A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [57]
Sally took Mace’s hand. “I’ll show you,” she promised.
They found Ruffles and headed out, Sally dressed warmly in furs and Mace taking the shape of a heavy gray horse. He changed form right in the square before the inn. The people here had rejected Sally’s word about lying with a battle sylph? Now they’d all know she was telling the truth. He left with the town’s eyes on him, Sally proudly riding bareback.
He cantered eastward, moving along a cart track for a while and then onto a deer path. Sally didn’t know exactly where the brigands were—no one did—but they were suspected to be in the woods to the east, away from the main roads and certainly away from the Shale Plains and Sylph Valley. A group like this would never have been able to establish itself in any area that battlers guarded. Nor, apparently, were they stupid enough to attack any Valley merchants, or any groups heading into the Valley. It was only the convoys heading away from the Valley and the people of Eferem itself who were suffering.
It was late in the afternoon and snowing, but Mace chose to go anyway. He didn’t want Sally to stay in this town. He wasn’t worried about exposing her to bandits; he’d keep her safe. The bandits weren’t half as bad as her family. He didn’t want her anywhere near the people who’d dragged her down for so long, and the farther they went from Falloweld, the more her happiness increased. She was away from her family. She was going toward her son. She was with her beloved.
Mace had no issues with the fact that she loved him. That was a simple concept: you met, you connected, you loved. It was easy. It was the fact that she believed he’d fathered a son on her that had him confused, so he pushed the thought away. He had three missions now: rescue Jayden for Lily, rescue Travish for Sally, and keep Sally safe.
There was really only one way to guarantee Sally’s safety. In the Valley, no one would care about her finding pleasure outside of wedlock. He just hoped that Lily had really meant it when she told him to search out a new master. If he brought a woman home and she reacted badly . . . Mace didn’t want to think about that. He just wanted to get Sally to safety and maybe even see if he still fit in her life. He wasn’t sure yet that she would make a good master to him, and he’d seen enough battlers end up with bad ones in the last decades that he would be very careful of whom he gave control of himself to, but there was that spark in her. That goodness and strength that made him want to protect her, to love her, and to feel her quivering underneath him as she cried out her pleasure into his ear.
“Travish is a good boy,” Sally was saying, unaware of Mace’s thoughts as she sat on his back with her knees gripping his barrel and her fingers twined in his mane. “He’s just so frustrated with everything. He was teased terribly when he was a child, and my father hated him. So did Falon. They thought I’d wasted myself and ruined the family.” She sighed. “Travish just wants to be respected. He’s never had that before. He wants to be something more.”
Mace snorted. That was the kind of thinking that had got Jayden into this mess. Everyone was what they were. There was no need to want anything else.
Then why did you come through the gate? a treasonous voice whispered into his mind. Why not stay in your original hive, where you could have remained a guard and simple warrior for the entirety of your life? Mace decided not to think about that, either.
“Tell me about Jayden,” Sally said, her fingers tangled in his rough mane.
Mace had made a few modifications to his horse form, just as he had with his dog form earlier, and he could speak. “He’s one of Lily’s orphans,” he said.
“Who’s Lily?”
He tossed his head, making his way around a half-buried log covered in snow that likely would be a problem for a real horse. “She’s my master.”
He felt Sally’s sudden uncertainty about what that meant, and about what else Lily might be to him. He felt a quick surge of jealousy in Sally, tempered by her fear of being left alone again,