Page 20 of The Bull's Beauty
“Fatecan go screw itself!” she yells, her voice cracking. “I’m going to the port. I’m getting on a ship and you arenotcoming with me!”
Panic flashes in Ulric’s eyes, a wild, animalistic fear. He reaches for her arm. “Cassia, please—”
That was his mistake.
In a movement almost too fast to follow, Cassia bends down, snatching a hefty, fist-sized rock from the stream bank, and swings it upward. It connects with the side of Ulric’s head with a sickening thunk. His eyes roll back in his head and he crumples to the ground like a sack of stones, out cold. Silas and I stand frozen in shock. Everything was suddenly, deafeningly, quiet besides the trickling of the water.
Cassia drops the rock, her chest heaving. She looks from Ulric’s prone form to us, her face pale. “I had to,” she whispers, her voice trembling. “I’m s-sorry! He wouldn’t have let me go.”
Her breath shudders, and for a moment I’m worried she might collapse. Instead, her eyes find mine. The fury that had hardened her expression simply bleeds away, revealing the young, vulnerable woman beneath.
“Beatrice. Take care of yourself, okay?”
Before I can respond, she closes the distance and wraps her arms around me in a quick, tight hug. I stiffen in surprise fora second, then awkwardly pat her back. The gesture feels odd, but…nice. I’m not typically a hugger, but we’d been captives together, however briefly.
“You could…you could come with us,” I find myself saying as she pulls away. The offer is out before I even fully think it through. “Wherever we’re going. It’s got to be safer than being alone.”
Cassia gives me a small, sad smile, shaking her head. “Nowhere is safe for me here. Not with Wolves and Orcs and…him.” She gestures vaguely, at the unconscious Ulric. “I need to get far away. Somewhere they can’t follow. The Sky Cities are my only shot.” She squeezes my arm. “But, thank you.”
Silas crouches beside Ulric, checking his pulse and the already-swelling lump on his temple. “He’ll live,” he grunts after a moment. “He’ll have a hell of a headache, but he’ll live.”
Cassia nods, swallowing hard. “Tell him…tell him I’m sorry. But I meant what I said.” She gives me one last, quick squeeze, and then turns, sprinting down the path and disappearing.
I look from the unconscious wolf-man to Silas. “We’re just…leaving him here?”
Silas stands, brushing the dirt from his hands. A faint, grim smile touches his lips. “He’ll wake up. He can track her if he wants. She made her choice.” He looks at me, his dark eyes holding mine.
He doesn’t say anything else. He just shoulders his own pack and offers me a hand up. After a moment’s hesitation, I take it, my mind reeling. A part of me whispers I should feel worse about leaving Ulric passed out on the river bank. But that whisper is drowned out by a sudden, roaring clarity.
Cassia just took her freedom. She saw a cage in Ulric’s offer and she broke it with a single, decisive blow. I feel something unlock inside me—a fierce, breathtaking admiration. He wastrying to take her choice away, and she stopped him. It’s that simple.
And I will not feel guilty for a man facing the consequences of trying to cage a woman.
Yet, as we walked away, I couldn’t help but wonder what my own choice would be.
The grasslands stretch out before us, a sea of whispering gold under a vast, open sky. The air is clean here, smelling of wild thyme. The sheer expanse of land should feel freeing. But a different kind of tightness has taken root in my chest, one that has everything to do with the large, silent Minotaur walking beside me.
His voice when he’d told Rurak he loved me kept replaying over and over in my head..She is mine because I love her. The words were on an endless loop, each time sending a fresh, warm shock through my system.
I’d spent so long seeing him as the enemy. He wasn’t what I’d thought. He wasn’t just a barbarian captor. He was patient and kind. He’s shown more restraint than any man I’d ever known. He’d let me go, even though it must have killed him. He’d followed me, not to drag me back, but to keep me safe. The realization was a slow, warm thaw in the icy fortress I’d built around my heart.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of violet and fire, Silas pointed toward a small copse oftrees. “We’ll camp there and we’ll make Havenmoor by midday tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. The word lands with a finality that steals my breath.
The words should have sent a jolt of pure joy through me. Home. I’m so close. But my actual feelings are far more complicated now.
We work together in a comfortable silence, gathering wood for a small fire, laying out our bedrolls a respectful distance apart. I notice Silas has even managed to bring along my bedroll and belongings left behind when the Orcs captured me and a warm, affectionate ache blooms in my chest. I watch his hands as they move, unable to stop my thoughts from wandering.
I think of the farm boys back home. The fumbling, hurried romps in the hayloft, all groping hands and panting breaths. It had been fun. I’d let them milk me, taste me with their hot and greedy mouths, and it had felt good. A simple transaction of pleasure.
But the thought of Silas doing it…Gods. I want to feel his big, calloused hands cup the heavy weight of me again, and guide his mouth to my nipple. Would his touch be rough or soft? Would he drink from me like a man dying of thirst? The image was so vivid, so shockingly intimate, that I shift on my bedroll, a sudden, aching warmth pooling low in my belly.
“You’re quiet,” he observes, his voice a low rumble that vibrates in the space between us and drags me out of the kind of thoughts I definitely shouldn’t be having.
“Thinking,” I say quickly, pulling my knees to my chest as if that could hide the flush burning up my face.
“About tomorrow?”
