Chapter 10
ten
STETSON
I pulled the cinch tight on my saddle, the worn leather creaking in the crisp morning air.
My horse, a massive blue roan gelding by the name of Cobalt, shifted his weight and let out a soft huff.
I gave his thick neck a solid pat, but my attention wasn’t on the stray cattle I needed to push down from the north pasture.
It was locked on the yard by the main house.
A week. It had been seven days since our beautiful Omega had dropped a match into our powder keg of a secret, and the resulting explosion hadn’t leveled the place like I’d expected.
Instead of running, Julia had stayed. Over the few days, she’d slipped into the rhythm of the Double T like she had always been here.
She learned exactly how Boone liked his kitchen, figured out that River preferred silence with his morning coffee while he watched the sunrise, and somehow managed to charm my stoic, too-serious son into actually acting like a seven-year-old.
She’d asked for time to find her footing, and for seven days, I’d made damn sure the pack respected that.
I’d held the pack back like she’d asked, giving her space to process, to establish a routine, to breathe our air without feeling pressured. And it had been pure torture.
The melodic sound of Sunny’s laughter cut through my thoughts.
Julia was pushing her on the tire swing hanging from the old cottonwood tree in the front yard.
Every time Sunny swung back, Julia would say something that sent the toddler into another wild fit of giggles and Dusty into a fury of barks.
Standing just a few yards away, consumed with the importance of his morning chores, was Wyatt.
He was hauling a half-empty bucket of grain toward the chicken coop.
Julia didn’t hover over him. She didn’t coddle him. She just kept a steady, watchful eye on his progress, treating him with the exact level of respect my son demanded.
My chest tightened. She’d taken to them as naturally as breathing, upending all my reservations in the process.
I watched Wyatt slip into the coop, scatter the feed, then start collecting the eggs, carefully adding them one at a time into his now-empty bucket.
Slow, steady, determined, that was my son.
He was an old soul. Too old for seven. He’d aged before he had to because I hadn’t known what the hell I was doing when his mother left.
She’d been a local Beta I’d been seeing casually.
When she got pregnant, we tried to make it work, but the isolation of the Double T and the responsibility of motherhood broke her.
She packed her bags and moved to the city before Wyatt could even walk.
I hadn’t expected Julia to understand any of that. When she had backed us into a corner in the living room last weekend, coffee mug in hand and eyes blazing, I’d braced for the disgust. I’d braced for her to demand a ride back to the airstrip.
Instead, she’d just listened.
She didn’t flinch when Ransom, uncharacteristically subdued, explained how he and River had a one-night stand with a buckle bunny who had tracked them down nine months later and left a car seat on the porch with a pink-faced baby inside and a crumpled custody sign-off.
She hadn’t even waited for one of us to answer the door before she was halfway down the drive, vanishing from our lives.
I had studied Julia’s face, waiting for the righteous indignation of a woman realizing she’d walked into a house loaded with baggage.
That her mates—the men fated to be hers—had messy pasts and two kids by two different women.
I’d braced for the anger, for the scolding, for the drama and hysterics the women I was accustomed to were known for.
Instead, she’d just stared into her coffee mug and graciously told us she didn’t expect us to be saints.
That she knew we’d had a life before she entered the picture.
And then those piercing brown eyes of hers found ours with a sincerity that fucking leveled me as she said that life was messy, and children were never a mistake.
She had even connected the dots, her voice softening as she realized exactly why Gideon had checked the “children not required” box on our OMA application.
Not because we didn’t want a family, but because we already had one.
I shoved my boot into the stirrup and swung up onto the roan’s broad back. The gelding shifted, sensing my wired energy, but I just tightened my grip on the saddle horn, the smooth leather biting into my palm.
Out in the yard, Julia caught the tire swing and brought Sunny to a gentle halt, crouching in the dirt to fix the toddler’s twisted overalls. The morning sun caught the dark, glossy wave of her hair as she smiled at our little girl.
The sight of it hit me full force.
Cobalt shifted below me, wondering what was taking me so long to nudge him into gear, but I couldn’t bring myself to tear my attention away from the idyllic scene in the front yard.
While I’d never given it much thought, I wasn’t opposed to having more kids.
Hell, looking at her right now, I’d give her a dozen if she asked.
But the unshakeable truth was that I only wanted them with her.
The mere thought of touching another woman, of trying to build a life with anyone else, turned my stomach, making it churn with something akin to battery acid.
Now that I knew Julia, scented her, seen her smile, felt her fire and experienced her warmth, other women were downright repulsive.
That was the power of an Alpha’s bond with his mate.
I had dug my heels in and tried to push her away to protect my son, and hell, if I were being honest, to protect myself.
But if Julia walked away from us now, I was done.
There’d never be another woman for me—as a partner or a body to keep my sheets warm.
I’d be a monk for the rest of my goddamn life.
Julia was it for me.
“You’re staring, boss.”
I tore my gaze away from the tire swing. Gideon was leaning against the top rail of the paddock fence, a travel mug of coffee in his hand. His wavy ash-brown hair was shoved back beneath a worn ball cap, and those sharp blue eyes missed absolutely nothing.
“Just making sure Wyatt’s getting his chores done,” I lied.
Gideon took a slow sip of his coffee. “Right. Because Wyatt is definitely the one you’ve been watching for the last ten minutes.”
I adjusted the brim of my hat, pulling it lower over my eyes, but I didn’t try to defend myself. As our Beta, Gideon was the pack’s nervous system. He felt the shifts in our dynamic before the rest of us even realized shit was happening.
“She didn’t run,” I said quietly, staring at the space between my horse’s ears.
“No,” Gideon agreed quietly. “She didn’t.” He paused, squinting up at me against the sun’s bright glare. “You thought the kids would be the dealbreaker?”
“I thought an Omega wouldn’t want to play stepmom and take on all our baggage,” I corrected bitterly, the guilt of my own assumptions sitting heavy in my gut.
Years. It had been years that she’d been waiting for a pack, and we’d been mourning the Omega we thought we’d never have, and it was all my fault. “Turns out, I don’t know a damn thing.”
Gideon hummed his agreement with a smirk on his face. “Julia’s special. We got lucky, Stet.”
“We did. But I’m worried luck isn’t going to keep her.” The words ground out of me. “I’m glad she’s too stubborn to let a couple of kids scare her off, but I’m worried she’s still just testing the waters. Until we bond, she can still choose to walk away…”
Gideon lowered his mug, resting his forearms against the top rail. “Then we better start making sure the water’s exactly how she likes it.”
My grip tightened on the reins. “And if we push too hard and she bolts? What then? I’ve got a seven-year-old already worried she’s going to leave. You want me to greenlight this thing and let Wyatt get attached, let Sunny start calling her—” I cut myself off, jaw clenching so hard my teeth ached.
Gideon didn’t flinch. He just watched me with that steadfast, patient expression that made me want to knock his hat off his head just to get a reaction.
“It’s not just them you’re protecting, Stet,” he said quietly. “You’re protecting yourself.”
The words landed like a boot to the sternum. I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, that he didn’t understand what it was like to watch your kid learn to stop hoping because hope kept letting him down.
But the truth was, Gideon knew this pack better than I knew myself. And the look on his face told me he’d been waiting all week to say it.
I stared at the yard for a long time. Julia had set Sunny on her hip and was pointing at something in the chicken coop while Wyatt narrated whatever they were looking at, his small hands gesturing with uncharacteristic animation.
He was talking to her. Really talking, not the careful, measured responses he gave everyone else.
He was already attached. They both were.
And so was I.
He was right. We had spent the first twenty-four hours walking on eggshells, terrified of spooking her, and the last week reeling from the shock that she hadn’t packed her bags. It wasn’t enough. Not for a woman like her. I couldn’t just stand back and hope she decided we were worth the trouble.
We needed to prove to her that we were.
The guys had been vibrating with pent-up energy for days, acting like half-wild dogs straining at the end of their leashes that were firmly in my hand. They were ready to make a move, just waiting for me to give the command that they could officially start courting her.
Once again, I was the one standing in the way.
Julia laughed at something Sunny did, the sound feminine and throaty. And when she bent to pick up Bun-Bun from the ground and dust the toy off, I couldn’t stop my gaze from tracing over the curves of her ass.
Mine.