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9
Aiden led her to the stables, fighting his wolf the whole way.She’s not going home. She’s just making sure shecango home.
The beast snarled.
Why do you care?Not that he was complaining that his wolf wanted something other than everyone dead, but it was bizarre.She’s a witch.
The wolf snapped his jaws.
Did it want to eat her?
Goldie came up beside him. With her hair pulled back, he could see her strong features and dark eyes. She was breathtaking.
His wolf let out a wordless roar of longing and possession, and Aiden scrambled for control, trying to keep from sweeping her into his arms as the beast insisted they take her back to their den right now.
Aiden considered trying to explain feuds, kidnapping, and revenge to a creature whose sense of long-term consequences was fuzzy at best. He gave up and opened the stable door.
She’d learned from their last trip and entered the stables in the exact middle of the aisle so that horses on either side could not get to her. Aiden could tell that Cliff, a teen without a wolf, had already been by. Aiden employed the kid to clean the stables and keep the horses when he was out of town.
He looked around at his motley collection of rejected horses. He wanted her next to him on Bonanza again, but it didn’t feel like a good idea. He also wanted her confident around his horses.
“You want to ride?” he asked her.
She froze halfway down the line, and a retired draft horse he’d saved from a beer commercial tried to nibble at her sleeve. She leaped away. “No?”
“They can’t hurt you.”
“Tell that to all the people who have died horseback riding.”
“That ain’t the horse’s fault,” he said and grimaced. He’d lost his West Virginia accent a long time ago when he realized his IQ jumped ten points with every twang he excised, but it slipped out under stress.
She held up her hands. “Sorry I insulted an entire species of enormous animals with hooves that run horribly fast and can rear at any moment. So silly of me.”
“Sorry, you’re right. A horse can kill you.” He took a deep breath and exploded again, “But these won’t!” He threw out a hand which made Bonanza shy.
“Your faith is, um, delusional.”
“Sorry, boy.” He repeated the gesture slowly, and the horse dipped his head. “See? All he did was shake a little.” When his horse was calm, he turned back to her. “I didn’t think anything scared you.”
She gaped at him. “Everything scares me. Life is damn terrifying. I just don’t let it stop me.”
He raised one eyebrow.
“Okay fine. Get me a horse.” She pointed at Bonanza’s nose. “Not that one.”
He went along the line, considering a pony he’d rescued from a riding outfit outside town where no horse deserved to grow old, but the old girl was too nervous for a nervous rider.
He moved to the next stall and clicked his tongue. Unlike the other horses, this one hadn’t put her head out. “You awake, girl?”
The chestnut mare tipped her head over her door.
“This is Beauty.”
Goldie snorted. “Beige Beauty?”
“Beauty, meet Goldie. I think you’ll get along just fine.”
Goldie cocked her head and gazed at the horse with unfocused eyes. “What’s wrong with her?”
