Feral Darlings

Chapter One

I glance up at the night sky once I ’ m outside, inhaling some of the fresh air that usually descends with the moon. My eyes scan the world above me, looking for it, and when I do finally see it, I notice that it ’ s bigger tonight than usual and brighter than any star attempting to take attention from it.

A smile tries to curve up the left side of my mouth, but the emptiness I ’ ve felt for a while now keeps it at bay. I know what ’ s coming to Crescent Oak because I invited the mayhem, and while my heart should be singing the opening bars of revenge, my mind tells me otherwise.

Just because they ’ re coming to make good on the favor they owe me doesn ’ t mean that I haven ’ t put myself in danger, too.

It ’ s amazing what a world of difference can be made when the only thing you ’ ve ever cared about is gone.

I blow my breath out through my nostrils, somewhat similar to a bull ready to face its matador to the death, then finally tear my eyes away from the sky.

While I brought this on myself and this town by asking them to come, I ’ m nowhere near removed from the fact that this also means potentially fighting for my own survival in doing so.

Who cares? They deserve this; we all do.

The sounds coming from Mollie ’ s Moonlight Saloon mercifully tears my attention away from my own thoughts. They also tell me that every last one of them in there has their senses focused on what their silver dollars have been able to purchase for the evening, and they ’ re getting their money’s worth.

I roll my shoulders before I square them and start to make my way toward the edge of town. My boots kick up parts of the dirt road, and my spurs make a quiet jingle sound with each and every step. Normally, I don ’ t wear my spurs—not even when riding my horse—but when I received word back from the mob, they requested that I do so.

I guess it would be their way of positively discerning me from them.

Of course, in the Wild West, it could be anyone.

But not in Crescent Oak.

Here, no one wears them because they ’ re afraid that the mob will hear the sound like a beckoning sonata and take them all when they ’ re most vulnerable.

So, only I ’ m allowed to, which makes the sound even more poetic as I continue to head toward the city limits. The sound that haunts them, that strikes fear in their hearts, is the one I ’ m using to let Judgment enter and wreak havoc.