Chapter 10 Wyatt
WYATT
Nine months ago... Pinedale, Wyoming
Two months of silence felt like an eternity when you were waiting for your life to change.
The Eros Institute talked a good game, but so far all we’d gotten for four million dollars were emails and gift baskets. If we got one more pity basket, I was going to drive to their headquarters in Washington and punch the CEO.
Knowing Eros was out there, trying to find our scent match, only made the yearning worse.
I leaned against the gate of our smaller training paddock, watching the new horse prance through patches of spring grass. Her coat gleamed white as fresh snow under the Wyoming sun, almost painful to look at directly.
"Easy there, darling," I called as the pale mare picked up steam, racing in circles. The mare had been with us nearly a month. Part of me thought we should give her a name, instead of waiting for an Omega that might never appear. The other part of me didn’t want to steal that rite of passage from the mare’s rider.
The horse tossed her head in response, mother-of-pearl mane catching the light.
She didn’t slow down though. I began strolling slowly towards her.
The smell of earth, hay, and horse filled my nostrils as I moved.
The Arabian eyed me warily as I approached, her nostrils flaring.
She took two prancing steps backward, ears flicking.
"I know, girl. But I’m not a stranger anymore." I kept my voice low, even. "You can trust me.”
She was a beauty, with intelligent brown eyes that seemed to look straight through me.
She’d come from a breeder in Billings, supposedly already saddle-trained and with a gentle temperament.
The gentle part was questionable. Not that she was mean, just spirited.
The kind of horse that needed patience, not force.
I held out my hand, palm flat with a small piece of carrot resting on it. She stretched her neck, curious but cautious. I could relate to that wariness. We'd all been burned before by hope.
"That's it," I murmured as she delicately lifted the carrot from my palm with velvety lips that tickled my skin. "No rush here." I stroked my hand down her nose, then took a few steps back to let her eat in peace.
Shit was easier before Cooper and his wild hare idea about Eros.
I’d been able to ignore my needs… mostly.
Keep the emptiness at bay, filling my days with hard work, and some nights with temporary distractions.
But ever since that damn testing, something had cracked open inside me.
A door I'd kept firmly shut now stood ajar, letting in drafts of hope that ate my organs. Our perfect Omega. Didn’t seem possible.
We’d tried everything. I’d learned to soothe my damn soul with quick, meaningless fucks.
Anyone who smelled remotely good to me was enough.
I’d stopped wishing for more. Or, I had stopped.
The moonlight mare began galloping again.
She wanted to be free. Wanted to race around the property with wild abandon.
I could tell she hated the confining training paddock.
It was small, but it needed to be. I moved further away from her, giving her a sense of independence.
I ended up hoping atop the steel board fencing, a recent replacement for the old wooden barrier.
Eventually, we’d outfit every paddock and pasture with the stuff, but it cost a fortune.
Fuck, there I went again, forgetting we weren’t destitute anymore.
We could probably pay full price, zero sweating, to have it all done at once.
Levi would balk, but it wouldn’t break us.
That was a crazy paradigm shift from the old days.
I’d lost my shit yesterday when Cooper’s espresso machine arrived.
As predicted, it was a fucking monster. He’d had to store it up in the attic; the only closet space left in our small rambler was in Levi’s office, and he’d chased Cooper out with an assault of balled up, neon sticky notes.
I straddled the fence; one leg tossed over each side.
From this vantage I could look across the property at the foundation of the new house.
Crawl space finally poured, two feet of reinforced cinderblocks seeming to sprout from the soil, rebar poking out of once-hollow centers.
New well was being dug, septic field laid out.
Construction was still so fucking slow, but I kind of enjoyed the process.
Felt like a time lapse video, and we were the watchers deliberately holding the remote to run the recording at half speed.
My head rotated back to the stunning horse.
Beyond her agile steps stretched the vastness of Sagebrush Ranch.
A fucking Wyoming paradise that we’d inherited through luck of birth.
Faraway mountains rose blueish purple in the distance, their tips always snow-capped.
Past rolling pastures was the big pond dominated by Wade’s growing duck family, and the small one, which we’d stocked with bluegill and channel catfish.
The greenhouses had the rain collection systems installed now.
Cooper and Boone continued to have heated arguments over what to grow first. They kept pushing me about switching gears from cattle. Even Wade wasn’t averse to the idea.
But I couldn’t let Gramp’s dream die.
Sagebrush’s land wasn’t meant for wheat or fucking sugar beets.
It was meant for wild beasts.
For running and roping cattle.
For birthing and bottle-feeding calves.
For campfire nights under stars, pretending like we were still driving herds across uninhabited land to sell in dirt road towns for ten bucks per hundredweight.
That price had gone up exponentially, something I couldn’t complain about, but a lot of the wonder had died as modern times shifted away from hitting the trail for weeks to deliver cattle.
I hoped down from the fence, ready to try my luck with the mare again.
She slowed her gait as I approached, which was a good sign.
When she tilted her head down expectantly, I knew I could try saddling her up again.
We’d built enough trust. I ran my hand along her neck, feeling the warmth and strength beneath the silky coat.
She leaned into my touch, though she also snorted and searched for another carrot.
I smiled at that; the horse had her priorities straight.
"Just needed a little more time, didn’t you, girl?” I said, mind wandering to Wade.
Wade, who could speak volumes to a strange animal, but clammed up around strange humans.
He warmed up to people like this, cautiously and without offering any initial trust. Once Wade liked you though, he liked you for life.
He was better than me. I barreled in, grabbed what I wanted, and barreled out again.
People seemed to like me, and I used that to my advantage.
I can’t honestly say I liked anyone outside the pack though.
Being the figurehead of Sagebrush wasn’t a choice for me.
The moment Wade backed down from taking any lead role, I couldn’t.
I was the eldest, after all. Minutes older, branded with first come energy for life.
I had too much on my shoulders to give part of myself to people who didn’t matter.
“Be back in a jiff,” I murmured to the horse, turning around and padding over to where the saddle sat atop the fence and the bridle hung from an adjacent post.
I grabbed the bridle first; it was always the hardest for a horse to get used to and I wasn’t sure this mare was going to let me use this conventional type.
She’d bucked and protested last attempt.
If she fought it this time, I wasn't about to force it.
Some trainers might, but that wasn't my style.
Wasn't our style at Sagebrush Ranch. I’d figure something else out.
"We've got time," I said as I walked back toward her, more to myself than to the horse.
But did we? The thought of an Omega riding this mare someday made me want to hurry, to break my normal mantra of letting the animal set the pace. I had to breathe, remind myself that this faceless scent-match may never arrive, and betraying this animal wasn’t the answer.
I found myself frozen next to the mare, breathing heavily, heart thudded in my chest.
I angrily swiped at my face when a tear—a fucking tear—scorched down my cheek.
I was losing it. I didn’t get emotional like this, not on the outside.
To my surprise, the horse nudged my chest. I blinked at her, her large brown eyes studying me curiously.
She nudged me again, this time targeting the right pocket of my jeans.
I chuckled, pulling out the sugar cube there.
“How the hell you horses can smell sugar is beyond me.” I offered it to her, and she did this little stomp of her front hooves, obvious happiness flooding her limbs. She licked it off my palm quickly, then began pressing her nose into my body as if to search for other hidden treasures.
“You can have another after we try this,” I assured her, slowly bringing the bridle into her sightlines.
She eyed it with distrust, backed away a step.
“It’s okay, girl. You can do this.”
I didn’t even get the bridle near her nose before she darted away. I frowned but then shrugged it off. I’d know this might be a futile exercise. She’d fought the bridle every time.
I watched as she moved away, trotting along the fence line with fluid grace.
This mare wasn't the kind of animal you broke hard, not that we ever took that route anyways. I’d seen other trainers who thought certain horses needed a firm hand, that they needed to understand their place in the hierarchy immediately.
But one thing I’d learned about horses—forcing them to break didn’t just kill their rebellion, it killed their spirits too.
She’d trust us eventually, and I’d find the right solution to make her a great rider.