Broken by the Horde King (Horde Kings of Dakkar #4) - Zoey Draven Page 0,34

day.

Riding Roon felt familiar. But Kiran had been right…the pace at which he and the darukkars pushed their pyrokis was something I wouldn’t have been prepared for on my own. Even with my experience, I felt the muscles in my body screaming. My back ached from holding myself away from Kiran, my arms shook from where they were looped around Roon’s long neck, my inner thighs burned—and I was eternally grateful I’d remembered to wear my riding trews.

When the sun was low on the horizon, casting golden light across the beautiful wild lands of the south, Kiran gave a gruff order to his darukkars and to Roon. Immediately, our pace lessened. The whipping wind wasn’t so loud in my ears and my cheeks stung and tingled, as did every part of my exposed skin.

“We can keep going,” I told Kiran, already sensing that he’d slowed for my sake. We’d stopped twice that day, for brief moments of reprieve and for me to relieve myself behind grassy hills we passed. “I’m fine.”

“You are not,” he replied. “We will ease our pace.”

Part of me breathed a sigh of relief.

The other part knew that the sooner we reached his horde, the better. Because it meant I wouldn’t have to be in such close proximity with him. Even now, I felt his thighs tight around my hips. When we were riding, I felt the shifting of his hard body against mine, the way his strong arms tightened around me as he held the reins, though I’d done my best to limit the inevitable contact.

Now that we had slowed to a gentle walking pace—a reprieve that Roon also seemed grateful for—I lifted my hand to my hair, feeling the wild tangle of it. Sighing, I tried to brush through it with my fingers and then started to plait it. Though it was difficult, I managed to braid it and wrapped a piece of cordage I had tucked in my pocket around the end. Even still, wispy tendrils I hadn’t managed to tame drifted in front of my eyes and I tucked those behind my ears.

Belatedly, I realized my mistake. Because, with my hair plaited, most of my back was exposed to him, given I only wore my bandeau wrapped around my breasts. I had taken off my furs and draped them over Roon’s neck when the afternoon had heated up.

His touch came. He dragged his fingertip—and his dulled claw—down the jagged, puckered scar that ran down my shoulder blade before disappearing beneath the fabric of my bandeau.

“What is this?” he rasped. I could almost hear his frown.

My jaw clenched tight and I shifted forward, separating his touch from my body. I ignored the way my skin tingled, how I had to suppress a shiver from his gentleness.

“Nothing,” I replied.

I would never tell him how I got it. Not only did I suspect he’d grow livid with the information…the way I’d received the scar had been foolish and dangerous, the decision based on anger and hurt. I was also ashamed of it, just as I was ashamed of my actions—and all the ones surrounding that time of my life, in the year after he’d left.

“You won’t tell me how you received it? It looks deep. The wound must have been—”

I still felt that aching, stinging pain sometimes. I didn’t need him to tell me how bad the wound had been.

“It was nothing,” I said again, my voice hardening.

I felt the sharp, hot breath from his nostrils spread over the back of the scar when he sighed in frustration.

I kept my gaze forward, over the grassy wild lands of the south. The runiri were shorter here than the stalks that grew by the sea but they still swayed with the wind. Perhaps the most uncomfortable observation was that I couldn’t see the sea. All my life, I had always smelled the salty air, felt the cold fronts that would blow in, heard the crashing of waves against the cliffs—a sound that lured me to sleep most nights.

Though we were still in the south lands, Drukkar’s Sea was nowhere to be seen. It had disappeared from view earlier in the afternoon. The air felt warmer, heavier. It even smelled different.

My heart ached with the knowledge I wouldn’t return to the sea for a whole season cycle. Already, I missed it, just as I missed my family. I had only ever seen my father cry when my mother died. But when I told him that Kiran had offered me