Page 49 of A Cruel Kindness

“Hi, sweet girl,” I said, carefully extending my hand towards her snout. Clover didn’t seem to have a fearful bone in her body, because she shoved her nose into my waiting hand a second later.

The second the soft, leathery feel of her nose connected with my palm, my heart squeezed painfully. My hand flew up to my chest, my fingers raking the skin there as if they could break through and massage my heart.

Soren’s hand came up between my shoulder blades, rubbing smooth circles across my back. “That’s her bonding with you.”

“Already?” I breathed though a tight throat. “She doesn’t even know me.” The horses I knew took days to build a strong relationship with a rider, and despite what I knew, I felt like I could already understand Clover’s every need.

Right now she was saying that she was hungry. It was like a general intuition, rather than a clear voice in my head like the Bond was.

“The equin are a little different than the horses on Vir. They bond with one rider at a time, normally for life.” Already, a deep current of protectiveness threaded through my stomach as I looked at Clover’s long eyelashes blinking over her huge eyes. I didn’t know how I could possibly bring her into harm's way willingly. “They also mate for life,” Soren finished.

I kept my hand on Clover’s snout, petting softly, as I turned to Soren. “That’s certainly different.”

His answering smile, a wide one that highlighted the ring piercing his nose, made my chest feel tight. The way his eyes creased when he was genuinely amused needed to be studied for its mind-altering effects. “Speaking of…” he said, trailing off while he looked somewhere behind me.

I turned, just as the largest horse I had ever seen, taking that title from Clover, barreled through the open doors, almost taking out two people as it galloped towards us. I flattened myself against Clover’s stall, as if my body would do anything to protect her, as that beast of a horse trampled everything in its path.

Soren. My heart fell into my stomach as I realized he wasn’t moving out of the way. I was halfway to throwing myself in front of him when he took two short strides towards the dark brown, if not black, horse and collided into him, pressing his forehead to his snout.

I didn’t even know how the horse managed to stop that quickly, but Soren barely jerked back against the force of his entrance. His horse reared back on its hind legs, kicking his front legs off the ground several feet before landing back down with a neigh that sounded oddly like a laugh.

My jaw was slack, my mouth surely hanging open as I watched Soren all but hug a horse.

After greeting him, he turned to me with a heartbreaking smile on his face. “This is Lucky,” he introduced.

They have matching names. I like that, the Bond mused happily.

Lucky’s attention swung towards me and to Clover hanging over my shoulder.

He turned his massive body with an agility I didn’t know possible and then the strangest thing happened.

I got caught in the middle of what could only be described as a horse kiss.

Lucky’s face shoved into Clover’s, pleased drool slipping out of the side of his mouth and plopping down on my shoulder.

Soren’s booming laugh rang through the stables as his hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me out of Lucky and Clover’s embrace.

“Yes, our horses are mated,” he said, as he leaned over the lip of Clover’s stall and pulled out a rag. My jaw remained on the floor, watching them fawn over each other like a newlywed couple.

Soren carefully wiped Lucky’s drool off my shoulder, and if I wasn’t so distracted by the scene in front of me, I might have blushed in response.

Maybe I did regardless, but that was of no consequence.

This was so insane. Not that anything I’d experienced over the past few weeks was anything close to normal, but this was really insane.

Married horses, a bar on another planet, and a Soul Mate I was supposed to ignore … not to mention the cherry on top—being in possession of secrets that could get me killed or exchanged as a bargaining chip.

“Oi, step back,” Soren said to Lucky, motioning for him to make some room. Lucky complied with a low rumble of frustration, clearly not amused with the idea of parting from Clover. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Two feet of space won’t kill you. I know it feels like it will.”

Soren was just joking, but damn if I wondered whether there was some truth to that statement. When Lucky gave us enough room, Soren motioned towards Clover with his chin, silently telling me to go to her.

Instinct ruled, needing no further instruction. Inherently, I knew what I needed to do. I carefully opened her stall, running my hand down her long neck when she started buzzing with excitement.

Someone had already attached her saddle, and though Clover’s proportions were different than the horses I knew, it seemed like the stirrups were already set to the height of my legs.

I would not be looking at Soren for any sort of confirmation he had a hand in that.

I wrapped my hand around the leather of her reins and said softly, “Let’s go outside.” After a happy sounding grumble from Clover, I added, “Yes, Lucky is out there.”