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But then my body – in particular, my tender ass – crashed back down upon something powerful and rigid.
Silar’s lap.
His whole body strained forwards, crushing me against his chest with his arm and tail while his other hand clutched Tarion’s reins in a fearsome grip. I’d only ridden on Tarion once and it hadn’t been like this – this bouncing, sprinting, mad dash through the dust.
“Hold on to me,” Silar hissed through his fangs. Gasping, I blindly locked my arms around Silar’s muscled torso. I was slung side-saddle, my legs thumping sideways against Tarion, twisting at my hips to hug Silar as hard as I could.
Silar cursed under his breath and tensed, leaning even further forward over both me and Tarion’s neck. We were going impossibly fast, a breathless, fathomless tear of motion. Silar’s thighs bulged with tension beneath me as he urged Tarion into an ever-more-rapid sprint.
There was no way we could keep this up. Tarion’s heart would give out, or one of his legs would buckle and snap. The stampeding bracku herd seemed endless in its writhing size and speed. We could keep galloping down this road forever and it didn’t seem like it would help one bit.
Only…
Only we weren’t on the road anymore.
Silar was aiming Tarion off the road, running us at a steep angle into the dusty pastures across from his property.
And then…
He yanked sharply on the reins, like an archer nocking and pulling back his arrow…
And turned us right around.
Instead of running away from the herd…
We were heading straight for it.
“Silar!” I croaked, panic soaking through me like acid.
My husband didn’t answer. He just kept his ferocious white gaze straight ahead as we pounded right back into certain doom.
What the hell was he thinking? That we could stop this stampede alone? One single rider against an infinite number of frantic bracku?
Except…
He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t a single rider. Through the dust-strangled beams of sun, I saw another man upon a mount. A yellow and orange and black streak. Like flame upon coal.
The other rider was even faster than we were, charging towards the bracku from a slightly different angle. Something else ran beside him – smaller than a shuldu but still pretty fucking big – giving loud, distinctly dog-like barks as it sprinted.
The two men on shuldu and the barking, running thing were apparently just enough to startle the trampling bracku. They didn’t stop by a long shot, but they were no longer content to keep running straight down the direction of the road. The cattle at the front veered off on an angle, and the rest followed.
“Tighter, Fallon!” Silar roared, again with that booming voice I hadn’t even known him capable of. A voice that I felt right down into my core, my very bones.
I couldn’t hear Fallon’s reply, but both men seemed to adjust their course, forcing the bracku into a tighter and tighter curve until the herd began to circle itself, like an animal chasing its own tail.
“Tighter!”
I clutched at Silar frantically. His speed never faltered, his muscles never relaxing for a second. His fingers were like iron at my ribs, his tail stronger than any rope could ever hope to be. Fearless and ferocious, like a blade he sliced forward on Tarion, keeping tight hold of me all the way.
The next time I felt stable enough to look up over Silar’s shoulder, I nearly sobbed with relief. The herd had slowed considerably. Forced into a tighter and tighter ball of bodies, they could no longer plough straight ahead with that mindless momentum.
As if satisfied that things were handled enough for now, Silar urged Tarion away from the herd, pounding through the dust until we’d reached the house. Without dismounting, he slung me off his lap as easily as he might a sack of potatoes and deposited me into the still-open doorway.
“Stay here!” he commanded, his eyes whiter and brighter than I’d ever seen them before.
Without waiting for my response, he faced forward in the saddle again and ordered Tarion back into a sprint towards the herd.
Between the dust and all the motion in the pastures ahead, I couldn’t make bracku head from shuldu tail of what the hell was going on.
