AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Maybe they weren’t riding her in the right direction.”
He smiles, and his face is transformed. I have amused the king, and perhaps not for the first time. I don’t think he was angry when I took the wild mare and ran. I think he was entertained. I think I got his attention. And I think there will be consequences for that.
* * *
Equs
Is there any joy greater than the capture of a wild thing? Is there anything wilder than this human who fled from me and now stands before me, trembling with emotion and barely contained fear?
If I did not know better, I would almost think she was capable of bolting way on just those two feet of hers. They certainly carried her fast enough when she stole the second of my horses.
This human at first appeared to be nothing more than a minor inconvenience. We deal with poachers regularly. They always come the same way, on a surreptitious cargo shuttle with enough room in its bays for a horse or two. They always claim they had no idea they weren’t allowed to steal our precious horses. Most of them are not as pretty as this golden-haired human with dark eyes and caramel skin, but pretty alone would not have saved her from justice.
Having the nerve to steal yet another mare and flee? Outride my very best riders? That proves her worthy of more than the noose, or the sword.
She is wild at her core, as unbroken as the mare she allied with to escape captivity. I will tame her, more successfully than I did the mare, though my methods will be very similar.
“What is your name, human?”
“Blaire.”
“You need no longer fear for your life, Blaire. You are now my ward, and you fall under my protection.”
She looks at me with those molten, untrusting eyes, and it is as if I have not spoken at all. If she is pleased by my reassurance, or if she believes it, she does not show it. Ah, she has the intellect of a wild thing as well.
“Come.” I transfer my grasp from her chin, to her hand. She does not resist me, but she does not willingly accompany me either. I mount my steed and pull her up in front of me. She has the muscle memory of mounting, and I feel the resistance in her body dip for a moment as she swings her leg over the horse.
She sits astride my beast, her smaller frame tucked snugly in front of mine. I like the way she feels there. I am not in the habit of riding with another, but this human, Blaire, feels like she fits somehow.
* * *
Blaire
His arms are around me, two great muscular pillars which keep me in place as we turn back toward the camp I escaped from once and now fear I will never escape from again.
At this slower pace, the journey takes many hours.
“Why did you come to my world?”
“To steal your horses.”
His chest shakes as he laughs. “Wretch,” he says. “You fled the noose and now you make light of the crime which nearly saw it about your pretty neck?”
“I make light of most things, but it’s also true. I came here to reclaim some of the old genetics, to bring a stallion back to breed my Earth mares.”
“A worthy aim.”
“I thought so. Maybe you could let me have one and take it back?”
“No.”
Well, that was simple, I suppose. Simple in all the wrong ways.
“What are you going to do with me? Are you going to let me go?”
“No.”
A second negative response, even more concerning than the first one. If he’s not going to let me go, that means he’s intending on keeping me. And that’s not good. At all. I don’t want to be kept. I want to get my stallion and go home. Or at the very least, go home.
“I’d go home, you know. I wouldn’t even look at another horse if you didn’t want me to.”
“I have no intention of letting you leave. Forget the world you came from. It is gone.”
“Uh. No.”
He snorts but says nothing. What I say doesn’t matter. Here I am, a complete captive to this king’s will. That scares the hell out of me. Just because he’s not going to kill me doesn’t mean my life is going to be worth living as a captive. He could do anything to me. He could…
“Don’t think about it…” he growls the words in my ear. He must have felt my body tense with the notion of taking another dive off this horse and trying to run again. Damn. He’s good. A good rider is one who can feel the little cues and know what the animal is going to do before it does it. He just used that horse sense on me.
