Though their refuge is dry and safe and even warm with their shared bodies' heat, Rade longs to find himself anywhere else but here, and contemplates whether he might have been wiser to brave the storm after all. Being cramped into such close quarters with a stranger was awkward and unpleasant enough, but the silence makes it worse, growing weightier with each passing moment until it presses on him far more suffocatingly than the walls surrounding them. More than once, his lips part tentatively, but the words he seeks evade him. Rade is unlike his father; he posesses no skill at forming a camaraderie with strangers. And he does not invite physical intimacy with them, such as he has been thrust into here. Regret is acerbic in his mind, but has not yet embittered his expression when Irina abruptly speaks.

It as if she has read his thoughts - Rade's amber gaze is sharp as it first cuts into her own, but softens as he reads sincerity in her eyes. No lurking deceit, no coy or suggestive mannerisms. She's just a girl who has been lonely for so long, that even his mute company seems a gift worthy of gratitude. And suddenly, though she's still a stranger with a jumble of syllables he cannot hope to pronounce for a name, Rade knows her. It has been a long time since he has ventured beyond the protective shell of his solitude, and even longer since he has sought any kind of comfort in the company of his own kind. Yet he recognizes these things for the simple guise that they are, bandages worn to conceal the festering wound of loneliness beneath the surface. Hers may not be the company he has longed for, but he is nevertheless glad that Irina is here. Glad that he does not have to weather this storm alone.

“You were abandoned here?”

His voice is sharp to conceal the pity that would otherwise seek to soften these words. Left with only shadows to keep her company. Left here to rot, just as Debonaire - and he - had abandoned his dam. It is unpleasant, this reminder of his own nature. Who was he to judge her previous captor, when he has shown little more care to those whom he had sworn to protect in the past? No man was perfect; even a flawless exterior concealed a character rife with inclusions. Rade was no better, he could offer Irina no better. The gratitude she had given him was sorely misplaced. That he had gone back for her was of little consequence; he would leave her for his own reasons in the end. Just as he had left Neassa. And Debonaire. And Styrke.

Only one thing had ever mattered enough to be held close, and he had cast that brotherhood away long before he had come to realize it.

stallion // mongrel // 15.1hh // 4 // palomino roan // reba
debonaire x neassa