Saving Me [MxM]

Chapter 26

He shouldn’t have let Cassidy get to him so much. He’d been doing perfectly well with her until their last shift, but Varian knew it was a lie before he finished thinking it. They’d never gotten along well, from the very first day he showed her around the store.

He’d just been hoping things would get better. That’d she’d get used to being around him after a little while. It hadn’t though, instead it’d gotten worse, until eventually he just couldn’t take it anymore.

Now her words hounded him as he stalked outside to the pasture, whistling for Cana. Many of his horses had shown up on the farmstead already, but there were a couple he hadn’t seen yet. Most notably, Cana, Epona, and the old half-blind gray mare.

Cana was usually the first horse back to the barn whenever he had to turn them out. Even Zephyr had returned, his demeanor much more calm, which lead Varian to believe the stallion had gotten what he’d wanted after all. Another headache he didn’t want to deal with right now. He’d known the risks of setting them free for the storm. It was always a risk to set a stallion out amongst fertile mares.

Part of him had been hoping though, that he wouldn’t have to. It was just sheer dumb luck that the storm had come and the mares had been in heat when they were. Should they show signs of foal later in the year, he knew he’d be in trouble.

“One problem at a time,” he sighed to himself, whistling for Cana one last time.

There was no excited answering whinny or thundering of hooves to alert him to the eager attention of his red roan gelding. His whistle rang out into silence, fading as it hit the barn. Chewing the inside of his cheek, Varian gave one last furtive glance around the property before he headed into the barn to saddle up another one of his horses.

First priority was to check the field. If Cana, Epona, and the gray mare didn’t return by the time dinner came around, he’d have to call Millie and tell her he wouldn’t be able to work for the next three days at the least. He wasn’t about to leave his horses to the wolves, many of which getting more active as the summer dipped closer to fall.

The mare he’d chosen was a young piebald paint. Her coat was black and white, and her mane and tail a mixture of the two trying to work together. She accepted the saddle and him as her rider easily enough, ears perking up and nostrils working as he spurred her off towards the field.

She shifted into a trot naturally, making him smile as she expressed her joy of being ridden. It was difficult to give equal attention to the horses for riding, since there were so many and only himself and Venerra to do it. Nathan wasn’t much for horseback riding, so Varian didn’t bring it up. Epona would probably be just as happy as the mare now should he change his mind.

That had Varian’s smile shifting into a scowl. Another female that didn’t listen to him most of the time. Except far more accepting.

Narrowing his eyes, Varian shook his head as Cassidy’s words came back to him. He shouldn’t be dwelling on it. But he couldn’t help it. Nathan had said that the people that cared about him didn’t care what he looked like. His race had never been a factor in his and Nathan’s relationship. Varian had been the first to even mention it when he’d asked Nathan to guess what ethnicity he was.

Even being half white, it didn’t matter. His father’s lineage came through strongly on him, as it did Todd. But Venerra had managed to escape the tan skin and Native features. She’d taken solely after his mother with her purely Dutch looks. At least life wouldn’t be difficult for her in that respect.

Varian’s thoughts were abruptly halted when he and the paint crest the hill that looked down into his field. What had once been a green carpet of maturing sweet corn was now a shredded and broken mass of plant fiber. More than half of the crop had been totally flattened by the storm, another good portion ripped from the ground and broken. What was left lay on the ground, kernels eaten and stalks halved.