Page 3 of Rough Riding Orc Cowboy

The male Beth would marry cleared his throat, and a hush fell over the room. Everyone peered back, but I already knew what they were discovering. The bride hadn't appeared. Still, anticipation thrummed through the air.

My stomach flipped over, and nausea clawed up my throat. I should not be here. She had chosen. She was happy.

I forced my hands into fists, my nails digging into my palms as I swallowed the urge to stay, to watch, to see her in her white dress, walking toward a male who would never cherish her like I could. Who would never feel the soul-deep connection with her I already did.

Hecouldnot. That feeling was only for true mates.

My vision blurred as I turned on my heel, my boots thudding on the floorboards as I made myself walk toward the door. Each step took me further from the life I was never meant to have.

I could not watch my mate marry another.

I could not stay to hear them speak their vows.

I could not let my heart finish breaking.

The side door led to a wide dirt path along the structure, and as I slipped through it, the cool, dusky evening air hit my overheated skin. The last breath I took inside the barn had been shaky, but I held it and used it to shove the pain down deep.

I would not look back.

I spied movement out of the corner of my eye, a flicker of white slipping through the shadows, hurrying toward the back of the barn. Long blonde hair. A petite,curvy frame. That same slant to her cheekbones I’d been unable to get out of my mind.

Beth.

My pulse roared like a storm crashing across the plain.

She was fleeing with her dress bunched up in her hands, and her delicate feet stuffed into white shoes with impossibly high spikes on the back. Her hair trailed across her spine in a loose, glorious, moonlit wave.

Why wasn’t she walking down the aisle to marry the male inside? She couldn’t be running away. Maybe she had to go to the bathroom. Or she was hungry, and she wanted a snack.

She turned, looking back, and the moonlight highlighted her pretty features. Despair shone in her lovely eyes.

No bathroom. No snack.

Shewasleaving.

My mate, running through the dark like a whisper of something I'd never deserve. I was torn between chasing a dream or turning away before it could destroy me any further. She wasn’t running to me. She wasn’t mine to take. But if she had no one else…

The urge to protect her—saveher—surged through me. I would not steal her from another male, but if she was rejecting him, that was a completely different story. Running away meant she was no longer with anyone else.

I barely had time to think before my feet weremoving, closing the distance between us before she could disappear into the dark.

Chapter 2

Beth

Six Months Ago

“You'll marry my business partner, Bradley, in six months,” my father said from where he sat at his antique mahogany desk that had belonged to his great-grandfather. He didn’t even look up from the papers arranged neatly on the gleaming surface in front of him as he made the pronouncement. He said the words as if this was just another business transaction, another deal signed in ink rather than carved into my flesh and bone.

Ringing filled my ears. “Excuse me? Did you saymarry?” I could barely scrape the word up my throat.

The grandfather clock standing in the corner of his study ticked out a steady, suffocating rhythm as I sat inthe chair he'd pointed to when I arrived, trying not to snarl my hands on my lap. Birds chirped in the gardens beyond the open windows overlooking the sea, and staff members moved through the halls, talking in muted voices. All normal things in this household. But I felt like the last echoes of my life were raking paths across my skin.

He hadn’t looked at me once since summoning me to this room, not even when he made his stunning statement.

“Don’t be shocked.” His cold gaze finally shifted to me before returning to his papers. “You’re twenty-seven. It’s past time you married. It’s a fine match. Bradley’s a successful man with wealth and considerable influence. He’s been a colleague for many years.”

His silver hair shouted that out. Not that I cared about the age difference. I barely knew him. I certainly didn’t want to marry him.

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