Page 50 of Resisting the Alien Rider

“Why don’t you tell her that?” he said, his young voice scorched with longing that mirrored my own. “Tell her you made a mistake before!”

“Because I’m not that blasted selfish!” I dragged my claws through my hair. “The only reason Oaken is here at all is because of me.”

Killian’s head snapped up.

“He is my cousin. Did I ever tell you that? My father’s brother’s son. He was there that day I killed my father. He was in the very room when it happened! He refused to testify against me and we were both convicted.” I sighed, bitterness burning in my throat. “I failed him. I tried to protect him and I couldn’t. I’vealready taken his future from him. I cannot now take his bride.”

I swallowed hard, almost wishing I could shove all those words back inside myself. What good would any of them do me now?

“When you are older,” I said hollowly, feeling entirely emptied out, “when it is time to leave my ranch and establish your own property, you can petition the warden to occupy land near Oaken’s. You’ll get to see Magnolia often that way, and I’m sure she’d be more than happy to have you as a neighbour.”

Killian did not seem wholly miserable with that possibility, which I supposed had to count for something. His burning eyes met mine.

“What about you?”

“I’ll survive.”

I’d survived so much already.

But the words felt like a lie anyway.

19

MAGNOLIA

While Garrek and Killian were out procuring dindins, I retreated to the hidey hole of my tent to finish work on Garrek’s vest. I’d only gotten it partly finished last night, and had given up when my hand was cramping and my eyes had started drifting shut.

I wasn’t in much better shape tonight, unfortunately. My hands were tired after holding the reins all day, and the lack of sleep was catching up with me. But I really wanted to get this done as soon as possible. Garrek was going to be out in the sun bent over building fences. He was going to need it.

I snipped and stitched in the quiet, working by the light of a small, solar-powered portable lantern. The longer I worked, the closer I got to finishing Garrek’s vest, the more something came into focus. Something I’d been avoiding looking at head-on for a long time, now.

With each push and pull of my needle, each stretch of the thread, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore.

I couldn’t marry Oaken.

Marrying him had been all I’d dreamed of for weeks on Elora Station. It had been what I’d looked forward to so desperately while staying with Darcy on Fallon’s ranch.

But today, when Garrek had let me know how close that reality had finally come, I’d felt trapped by grief so thick I wasn’t ever sure that I would be able to fight my way out. He told me that it wouldn’t be long until we found Oaken now, and I hadn’t been able to breathe.

There was only one thing for it.

I had to call it off.

Guilt poked at me, just as my needle did to the fabric. But despite that, there was also a clear-eyed realization that marrying Oaken wouldn’t be good for anyone now. It wouldn’t make me happy. And it wouldn’t make Oaken happy, either. Oaken deserved a wife whose heart was free to love him.

Mine wasn’t. Not anymore.

Because mine, it turned out, belonged to a quiet, white-eyed child and the hard-jawed, scar-backed rider who took care of him. When I closed my eyes to picture my future, to picture my own happy ending, it wasn’t the wedding I’d once spent so many hours imagining in painstaking detail.

It was putting Killian back in his bedroll with Garrek. It was talking to Garrek late at night, seeing those eyes shift from purple to white and then back again. It was the rough char of his voice. The callousedtouch of his hands. The way he’d had no idea what a hug was but then he’d gone and hugged me anyway.

But that hug, that night, felt very far away from now. Garrek had made it spectacularly clear he didn’t want a human wife – or any wife. He’d talked to me more this afternoon than he had all week. There was no indication that, once I broke things off with Oaken, there would even be a place for me here anymore.

Maybe I could at least keep travelling with them until they returned to their ranch.

And then…

My eyes filled with tears at the thought of leaving Garrek, leaving Killian. Leaving this world entirely. I doubted I would be allowed to stay if I weren’t participating in the bride program.

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