Chapter 5
Boone
The beer is a temporary fix for just how shitty the day has been.
The Salt Lick is packed, the air thick with the smell of fried food, spilled whiskey, and too many bodies in a confined space. The band on stage is butchering a classic country song, but no one seems to care.
Knox is on his third beer, his usual easygoing charm replaced by a restless energy. He keeps running a hand through his hair, his knee bouncing under the table.
Rhett is nursing his first, his mind already working, turning the problem over and over like a stone in his hand. “We need that will,” he says for the third time, his voice low enough to be lost in the din. “And we need to know who drew it up.”
I just drink. The cold lager slides down my throat, but it does nothing to cool the fire in my gut.
Saramaria. Here. After all this time. And not just here, but threatening to sell the only home I’ve known since I was seventeen.
The image of her face—older, sharper, but still hers—keeps flashing behind my eyes.
“Fuck the will for a minute,” Knox says, slamming his empty bottle on the table. “Let’s just drink and forget it for tonight.”
We drink in silence for a while after that.
The alcohol helps, blurring the edges of the anger and the hurt.
It doesn’t erase the memory of her face when I asked why she missed the funeral.
The way she’d smoothed down her blazer, a small, controlled gesture that shut me out completely.
“I was busy.” The words still echo in my head.
She just left.
With no regard to anyone here, she just left. I understand that Anthony was kind of an asshole to her sometimes, but I thought… I thought I was her family too.
After five years in her life, she didn’t spare a single second to tell me where she was running off to.
And now eight years later, she’s back.
What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
By the time we leave, the moon is high in the sky, a silver coin tossed on black velvet. The ride back to the ranch is quiet, the only sound the crunch of the tires on the gravel road. The whiskey I switched to later in the evening is buzzing through my veins.
Knox pulls his truck up next to my cabin, the headlights cutting across the yard. We’re just getting out, the truck doors groaning in protest, when a figure emerges from the shadows near Knox’s shower.
It’s her.
She’s climbing out of the bathroom, a plush white robe wrapped around her body.
Her hair is all wrong now, not the severe, professional bun from earlier, but a wild mass of curls that frizz around her face.
It’s brown, not the vibrant red I remember from her mother, but the moonlight catches hints of it, like embers in ash.
The air stills. The three of us freeze, caught in the beam of the headlights like deer. My entire body goes taut, every muscle screaming. My Alpha roars to life, a territorial instinct so powerful it almost takes me to my knees.
She smells of Knox’s soap—whiskey and tea and ginger—but underneath it, her own scent is there. Vanilla cream. Wild honey. Almond blossom. It’s a scent I haven’t smelled in eight years, a scent that’s tied to memories of mud and rain and a rejected kiss.
She sees us, and her steps falter. For a second, she looks like a cornered animal, her eyes wide and green in the darkness. Then she pulls herself together, her chin lifting in that way I remember so well.
“Hey,” she says, her voice a little breathless. Her eyes find Knox’s. “Sorry. The water was out at the house. I just... I used your facility.”
Knox leans against the truck, a smirk playing on his lips despite the redness still clinging to his face. “See? See how easy it is not to grievously harm someone with pepper spray?”
Rhett is watching her quietly but I can feel the tension rolling off him. So am I. This is too much. Too close. Her, here, in our space.
She ignores Knox’s jab, her gaze flickering between the three of us before landing somewhere over my shoulder. “Well,” she says, her voice tight. “I’ll let you get to it.”
She turns and walks away, her bare feet silent on the grass as she heads toward the main house. The three of us stand there, watching her go, until the door closes behind her.
Our dog, Blue, who had been sleeping on the porch of my cabin, comes trotting over, his tail wagging. He goes right to Rhett, nudging his hand with his wet nose. Rhett scratches him behind the ears.
“I’m turning in,” I say. I don’t wait for a response, just turn and walk toward my cabin.
The moment I step inside, the tension in my shoulders eases, just a little. This is my space. My sanctuary. It’s not much, just a single room with a small bathroom off to the side, but it’s mine.
The walls are made of rough-hewn logs, the floor is worn wood.
A big, comfortable armchair sits in the corner, the one Anthony used to sit in when he’d come over for a whiskey.
A stack of rodeo magazines sits on the small table next to it.
My bed is a simple frame with a thick mattress, covered in a worn quilt.
It’s neat, functional. A place to rest, not to live.
I pour myself a glass of whiskey, the amber liquid sloshing in the glass. I don’t bother with ice. I walk to the window, looking out at the dark silhouette of the main house.
I came to this ranch when I was seventeen, an angry, lost kid with nothing but the clothes on my back and a talent for handling horses.
Her dad, Henry, he’s the one who gave me a chance.
He saw something in me, I guess. Taught me everything I know about cattle, about the land.
He was a good man. A Beta, but he had more strength and character than most Alphas I’ve ever met. He treated me like a son.
When he and Angelina died in that accident, it was Anthony who held me together. “You’re all the family I have left, kid,” he’d told me, his voice thick with grief. “You’re the son I never had.” He gave me this cabin, a job, a purpose. He became my father in every way that mattered.
Now everyone’s dead. Henry. Angelina. Anthony.
The only person left is Saramaria, and even she is all kinds of wrong.
The girl I remember was wild and free, with a laugh that could light up the darkest night and a spirit that couldn’t be contained.
This woman... this woman is a stranger in a tailored suit, with a cold heart and a lawyer’s tongue.
I let the whiskey swim in my head, a dull, warm fog.
Finally, I crawl into bed, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up with me. The scent of her—vanilla and honey and almond—clings to the air, a ghost in my room. I close my eyes, and I can still see her, standing in the moonlight in a white robe, her hair a wild halo around her face.
And I hate that a part of me, a part I thought was long dead, is glad she’s back.
The dream starts in an alleyway. It always does.
The stench of rot and stale beer fills my nose, thick enough to taste. Concrete is cold and rough against my cheek. My knuckles are split, burning.
A glint of steel flashes under the single, flickering streetlamp.
Run. That’s the only thought in my head. Run or die.
Then the scene shifts, a violent, nauseating lurch.
The alley dissolves, replaced by the endless, sun-baked expanse of Meadowlark Ranch.
But the fear stays, clinging to me like a second skin.
The air is thick with dust, the heat a physical weight on my shoulders.
I’m seventeen again, all angles and anger, a duffel bag slung over my shoulder containing everything I own in the world. Which isn’t much.
A truck is parked in front of a weathered barn. A man stands next to it, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s older, his face a roadmap of hard living, but he stands straight, his shoulders squared. He looks like he was carved from the same rock as the mountains behind him.
Anthony Cruz.
He’s not looking at me with pity, but with a kind of gruff appraisal, like he’s sizing up a wild horse he’s thinking about breaking.
“This ain’t a hotel, kid,” he says. “You work, you eat. You cause trouble, you’re gone. Understand?”
I just nod, my throat too tight to speak. I’ve heard that speech before. From social workers, from foster parents, from cops. It always ends the same way. With me leaving.
Then another man is there, stepping out from behind the barn. He’s younger than Anthony, with kind green eyes and a gentle way about him. Henry. Saramaria’s father. He’s holding a sandwich, and he holds it out to me.
“You must be hungry,” he says, his voice soft. It’s the first time anyone’s offered me anything in I don’t know how long.
I take the sandwich, my fingers brushing against his. The bread is soft, the meat real. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
This is Anthony’s halfway house, though he’d never call it that.
It was just his way. He saw kids like me, kids teetering on the edge, and he gave them a hand up instead of a kick down.
Henry had ended up here years ago, a city boy with no idea how to work the land, but a willingness to learn.
Anthony had seen that, had seen the good heart beneath the uncertainty, and had taken him in.
Henry had become his right-hand man, his friend, the son he’d never had.
Until he betrayed him by getting Anthony’s only daughter pregnant.
Anthony was disappointed and angry and shut his ranch down, refusing to help anyone else.
And yet, he’s thinking of helping me.
The dream shifts again, faster this time. A montage of moments. Me, fumbling with a fence post, my hands raw and blistered. Henry showing me how to do it right, his patient voice explaining that you fix things, you don’t just throw them away.