In the chaos, there came a quiet moment of perfect clarity. Clarity about where I’d come from and what I’d done. Every bad decision I’d ever made, laid out in a line, winking at me like marbles in a child’s game. Starting with the day I went to the mob for money.

And ending here. Now. In the midst of what I now could tell were the hooves of about a million raging bracku bearing down upon me.

And in that strangely hushed moment, I didn’t miss Mama or Maggie. I didn’t pine for Terratribe I or wish I could have just one more chance to make it all right. I didn’t pray again.

I just wished I could have seen Silar one more time. Seen him one more time and maybe even told him that –

“CHERRY!”

A man’s bellow – somehow even louder than the bracku horde – smashed through the air like a weapon. Dizzily, I wondered if the warden had somehow come upon the scene, because I couldn’t think of anyone else around here who could get that fucking loud.

But when a hand and tail seized upon my waist in perfect unison, they weren’t purple.

They were gold.

My body sailed upward so quickly it felt as if I flew.

Maybe I really had died. Maybe this was just my soul leaving my body…

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.

The roof!

Before I could let my emotions catch up with me and render my legs completely useless, I ran out to the back porch and hoofed it up the ladder. Once on the flat area of the roof, I aimed myself towards the front of the property, leaning my body against the roof that angled up at the front of the house.

It was hard to spot Tarion in the churn of dust, since he was the same reddish colour as the land. But Silar’s bright teal hair streaming out from beneath his hat became my visual anchor. Once I saw that, I could make sense of the scene.

Silar and the other male were trotting at a much slower pace, moving in circles around a tightly packed fist of bracku. The beasts were already moving even slower than before, a shuffle of inertia that was close to dying out. The animal moving the fastest now seemed to be the manic, blurry one doing all the barking.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I took in a full, deep breath and let it out.

Silar was safe. I didn’t get turned into Cherry jam. The bracku had nearly stopped and now the other man was approaching Silar on his mount.

Everything was OK. Everything was going to be just –

Shit.

Everything was going to be just shit.

Because as soon as the other man was in range…

Silar’s tail shot out and wrapped tightly ’round his orange throat.

20SILAR

Fallon jerked as my tail seized upon his throat.

I had not felt rage like this since… since…

Since I’d killed that man on Zabria.

Fallon’s white eyes bulged, his claws sinking deep into my tail. I barely felt it. His hound snapped feral jaws in defense of his master, circling Tarion, but I paid the creature little mind. If Tarion felt threatened, he could deliver a single, skull-smashing kick.

No. All my attention was focused upon Fallon. Fallon, whose stampeding herd had almost killed my wife.

Thoughts about how Fallon was the youngest and likely the best among us were torn asunder, mashed up by memories. Memories of hearing the stampede and racing across my property, calling Cherry’s name but not finding her. Memories of spine-sheering panic as I’d rounded the house on Tarion’s back and saw my wife, trapped and disoriented, while Fallon’s cattle hurtled towards her like a storm.