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under the round bottom of the child she balanced on her hip. The woman shot a hurried glance upward at the cloud spitting sparks, then sped up, tearing across that field for the shallow crossing, legs pumping.
    â€œWe have to warn them,” I said, starting to rise.
    He shoved me down hard, his hand splayed on my back. “Stay low!”
    â€œWe can’t just watch this! We have to do something.” I pushed his arm away and surged to my knees. “They’re nothing but kids and women; we have—”
    He threw himself on top of me.
    â€œLet me go!” I bucked under him.
    â€œStop it!” he hissed in my ear. “These are Raha’ells! They’ll smell the horses soon and they’ll cut back into the forest. My warriors will be in the rear of the retreat. It’s our way.” His thighs were weights on mine, his arms steel brackets, his jaw a hard pressure on my neck. “My pack knows these woods better than I know Creemore.”
    My gut dropped at his use of the possessive pronoun.
    It plunged further when a moment later the tail of the Raha’ells came crashing through the undergrowth. Contrary to Trowbridge’s words, they were no brawny warriors bringing up the rear, and the pack did not as one veer off into the woods again. Instead, they ran for the river and certain ambush.
    â€œJesus, where are they?” Trowbridge’s tone was raw as flayed skin. “Where are my warriors?”
    Dead, I thought in sudden instinct.
    I huddled into myself, my lover’s weight a stone upon my back.
    *   *   *
    Alone, unburdened by children or loyalties, I suspect most of the women could have easily outpaced the menaces behind them. But it was apparent that for Trowbridge’s old pack there was no such thing as every woman for herself.
    Nobody outran the kids.
    Those little wolves who could sprint on their own were doing so. But on either side, they were flanked by mature female warriors. Behind them, more women, shouting encouragement and threats. Their words were spoken in a tongue foreign to me, but I understood them. “Don’t look behind you. Don’t look up at that cloud. Hurry. Run.”
    Pinned beneath Trowbridge’s taut body, I could taste the sour spike of his scent on my tongue and feel the suppressed violence cording his muscles. His growing anguish only added to my own swelling sense of claustrophobia.
    I was deeply angry with him. For protecting me when he should have been protecting them. For not being the fearless, brave guy I’d thought he was. For proving himself to be a smart man instead of a heedless one.
    I wanted a hero.
    And I wanted him off of me.
    Because I was going to be forced to watch and bear witness and doing so was going to be a very bad thing. It was going to push me across some threshold that up to that minute I hadn’t known existed. And I knew in my guts that I wasn’t ready for it. My life in Creemore had been piss-poor preparation for whatever I was going to see.
    I could hear the drumming of their horses’ hooves getting closer.
    Any second now …
    The Fae erupted from the forest.
    *   *   *
    The full visual impact of a cavalry charge can twist your bowels. Anyone in the path of that incoming of violence would have to be either an idiot or a very brave woman not to scatter in the face of it—it’s a wave of death pouring toward you.
    If I live to be ninety, I’ll never forget the spine-chilling calls those riders made as they thundered across the field—mocking hoots that sharpened into high yips as they bore down on the pack.
    â€œFuck, fuck, fuck,” said Trowbridge, turning the swearword into an obscene prayer. A few of the mounted men carried spears, but most carried cavalry swords; the latter being long, thin, and slightly curved.
    No one can be “born ready” for this world.
    I need to go home.
    The bulk of the Raha’ells