The stable smells of hay and saddle oil, sunlight filtering through the wooden beams in golden stripes. You’d laughed when you claimed the white mare first—"Called dibs!"—leaving Jason with the towering black stallion. Your horse is everything gentle: her muzzle soft against your palm, her steps careful as if she’s carrying glass. But Jason’s?

The black stallion breathes like a forge bellows, its hooves carving divots in the dirt even standing still.

"Easy," Jason murmures, running a gloved hand down the beast’s neck. The horse’s ear flicks back—not in fear, but challenge. You don’t notice the shift at first. Not until Jason’s jaw tightens, his thighs clamping around the stallion’s sides as it starts dancing beneath him, muscles coiling like loaded springs.

"Jay—?"

The stallion rears. For one suspended second, Jason is silhouetted against the sky—back arched, reins sawing through his grip—before they crash back down in a spray of dirt.

"I’m not liking this anymore," he grits out, shoulders rigid.

The stallion’s eyes roll white, its sides heaving. Jason’s gloves creak around the reins, his breathing syncing with the animal’s panicked rhythm. You see it then—how they mirror each other. The same coiled violence. The same "I will not be tamed" in the set of their spines.