Chapter 15 #2
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Depends on how long you make me sit on this horse,” I said, trying to mask how I really felt, although I wasn’t joking. My thighs weren’t exactly loving the ride.
His laugh rolled through me, deep and genuine, vibrating through his chest where it pressed against my back. After that, we rode in easy silence, another piece of that hard wall around him gone, gifting me a slice of the real him.
The farther we travelled, the more the world shifted, the remnants of the city giving way to the scarred wasteland beyond.
The apocalyptic truth of our reality returned like a tide, washing away the fragile peace I’d been clinging to.
Bones, shattered buildings, blackened ground. All the markers of a war still raging.
And through it all, I couldn’t stop thinking about the man at my back. The one I’d once thought the cause of it all. The one who, it turned out, had been trying to save us instead. The tension between us shifted like the landscape itself. Rising and falling with every change in scenery.
Each time we passed the devastation left behind by the dark ones, I could feel his mood darken like the air just before the storm, and the tension at my back only added to it.
It was as if he carried the ghosts of every ruined town inside him.
I imagined what it must have been like to watch his own kingdom being plagued by the attack.
To know that his people had died not by a stranger’s hand, but by their own.
That guilt… it must have carved something deep inside him.
The farther we rode, the more the destruction faded, replaced by something almost sacred. Nature reclaimed the world here, wild and untamed, as though the mountains themselves had the power to repel the unnatural.
The deeper we rode into the wilderness, the more the air changed.
I couldn’t help but breathe in deep, basking in the scents of fresh pine and earth.
It was such a contrast from the towns I’d seen, which seemed permanently doused in the stench of death and destruction.
Birds were still absent, yet even their silence felt alive, reverent somehow.
And for the first time in years, I felt a flicker of peace.
Maybe it was the sunlight streaking through the canopy or maybe it was the quiet strength of the man at my back, his steady breathing a constant presence against me.
We followed the same mountain trail for miles.
What began as open, rolling land dotted with hardy shrubs and wild grasses soon narrowed into dense forest. Towering firs and larches stretched toward the sky, their scent sharp and grounding.
Unfortunately, any hope of enjoying the scenery dwindled quickly as I wriggled in the saddle again, desperate to relieve the ache blooming in my backside.
A low huff sounded behind me. Then a quiet, amused tsk.
“Is something wrong?” His voice was rough velvet, threaded with humor.
“Well, Mr. Horsey Leather Pants, I’m glad you asked,” I grumbled before informing him, “I’m not used to riding a horse or the chafing that apparently comes with it.”
What came next was a sound so rare, so unexpected, that I actually gasped. He laughed, and I mean, really laughed. I whipped around, to catch the last moments and holy hell, he looked sinfully handsome, and I was glad I was sitting as he would have undoubtedly made me weak at the knees.
“We shall stop, so that you may reprieve your ass,” he said, still chuckling, and in response I groaned but didn’t argue.
A moment later, I felt him shift behind me.
Strong hands slid around my waist, firm and steady as he lifted me down as though I weighed nothing.
My boots touched the ground, but my legs refused to cooperate, the laugh had really made me weak at the knees.
Painful pins and needles prickled through my thighs as blood rushed back to where it had clearly gone on strike.
He caught me before I could crumple, one hand braced at my waist, the other hovering near my arm like he didn’t quite trust me to stand. His breath brushed my temple as he muttered something under his breath. Something too quiet to catch, lost beneath the crunch of gravel underfoot.
When I finally steadied, he took Acelin’s reins and led the stallion to the nearby creek for a drink. I followed, limping slightly and rubbing my thighs, wincing every time my fingers brushed the tender skin.
“Where are you going?” he asked when I started to veer off.
“Don’t worry,” I called over my shoulder, trying not to sound suspicious, like I would be foolish enough to try to run away. We were well past that now. “I won’t go far.”
In truth, I was desperate, and there were some things a girl simply couldn’t announce to a King. Like the need to duck behind a wide tree, yank down my pants, and sigh in sheer relief when relieving my bladder.
However, the moment of peace was short-lived as one look at the red welts marring my skin made me groan.
“Perfect,” I muttered, “Royal-level humiliation, incoming.” I found a handful of broad leaves to clean up, then shuffled a few steps away, keeping my pants low so the cool mountain air could soothe the sting.
“What are—”
“Ah!” I shrieked, spinning around and covering myself as best I could when I found Atlas standing there, half-hidden behind the tree. His expression was somewhere between confusion and poorly suppressed amusement.
“Oh, I—” he started, voice rough with something I couldn’t place.
“Do you mind?!” I snapped, turning redder than the marks on my thighs, but that was when he noticed them too, as his eyes narrowed in on my sore skin.
“Just er… go back to Acelin… I’ll be a… second,” I mumbled, as I fought to yank my pants up shamefully.
My cheeks burned hotter than the raw skin between my thighs.
I could already feel the story this humiliation would tell when I was old and grey, if I lived that long.
The time a King caught me squatting in the woods.
But my suggestion to leave me didn’t penetrate because apparently, the King had other plans.
“Wait, what are you doing?!” I blurted as he strode toward me with the purposeful grace that only made everything worse. My fingers froze on the waistband when his hand covered mine, large and warm, stopping me from pulling the jeans up.
“Atlas…” I hissed, but the rest died in my throat at what he was doing. Even the forest seemed to still around us.
It was his smoldering eyes that stole my breath, they were impossible to misread. It wasn’t lust, not exactly. It was something far more dangerous. A mixture of concern and something deeper, something that made my stomach twist and my heart race, all at once.
Every nerve in my body screamed at the absurdity of it. And yet, there he was, unflinching, as if this was exactly where he was supposed to be and this was exactly what he wanted to do.
Because the King of The?kós, warrior, commander, impossible man…
Lowered to his knees.