The monster caught Thalia when she lowered herself for a drink. Grasping tentacles flowed out of the largest clam she had ever seen and wrapped around her waist and front legs. She parked her perky ass on the sand, using her glorious posterior to counter the pull with weight. It worked; the creature's body rose from the river, a long snake of rippling muscle and tight skin. The long serpentine body flexed, and the clamshell opened wider.
Smaller brown tentacles emerged from under the shell bulging before squirting horrible yellow bile on the ground. Even wrapped with tentacles, her ears worked. Thalia heard the ground sizzle.
Shoom!
The fletching of an arrow appeared in the moonlight, and she turned her eyes on a centaur with the head of a horse and a human growing out of its back. It pulled back its bow again, and another arrow impacted the monster's side. Blood and river water poured from the monster's wounds before more shafts appeared in the monster. Its grip loosened for a moment; that was all the time she needed to pull her dagger and slice through the tentacles.
The monster shrieked, and the mutant centaur approached with a massive club wrapped in a strange reflective silver cloth. Her ears twitched as the club fell. The creature's head exploded in gore. Thalia was about to warn the strange centaur not to let his guard down until he swung a second time. It tried to lunge, but the final strike ended any chance of surviving or retaliating.
She turned her attention to the man who had separated from his body, and suddenly she was very aware that a human had saved her. He smelled like unicorn musk and danger. The maiden in her swooned at the thought of such a man saving her life, but the boss mare in her smelled the scent of rivals.
Then the man did the unthinkable he grabbed the monster by its partly shattered clam shell and ranked it up from the river like a slave might a carrot. Cold, almost uncaring blue eyes met her own, and it was like they were the only two people in existence. Suddenly, all the trashy romance novels she read about centaur maidens falling for and dominating humans made much more sense.
She had found her Shiro. The perfect chef, homemaker, hair brusher, and pussy pounder. By the way, he yanked the monster from the river with one hand; the last was a definite yes. All she needed to do was capture him and brand his ass.
Thalia shook off her image of branding the cold eyes superhuman when he mounted his unicorn. She had never heard of a unicorn allowing a rider. The dark-coated golden-horned majestic cousin gave her a challenging snort. Suddenly it was on. Then the human touched the reins to the unicorn's cheek gently, and the majestic symbol of untamable beauty and majesty turned around, swished her tail tauntingly, and trotted off. The monster quickly followed the unicorn on a sled dragging the ground.
The centaur stood frozen, hands clenching as her rival in love trotted off with her man. She was a diplomat of Chiron, the toughest, strongest country on the continent. No unicorn was going to tell a centaur boss mare off.