s voice was compassionate. “The voice of experience?”

“Yes.” Anna took in a deep breath. “Truth has many facets. Choose the ones that make her happy to be alive instead of the ones that make her want to smack you.”