Chapter 246
Belle wanted an audience. She yanked the left rein, steering the galloping horse directly toward the rest area where Isolde and Effie were sitting. She wanted to kick up dust in Isolde’s face. She wanted to show off.
As Belle approached the fencing, she pulled back violently on both reins, trying to force the horse into a dramatic, sliding stop. The painted stallion was not a trained stunt horse. The sudden, brutal pressure on the bit caused it excruciating pain.
The horse let out a horrific, ear-piercing scream.
It planted its front hooves and bucked violently, its hind legs kicking high into the air. Belle lost her grip instantly. She shrieked as she was launched over the horse’s neck, flying through the air before slamming hard into the grassy shoulder of the track.
But the nightmare didn’t end there.
The stallion, now completely blind with panic, scrambled to its feet. It didn’t run down the track — it bolted sideways, crashing straight through the low wooden fence and charging directly toward the bench. Directly toward Effie.
Effie froze. Her eyes went wide with terror, her small body paralyzed by the sight of the massive beast bearing down on her.
Isolde’s pupils dilated. Her heart stopped in her chest. She lunged forward, throwing her arms around Effie and twisting her body to shield her daughter, exposing her own back to the crushing weight of the hooves.
A blur of dark movement shot into her peripheral vision.
Grayson had been watching Belle’s reckless riding with a growing sense of dread. He saw the horse buck, his eyes already tracking Belle’s trajectory as she was thrown — and then widened in horror as the panicked stallion veered off course, heading straight for the bench. His mind screamed. He wasn’t thinking of Belle’s fall, or Isolde’s past. He saw a child, his own child, in the path of a runaway beast. He moved.
He slammed into Isolde’s shoulder with the force of a freight train, knocking her and Effie out of the horse’s path. The impact was brutal, sending a searing pain through his ribs, but his hand instinctively clutched at the crimson fabric of Isolde’s jumpsuit for a fraction of a second as they tumbled to the ground.
𝘞𝘩𝘢t 𝖾v𝗲𝗿𝘺𝗼ո𝖾 𝗂𝘴 𝗿𝖾𝗮𝗱і𝘯𝗀 𝘰𝗻 𝘨𝗮l𝗇o𝗏𝘦𝘭𝗌.c𝗈𝘮
A sickening, heavy crunch echoed through the air.
Isolde scrambled to her knees, clutching Effie to her chest, and looked up.
Grayson was lying on the dirt ten feet away. He had thrown himself between them and the horse. The stallion’s heavy shoulder had clipped him mid-air, sending him tumbling like a ragdoll. He lay completely motionless, his face pale, his breathing shallow.
Club staff rushed the field, shouting and waving their arms to corral the panicked horse away. The area fell into a terrifying, ringing silence.
Then a piercing scream shattered the quiet.
“Gray! Gray, no!”
Belle scrambled up from the grass. She had a scrape on her cheek and a tear in her riding pants, but she was otherwise unbroken. She threw herself onto the dirt beside Grayson, sobbing hysterically, grabbing his shirt and shaking him.
“Don’t die! Gray, please look at me!”
.