Soon I can feel her heart thundering, and her pace slacking.

Horses can only gallop full out for a couple of miles. They can go a long way in a day. But they’re not tireless.

In fact, the animal with the greatest endurance is a human. You could run a horse into the ground, if you had unlimited time and distance to chase it. We’re not as fast as them, or as strong. But there’s no creature more tenacious than us.

Star will tire before I do. I knew that before we started. And that’s why I already knew the outcome of this struggle.

There was no battle between Star and me. I already knew who would win.

That’s why I approached her with gentleness and patience. I wasn’t afraid of her, or afraid she might beat me.

I only had to show her that I’m not her enemy, not her adversary.

I ride Star at top speed until she tires, then I let her canter around and around the pen. Finally she drops to a trot, and then a walk. She’s tired—not beaten and broken down. Just exhausted enough to be at peace with me on her back.

* * *

17

Riona

Raylan is out in that pen for hours.

I find myself drawn back to the window again and again to watch him.

I have Bo’s laptop, and I was able to access my personal files. Not the ones for all of Griffin, Briar, Weiss, because they don’t allow remote access from unknown IP addresses. But anything I scanned in myself I can still open, read, and edit.

So there should be plenty for me to do. Plenty to hold my attention.

Instead, I’m back at the kitchen window, watching Raylan gallop around and around that pen with infinite patience.

He doesn’t seem to be trying to calm the horse. Actually, it looks like he’s urging it to run faster. I guess that tires it out sooner.

I don’t know why I feel so agitated, watching him.

I’m impressed by his patience, and by his skill in riding the horse bareback, balancing flawlessly, barely even shifting when the horse abruptly startles or turns, trying to throw him off.

And yet . . . I feel a sort of anxiousness, too. Almost an antipathy toward Raylan. I look at that beautiful, wild horse, and I almost want it to fling him off, so it can kick its way out of the pen and go thundering off across the field again.

That’s an immature impulse, I know.

It’s just a horse. It was bred and raised for work.

But there’s a stubbornness in me, a contentiousness, that wants to see that horse rebel. I hate to see it broken.

I force myself to sit down at the kitchen table again, to return to the endless rows of data in my purchase agreement spreadsheet. There’s a couple of numbers that aren’t adding up in the deposit column, and I’m trying to figure out which figures are causing the discrepancy.