Chapter 29

29

E ven with instinct to guide him and to warn him when someone's interest in a loose horse was more than just trivial, it was a complicated journey.

Logan had to cross a crowded highway once, waiting at the edge of the road for a gap in the traffic, and instinct gave a little twinge when a truck with a trailer slowed down and a man got out with a rope.

He risked a gap in the cars that he otherwise wouldn't have, and sailed over the concrete divider. Another truck had to slam on its brakes, and someone honked.

Logan didn't stop running until he'd found a copse of trees to get behind, cursing the brief open farm area with its unobstructed view.

Wild forest was too thick to travel through quickly, and fields were too exposed, so Logan found himself skirting the woods when he could. The landscape was full of unexpected ravines and craggy bluffs, as well as invisible animal holes that could easily break a horse's leg if they were running at full speed and went down.

Sometimes the magical sense was just gone, like a smoke trail that had grown too faint to see or smell. Logan could do nothing but trot on in the direction he'd last been pointed and hope that he was still headed for Tabby's ranch when he had to detour around natural pitfalls and try to find his compass bearings again.

When it wasn't outright hazardous, the trip was tiring. Logan had a ground-eating trot on a smooth trail, but the terrain he covered was anything but easy. After a few hours, barely pausing to snatch enough grazing to go on, his muscles burned. He was grateful for Tabby's training and recognized how much worse it would have been if he'd been in the mediocre shape he'd considered good before he came to stay with her.

She was humbling, Logan thought, as he started diagonally across a field in the dark, ripe wheat whispering away from his flanks. He thought he'd been whole and had everything, and then he got Franzi and realized exactly how incapable he actually was. If it hadn't been for Tabby, he would have failed at everything.

Hel-lo, his stallion grumbled. I'm right here, being unappreciated!

I appreciate you , Logan protested.

You certainly don't respect me, his stallion pointed out. Right now, you're all caught up in how you're stuck like this, how awful it is, how inconvenient it is not to have your fancy fingers and phones. But if I were "just a horse," you'd be caught or lost, because I'm the one with access to instinct. If you'd listened to me in the first place, we wouldn't even be in this mess. You take me for granted, and you think that you're better than me just by virtue of being human, but I'm everything that makes you special.

Logan was completely taken aback, and he stumbled to a stop beside a trickling creek.

His horse was usually self-absorbed and vain, but was Logan himself guilty of exactly the same? His stallion had been his other half for all of his life that he could remember, a constant companion, a second self. But he wasn't just a horse. Logan had been around plenty of ordinary animals, and his stallion was not just smarter than any of them, but more complicated...and more connected. His shifter self was a part of himself. They were better together than either of them could be apart.

Maybe it was because of whatever had trapped him in this form that his shifter half had more cognizance now. Or was it that they were closer because of this ordeal, or that Tabby had started to open up his heart to understand his partner's complaint? His horse felt closer, more articulate.

Maybe…

Ooo, oats!

Logan hopped over the creek into the next field and let his stallion graze on the ripening oats that had caught his attention.

Not too much , he cautioned.

His horse snorted. Says the man who got a stomach ache eating too much buttered popcorn with his niece.

Maybe they weren't that unalike.