He grins crookedly at her words of ‘freeing him from chains of monogamy.’ “Funny, I’d think you’d be one to like chains,” he nearly mutters the joking words to himself— for indeed Nyx would be wild enough to play such games with a stallion. “She must be some woman.” His grin fades and he gives her no reply. Assuredly Rexanna had quite the siren’s call for him. An unconscious, small sigh leaves his thick nostrils.

The brief relief that had flooded him at not being the foals’ sire flees him as she mentions that she’d be proud to have him as their sire. Something unnamed wave of emotion overtakes his barrel and bubbles in his stomach. Was it pride? Guilt at his relief of not being their sire? He would have been their father were they his. In fact, he had been there before the sire when they were born, had he not? So, then, what was the source of this self-reproach? Perhaps he truly wanted to be their father, perhaps he wanted to have a foal by Nyx. She certainly was a mare to be reckoned with (in battle and in bed). And she’d managed a joke and grin out of him, despite his rancorous mood.

As these irritatingly confusing thoughts roiled in his brain, he turned his head to nip at the itchy and healing claw-wounds on his shoulder. Ears tilted backwards at the sweetly satisfying sting that lit his nerve endings as his large teeth grabbed the pink new skin. His thick hide rippled as he swung his head back towards the silver mare, “You call it ‘chains of monogamy,’ Nyx. But I call it security in knowing that it’s my ‘fruity lions’ that swell your sides.” There. That was the source of his confusion. He had wanted (and thought) he had been the sire.

But she had let some other stud sow his wild seeds. It was a grossly unfamiliar feeling. And an uncomfortable one.

Regardless, it was not him judging her lifestyle. Nor condemning it. He was trying to reconcile his place in her tumultuous, battle lust world. But he could not, for it was not his way.

At her query after how things were going with Rexanna, his thick ears tilted back and he turned his hardening cobalt eyes away from the silver warrior. “Not good.” The words were out before he could stop them. He supposed there was no fear of judgement from Nyx, not when he’d already been inside her. “She assumed, as I did, that your foals were mine…” His low voice trailed off, for he did not want to place blame on his voltaic friend. The blame was his alone. But pregnant Nyx had been the trigger on a preloaded gun.

“And now… it’s a mess.” (read: ‘I’m a mess.”)

TEMBOVU

Beware the weight of a vengeful soul.