Page 18 of Unforgivable

His eyes narrow. "Is your wolf a solid color?" he asks with humor dancing in his eyes.

"Maybe," I sniff. She's not. She grey, white, with a little bit of black tossed in. Mottled and muted, just like my mom. I pet the side of Wheat's neck absently. I haven't seen my family since dinner the night I screwed up my life forever. It feels surreal, as if I just fell into this nightmare reality and can't wake up from it. What are my parents thinking? Do they know what happened or where I am? How are they? How are Penny and Tyler? Penny is twelve, old enough to be affected by all of this. Tyler is only three. He won't understand what happened to me, but he'll know that I'm gone. Will he feel abandoned?

"Hey?" Rhet moves a lock of my hair out of my face. "Let me saddle up Wheat, and we'll go on a little tour, OK?"

I nod, not meeting those blue eyes that seem to see everything.

Thankfully, Rhet saddling a stubborn horse is a perfect distraction. I watch, giggling, as he curses under his breath. "Fucking, hell, bonebag, breath."

"What is she doing?" I ask.

"Holding her air and puffing out her chest so that the saddle can't be cinched tightly. She tends to do this if she hasn't been ridden in a few days."

"You haven't been riding her?"

"Naw. She's used more often during round-ups. Usually, I run the ranch on paws. It's faster, and I trust myself more than this stubborn nag. Ha!" he shouts, tightening the buckle four more slots. "Gotcha."

Wheat knickers irritably.

"Yeah, yeah. Stand back, pretty. I'm going to lead her out into the yard. Then we'll mount her there, OK?"

"Sure?" I ask him. I'm suddenly really seeing how stupid this move might be.

Rhet just smiles. I move back, and he opens Wheat's stall, tugging her reins to get her moving. "She's brilliant when she wants to be," he promises.

I follow behind as he walks her out. I'm unprepared when he suddenly grabs me by the waist and hoists me up sideways on the horse. He mounts so swiftly that I only have time to let out an undignified squeak before he is right behind me. Wheat shifts, dancing on her hooves, and I clutch her mane like a liferaft.

Rhet rearranges me so that I am draped over his lap. My bum is nestled right between his legs, and I can feel the poking.

"Sorry, just ignore that," he mumbles. "Ah, how do you feel up here?"

"She's big."

"She is, but you're doing great. How do your hips feel?"

"Fine," I say doubtfully. I snuggle into Rhet out of necessity. I didn't realize just how high from the ground the back of a horse is.

We ride out at what I suspect is a slower speed than usual. The trail Rhet takes us down is worn, packed dirt. It's reasonably smooth, though, so the jostling of Wheat doesn't aggravate my hips much.

"Relax and enjoy the view, pretty," Rhet says in my ear. I do what he says, realizing that his body moves in perfect sync with Wheat. As long as I pretend to be boneless and let Rhet and Wheat do the work, then we'll all be okay.

"That's where Ezra wants to build a shearing shed," Rhet indicates a low, flat spot down the gently sloped hill. Just past that is a large pond, and past that, I can see a few trees and a fence that’s so long it disappears into the distance.

"We moved Rocky out there. See if we can get a couple more calves outta him this spring."

We ride for a few more minutes, just enjoying the nice weather and the pretty scenery. I had never really thought about Genom before. If they own this much land, then it sets these males apart from the rest of the pack.

"Do you own all this, Rhet?"

"I was wondering when you'd ask. Yeah, it's ours, not the pack's. Alpha Jax wasn't thrilled when we wanted to buy it, but they used that money to fund that addition they put on the school and some other things."

"Wow, I like the addition," I tease him. "Now, we have three gymnasiums."

He chuckles against my back. "Which is ridiculous. There's what, four hundred students that go to the school?"

"Yup." It is ridiculous, but building it supplied pack workers with jobs for a while. At least, that's how my dad justified it when I asked him.

I sniffle. My dad.

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