1
ROLAND
“Hurry up!” my herd’s healer yelled as if I weren’t three feet from him.
As if I wasn’t going as fast as I could grinding herbs for a bandage. I knew the consequences if I didn’t.
It was such a dumbass reason for needing healing, too. Frank, an alphahole of a grown-ass man, decided to cut through property that had a fence clearly labeled as barbed and electric and got his leg cut flinching from the shock and getting gouged by the barb. Somehow that meant I had to help him out.
They always made itmyresponsibility. That would make sense if I was the healer of the herd, but I wasn’t, and I had no desire to become one. Not that my father, the Alpha, would let me train for anything valuable like that. I was a commodity to him and a reminder of his own lacking. Nothing more.
I finished up, tapped the mortar to get all the herbs off, and brought the bowl over to him.
“I wouldn’t need to do this if you hadn’t overused your abilities yesterday.”
I bit my tongue. Getting into a fight with the healer wasn’t going to make my day any better. But the truth was, I hadn’t overused my abilities. I was forced to shift so the healer could take advantage of my horn’s power. He had me heal a bunch of bruises on herd members who got a little too aggressive in their soccer match. They didn’t need healing. They needed to wait a few hours until their beasts took care of it.
What a waste of my ability and 100% done to make sure I knew my place as his current lackey. I was left needing to recharge and not fully available when he needed me all because of his hazing.
Just leave.That was always my unicorn’s solution. Just leave. As if it was as easy as that. At least with the herd, I had some protection.
If word ever got out that there was a unicorn running free, I’d be on borrowed time. There was always someone willing to take me down for my horn. Thankfully, most shifters didn’t believe unicorns were real. They, like humans, thought I was a mythical creature. There were days I wished I was—that I wasn’t an anomaly, a loser in the current genetic crapshoot, a recessive gene that hadn’t been seen in my herd for generations deciding to present with me.
“It’s packed in.” The healer indicated the herbs. They were designed to keep out infection, because while I’d be able to heal it, I wouldn’t be able to keep that at bay. Not with the amount of strength I currently had.
“Shift,” the healer told me.
No,my unicorn answered.
Shift, please,I begged my unicorn.
I hated being forced into a shift. I got stuck there for hours and hours when I did, but that was exactly what was going to happen if I didn’t shift.
Part of the reason I’m so weak is because you wouldn’t shift yesterday,I reminded my beast. He didn’t care.
“You know what to do.”
I let out a sigh. Either I did it on my own, or they were going to have people hold me down and make me. I went to the jar, the one just for me, and grabbed a piece of the “candy.” Candy, what a joke. It forced me to shift. It was a drug with a sweet name and nothing more. I hated it.
This was the strongest version of the recipe, one only used by Healer and my alpha father and only occasionally, and it was usually under lock and key. The normal “candy” didn’t hurt nearly as much, but it more coaxed than forced my beast out. I wished he tried it first, but he’d set that jar on the counter when I was dealing with the herbs too slowly, so it was a punishment.
On the times that my unicorn shifted on its own, when we were far away from people and just having fun the two of us, shifting didn’t hurt. With this sugary delight, it was agony. I could feel my bones break and move and reform. It was a cruelty like no other.
Soon I was standing there on my four legs, pressing my horn to the wound.
I didn’t really know how it felt to be healed by me. My herd would say everything from, “It stings and you’re doing it on purpose,” to “It hurts,” to “I’m on fire,” to “I didn’t feel a thing.” Most likely, it was somewhere in the middle of the extremes, because forced healing, like forced shifting, couldn’t go withoutany sensation. But no one I trusted had ever needed me, and I long ago stopped asking.
The alpha stood up and shook his leg off. “Weak-ass horse wannabe.” He pushed past me and walked away. He was one of those ones who tried to make it look like I never really did anything because, obviously, he was better than me in all ways… while at the same time being stupid enough to get caught in a barbed-wire fence.
I stood there looking at the healer, hoping that today would be one of the good days, one of the days he allowed me to shift back without having to wait for the medication to wear off. And he did, pulling a little pellet from his pocket. “I’m only doing this so you’re stronger tomorrow.”
I didn’t care why. I ate it. The shift back was doubly painful, but at least I was walking back to my place, my clothes in hand, and not on my hooves wondering how long it would be until I had full control again.
My place was close, and I took the dirt path back, not caring who saw me.
My cabin was one of the smallest, most dilapidated buildings on the herd land and sat in the far corner of the same lot as the Alpha house. It was the equivalent of a human’s tiny home, only less nice.
I didn’t get to live in my father’s house, despite the Alpha house being huge. He kept me close enough so he could still have control over my every move, but far enough that I knew exactly where I belonged in the pack hierarchy.
