Page 65 of Savage Reins
"I can do this part alone," I tell him as we prepare to leave the office. "You've done enough."
"No."Batya's voice carries an authority I haven't heard in years. "We do this together or not at all. You're my daughter, Mira. I won't let you carry this burden by yourself."
Gratitude and guilt war in my chest as I look at him—this broken man who has sacrificed everything for a dream that never quite materialized. He deserves better than a daughter who drags him into criminal conspiracies. But the world has never been interested in what people deserve.
The ranch sleeps under a canopy of stars that seem impossibly distant. Rusalka stands silhouetted against the pasture fence, her head raised as if sensing our presence. In thirty-six more hours, she'll run the race of her life under another horse's name, carrying all our hopes and lies across the finish line.
If we survive long enough to make it happen.
The thought follows me back to the house, where I lie awake until dawn, clutching the false papers against my chest and listening to the wind howl through gaps in the window frame. By tomorrow night, we'll either be free or dead. There's no middle ground left—only the terrible mathematics of survival, calculated in blood and betrayal and the kind of desperate courage that grows in places where hope has learned to hide.
25
RENAT
The vodka burns down my throat, but not enough to kill the memory of her face when she looked at me today. Not enough to erase the way Mira recoiled when I stepped toward the fence, as if I carried plague instead of protection. The bottle sits half-empty on the rickety table beside my cot, and I stare at it through the dim light filtering through cracked windows.
The bunkhouse has seen better days. Mice scurry through the walls at night, their claws scratching against insulation that hasn't been replaced since the Soviet era. This place is dying, room by room, board by board. Everything here is dying.
Including whatever was growing between Mira and me.
I take another drink and let the alcohol pool in my stomach, a familiar warmth that promises to dull the edges of thoughts I can't afford to have. The punching bag hangs from the central rafter, swaying slightly following my intense workout. I installed it three days ago, needing something to hit that wouldn't bleed or beg or crumple to the dirt with eyes that stopped seeing. She'd only hate me more if I took my anger out on someone instead of this bag.
And the energy I've already spent doesn't feel like enough. I rise, setting my glass aside, and take another swing at it.
The bag takes my first punch without complaint, leather groaning under knuckles that have split too many other things. I hit it again, harder, feeling the chain creak against the beam above. Again. The sound echoes through the empty space—thud, creak, thud, creak—a rhythm that matches the pulse hammering behind my temples.
She used to watch me work with the horse. Used to stand close enough that I could smell the soap in her hair, the earth on her clothes. Now she keeps fifty meters between us, minimum. As if proximity might contaminate her with whatever darkness lives in my bones.
But I'm not a monster.
I hit the bag until my shoulders ache and my hands start bleeding through the tape. Until the vodka and violence combine into something that resembles numbness. But when I stop, when the bag settles into stillness, her voice comes back to me.
The horse senses violence.
As if I'm some rabid animal that needs to be contained. As if the blood on my hands marks me as permanently unfit for anything clean or good or worth saving. But it was there before I touched her, before she told me she was falling for me. Before I fell in love with her.
But maybe she's right.
The thought sits in my chest. Maybe I am exactly the monster she sees when she looks at me now. Maybe there's no washing off fifteen years of Vetrov business, no coming back from the things I've done in service to a name that was never really mine.
I drink until the bottle empties and the room tilts sideways. Then I stumble outside, needing air that doesn't taste of failure and self-pity.
The ranch spreads out under a moonless sky that prophesies dark, ominous things. The main house sits dark except for a single light burning in what must be Mira's room. I can see her silhouette moving behind thin curtains, and the sight hits me with a longing so fierce it makes my knees weak.
When did I start wanting things I can't have? When did I stop being satisfied with orders and violence and the simple certainty of knowing my place in the world's ugliness?
The paddock draws me forward, my feet finding the path without conscious thought. Rusalka stands near the water trough, her coat silver in the starlight. She lifts her head when I approach, ears forward, alert but not afraid. At least one female on this ranch doesn't see me as a threat.
"Easy, girl," I murmur, letting her catch my scent. "Just me."
She allows me to stroke her neck, muscle shifting under my palm. She's beautiful—all power and grace and potential wrapped in dark hide. The kind of creature that deserves better than being used as currency in other people's wars.
Footsteps crunch across gravel, and I turn to see Mira approaching with a bucket of fresh water. She freezes when she spots me, her whole body going rigid with tension.
"I told you to stay away from her." Her voice cuts through the night air, sharp enough to draw blood.
"I'm not hurting her."
