Page 103 of Running on Empty

“Do you know what you’re doing or would you like me to show you?”

Her eyes danced with amusement as she faced my alpha down, but he just grabbed the brush.

“I’ve groomed plenty of horses before on our grandparents’ farm.”

“Then time to get to it,” she said before turning back again. “And as for you two—”

“We can help show Stevie the grooming process,” Jax interrupted smoothly.

“Working together,” Scarlett said, pointing the crop at us. “I like it.”

“I could show—” Ash started to say.

“You need to show me you can do as you’re told,” was all Scarlett would say in response.

I heard Ash grumbling as Jax opened the stall, slipping in through the small gap before gesturing for me to follow. It felt like Noddy sensed my nervousness, stamping his feet as I did so. But Jax reached out, whispering sweet nonsense to the horse in a familiar tone as he smoothed his hand down its neck. The beast’s muscles quivered for a moment, but when he produced a small apple from his pocket to offer to the horse, Noddy decided we were friends. He crunched the apple up in a few bites as Jax found a brush and handed it to me.

“Always with the grain of their hair, not against it,” he said, putting my fingers through the strap, then moving my hand as if I was grooming an imaginary horse. “Brushing them is good for circulation, gets rid of dead hairs, but mostly?” He stepped in closer and rubbed a hand down the horse’s flank. “It’s about bonding with them.”

“Reassuring the big flighty bastard that you’re friend not foe,” Ronan said with a nod, scratching the horse’s forelock. “This boy is pretty soft though, had a sweet life dealing with nervous kids. If they can get up on his back, you can groom him, omega.”

That complete confidence was what had me stepping forward, standing at first awkwardly by the horse’s side, before I lifted the brush and worked it down the Noddy’s back.

I knewwhat they were doing. They were trying to break me out of the cocoon I’d wrapped around myself, but even having a shower, leaving the cottage, didn’t do that much. When I slept and slept, I was just giving in to what I knew was true. There was this awful, grey numbness inside me that I had never expected to feel. It swallowed everything and everyone in its depths. Slicing Jack’s throat, Rock’s, that was all smoothed over by that internal haze. Snake, Blaine begging for mercy, that all went the same way. Even what they’d said, done, the way they responded when they… Raped me, I could say it now, because all emotion was gone somehow. I was raped, despite the fact I was more than willing to have sex with them, because I hadn’t consented to the way they did. My hand paused where it was, midway down Noddy’s spine and Ronan reached across, moving it again, as if showing me the path to take.

And he’d do so much more than that, I knew.

His eyes gleamed bright green, which should’ve warned me chaos was about to be unleashed. I should’ve forced my body between Noddy’s and his, as if the damn horse needed protecting. Ash surely would’ve. But I knew. I’d always know what Ronan would and wouldn’t do, the feel of him somehow embedded deeply inside me, his fingers tracing over the mating mark I’d left on him, reminding me of why.

And that’s what this was all about.

When I slept, I let my body, my mind rest, and that was needed so very much, but it also helped the grey fog grow until it threatened to subsume me too. But now, with no danger on the horizon, and none likely to come, I could breathe easily, each one coming deeper and deeper as Jax pressed his body into my back and Ronan guided my hand, the two of them helping me make the movements of grooming a horse until I could take over.

My body ached,rest having weakened muscles that were used to the strain, and when I stumbled out of the stable I thought, hoped that was it. But Scarlett smiled, her white teeth brilliant.

“Finished? Good, good, now grab a shovel. Those pretty Murphy alphas assure me that they have to clean horseshit out of each stall every day, so let's get started.”

Chapter60

Scarlett thought she was so fucking smart.

She wanted to buck me up out of the haze I was in, but as I stabbed the stable fork into the hay and shit, over and over, I realised she didn’t know.

I’d done this all before.

My life had been one long session of shovelling shit, metaphorically or actually, so putting me right back into it wasn’t the cathartic thing she thought it was. I wasn’t freed by the good sting of hard work. My mind wasn’t cleared just because my heart was pumping harder than it had in days. Instead it felt like my eyes ached from the muscles around them being clenched tight and my head wasn’t clear. My thoughts were like a length of rusty barbed wire, catching on themselves and everything else until they became a messy snarl.

But I didn’t stop.

Over and over, I’d pushed past my pain and anguish and just kept going, like I always had. Sweat rolled down my nose, dropping on the hay beneath, but I stabbed my fork into the soiled hay anyway.

“Stevie…”

I ignored that masculine voice, completely focused on what I was doing. My muscles screamed as I hoisted another load up, and then dropped it into the wheelbarrow, then I went back for another and another.

“Omega…”

Another masculine voice, but I ignored that too, wanting to finish this stupid fucking job. See shit through, that’s the instinct that I’d always stayed true to, keeping on keeping on until the task was done.

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