The child falters, his small head dipping out of sight beneath the waves.

Fatigue fills his veins with liquid lead, but Rade is swift and decisive when he acts to save the colt. Ignoring to protest of his aching muscles, the stallion twists his body around, plunging his muzzle into the sea to grasp the tendrils of the colt's forelock in his teeth. With a sharp, upward jerk of his neck, he heaves the yearling's head back above the surface of the water. Conquistador snorts a harsh breath that expels the remaining seawater from his lungs, and relief thaws the rigid tension that grips Rade, loosening his jaw enough that he can release his burden. For a single moment of vulnerability, the hard lines of the stallion's face soften. He urges the youth closer to his body, where he will be sheltered from the worst of the waves' battering, and encourages him to rest his muzzle on his withers.

The sight of the weakened child slumped against him, and the shallowness of the breaths that pass through Conquistador's lips, awakens a strange new sense of desperation in Rade. Throughout his reckless childhood and well into his wild, impulsive adulthood, Rade had felt invulnerable, immortal. It is only now, plagued by constant concern for the child, that he is beginning to grasp how truly fragile a life is. In the days since he'd acquired the boy, the palomino stallion has watched him waste away, brown eyes listless and dull, and tawny coat stretching tighter over his small frame so that his ribs stood out like dunes in the sand. He was dying. Conquistador was dying, and there was nothing that Rade could do to save him - so he had staked both of their lives on the barest glimmer of hope. It was a long chance, almost no chance at all - but he could do no less for his brother.

And for his father.

Agony twists Rade's expression, the thought of Debonaire like a physical blow to the chest; stealing the breath from his lungs, and aching in the hollow where his heart resides. Rade had always admired his sire, though he had accepted long ago that they were destined to be different men. Debonaire had been a charming, charismatic man; his open personality had won him no shortage of allies to stand at his side. Rade was a cynical creature, a closed creature, with an abrasive personality that had earned him many enemies and no friends. Debonaire had seemed to exist apart from the darkness that plagued men's hearts; immune to the envy and spite that had fueled the islands' endless wars.

Rade had been consumed by it.

For that reason it feels unnatural for the golden stallion to clamber up the Atlantean beach with a purpose other than conquest, strange to attempt to appear as non-threatening as possible. His subconscious self wars against the tolerance of a stranger taking up residence in his father's kingdom, chafes beneath the simple but perverse act of lowering his head in submission to another man. Only Rade's concern for the Conquistador, who stands so close to his brother that their shoulders brush in a feather-light touch, restrains him from his natural, and criminal, urges. Where Debonaire has gone, he is incapable of caring that another has claimed his life and his home here, and that his harem has apparently moved on without a backward glance. Like Rade, he was beyond redemption.

But his youngest son could still be saved.

Amber eyes raking the concealing shadows of the jungle, Rade seeks a familiar face, a pair of eyes that will widen in recognition, while his body braces for the inevitable confrontation.

stallion // mongrel // 15.1hh // 5 // palomino roan // reba
debonaire x neassa