This was ridiculous. This was a horse. This was basic groundwork. She knew that. She did this with new horses, skittish ones, traumatized ones.
But watching him do it with no expectation, just presence, felt like watching something she wasn’t supposed to see.
She swallowed hard, forcing back her fear. See him, want him, allow him to find his way. She didn’t mean Jet. Breakneck eased one step forward.
Jet’s ears flicked again, nothing but a soft, wary curiosity.
“You don’t like men,” Breakneck murmured. “I get it. Most of them are assholes.”
Skull sputtered. “Hey.”
Boomer elbowed him. “He’s not wrong.”
Blair should have laughed. She didn’t.
Breakneck stayed loose, no tension in his hand, no force in his body. Jet stretched his neck, inch by inch, sniffing the air. Then, slowly, the gelding’s muzzle brushed Breakneck’s fingers.
Jet’s breath was warm against her hand and Breakneck against her pulse at the same time. Something inside her stuttered.
Breakneck simply let Jet touch him. Let the horse decide.
“Good,” he said softly. “You did good.”
The same words he’d murmured, barely above a whisper, after pulling off the impossible RPG shot. His focus was just as absolute here as it had been in the compound. A shiver went down her spine.
He was aware of everything, Jet’s breathing, her position, the space between them, just as he had been when that RPG threatened them all. He’d known where everyone was in real time, how to move, how to turn his body to take the blast in a way that spared her as much as possible.
Blair’s throat tightened.
Jet let his muzzle rest in Breakneck’s open palm for a moment, then bumped him once, a brief, testing nudge that would have flattened a less grounded man. Breakneck absorbed the impact like it was nothing.
“Yeah,” Breakneck murmured. “I’ve taken worse hits today. You’ll have to try harder.”
Blair could have sworn Jet huffed at that, the equine equivalent of a smirk.
She found herself smiling before she could stop it. She wiped it off her face just as fast.
Distance. Control. Caution. She was allowed to feel. She wasn’t allowed to be careless.
“Fine,” she said. “He likes you.” Her voice came out more ragged than she liked. “That’s saying something. He’s a beast when he’s on edge.”
Breakneck’s gaze flicked back to hers, something unreadable in it, a shadow, a question, and a wanting she could almost feel if she stared too long.
“Story of my life,” he said quietly.
Then he stepped away from Jet and turned toward the remount string without another word.
The distance fell back between them like a curtain.
But the image of that big, damaged warhorse breathing into Breakneck’s hand lodged somewhere under her sternum and refused to move.
The barn stretched long and high around her, rafters dark with age, the smell of hay and leather and animal heat hanging thick in the air. Hooves shifted in stalls, a chain rattled once and settled, the low creak of wood underscoring the quiet like a held breath.
From down the long stretch of barn, a horse whinnied so loud, Jet lifted his head and responded.
Talon. He had been Constable Stephen Sanchez’s mount.
The sound echoed off the timber beams, raw and lonely, the kind of call that carried more than impatience.
