Chapter 32
thirty-two
JULIA
Dusty met me at the edge of the fenceline, his nub of a tail going a mile a minute, and fell into step beside me as I crossed the yard toward the house.
I scratched behind his ears without breaking stride, grateful for the warm, uncomplicated comfort of a dog who didn’t need me to explain why my hands were shaking.
My chest felt hollowed out, like someone had reached inside and rearranged everything I thought I knew about this pack and this ranch and the distant, scarred man who’d just trusted me with the heaviest thing he carried.
Colt had given me more of himself in twenty minutes than he’d given anyone in three years.
I could still hear the gravel in his voice when it broke, still feel the phantom warmth of his lips against my forehead.
The way he’d looked at me after I told him it wasn’t his fault—raw pain, completely cracked open—nearly undid me.
I’d done my best to hold it together. I’d kept my voice steady and my hands gentle.
I’d kept my spine locked in place because what he needed was solid ground while his was crumbling.
But now that I was alone, the weight of everything he’d told me was sitting on my chest, making it hard to breathe, and the ache of it was staggering.
Thankfully, the house was quiet. With the kids at school and most of the guys scattered across the property dealing with the cattle, I headed for the stairs and jogged up to my room before flinging my laptop open.
Colt had bared his soul, but I knew he’d run out of words before he ran out of story, and the parts he couldn’t say were the parts I needed most. I needed to know what happened in that arena.
I needed to see the face of the man whose garden I’d been tending and whose ghost had been keeping me company nearly every day since I’d arrived.
My fingers moved across the keyboard before I’d fully settled against the pillows.
Easton Calhoun, Coldwater Creek, Wyoming.
The search results loaded, and I clicked the first link, a newspaper article from three years ago.
Local Bronc Rider Killed in Arena Tragedy.
My stomach bottomed out. I read the article twice, my eyes dragging over the details Colt couldn’t bring himself to say.
It was all there in black and white, every devastating detail of a life cut brutally short at a bronc riding event at the annual Coldwater Creek County Rodeo.
They called it a bad draw, blamed it on a horse with a reputation for dangerous behavior.
Apparently, the fall happened so fast the arena medics were still running when it was already over.
Wait…
The Coldwater Creek County Arena.
I read the name of the venue again, and the blood drained from my face.
The same arena where my pack was scheduled to compete this weekend. The same dirt. The same chutes. The same crowd that had watched a man die and then came back the next year like the ground wasn’t stained with it.
I closed the article and clicked over to the obituary. The text was sparse and formal the way those things always were, compressing an entire life into four paragraphs of polite, sanitized grief. But the survivors list punched through the clinical language like a fist through glass.
His brother, Colt Calhoun. His packmates: Stetson Tate, August Boone, Gideon Rhodes, Ransom Beaumont, and River Beaumont. His children, Wyatt and Sunny.
Every name I loved, listed under the word survivors. A roll call of all the people he’d been left behind.
He was pack. He was one of them.
One of mine.
I couldn’t fucking breathe as I clicked on the image tab. A photograph loaded on my screen, my throat ached while my heart threatened to explode from lack of oxygen.
Two young men stood leaning against a wooden fence at a rodeo, their hats tipped back, dust on their jeans, matching belt buckles catching the sun.
The man on the right had warm, golden-brown eyes and the kind of wide, easy grin that made you feel like you were already in on the joke.
He was beautiful in that effortless way that some people just are.
He had the kind of face that made strangers want to buy him a beer and old ladies want to pinch his cheeks, so damn handsome I was sure the buckle bunnies threw themselves at him, hoping for a chance.
The man on the left had his arm slung around his brother’s shoulders, and he was laughing.
It was Colt. But it was a version of Colt I had never seen.
He was grinning, his stormy grey eyes clear and unburdened.
He looked young. Happy. There were no shadows behind his expression.
No careful distance maintained between himself and the person beside him.
I pressed my fingers to the screen.
That was my Alpha. My Colt. Except it wasn’t.
It was the version of him that existed before the world took a hacksaw to his heart.
The man in that photo didn’t stand in doorways or chop wood until his hands bled or swallow his own smile before anyone could see it.
That man threw his whole arm around his brother and laughed like nothing had ever hurt him.
My attention returned to Easton. To the easy warmth in those light brown eyes and the grin that probably lit up every room he walked into.
I could see it now, how similar their smiles were.
Tilting my head, I zoomed in on the simple silver chain resting against the fabric of his t-shirt, holding a small, unassuming pendant.
My hand went to my mouth. I recognized that chain. I saw it every single day resting against Colt’s chest. I watched Colt’s calloused fingers wrap around it like a lifeline every time the noise of the house got too loud or the ghosts got too heavy.
I leaned away from the laptop, tears springing to my eyes. Muscle memory dictated my next move before I even processed it. I grabbed my phone, desperately needing to share this world-shattering revelation with the one person who had always been my confidant, my constant.
I opened Addy’s contact, my thumb hovering over the call button.
The screen stared back at me, and I hesitated. I couldn’t do it. Addy was carrying enough of her own weight without me piling my crisis on top of it.
The ache of it hit like a second physical blow. I was falling in love with a fractured pack, discovering ghosts buried in the pasture, and the only person I wanted to cry to about it was grieving the very thing that had brought me here.
My heart broke all over again, shattering for Easton, for Colt, and for the best friend who needed space from me because my happiness had come too close to her hurt.
My heart was destroyed, bleeding out, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
I lost a mate I never even got to meet, and I was grieving three years too late.
I stood and walked out of my room, taking the stairs almost without noticing.
Gideon was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with his head down and his arms crossed.
He wasn’t pretending to be busy. There were no invoices spread out, no coffee mug as a prop.
He was just standing there, waiting for me, because he already knew.
Colt must have told Ransom when he rode out to help him with the ornery steer, and Ransom would’ve told the others before his horse hit the corral gate.
That’s how this pack worked. One of them bled, and the rest felt it.
His eyes found mine the second I stepped off the stairs. One look at my face and his arms uncrossed, opening wide without a single word.
I blinked back more tears and walked straight into his chest. His arms closed around me, solid and warm, one hand cradling the back of my head while the other pressed flat between my shoulder blades.
His scent wrapped around me, instantly soothing, and I stood there with my forehead against his collarbone and let him hold me together for a minute.
“The guys had to take the trailer down to the arena,” he murmured against the top of my hair. “They’ll be back before dark.”
Through the kitchen window, I caught the dually pulling down the drive, the long aluminum trailer swaying behind it. From the back seat, Ransom’s blond head was turned toward the house. Even from this distance, I could tell he didn’t want to leave.
“I’m right here, Jules,” Gideon said quietly. “Whatever you need.”
I nodded against his chest. I didn’t trust myself to speak. But I squeezed him once, hard, then pulled back and walked out the kitchen door without looking at him, because if I saw the worry in his blue eyes I’d fall apart all over again, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.
I took the path back to the old cottonwood trees.
The afternoon sun was dipping lower, casting long shadows across the grass.
I sank back down into the grass in front of the memorial.
Dusty, my trusty companion, curled up immediately, resting his heavy head across my lap, trying to offer furry comfort.
I pet his head as I stared at Easton’s name, feeling this huge, gaping loss.
“I’m Julia,” I sniffed to the empty air. My voice cracked on the first syllable, but I forced it steady. “I’m… um… your Omega.”
The wind rustled the leaves above me.
I gave a watery laugh. “You’ve got excellent taste in trees,” I managed, dragging a hand through Dusty’s fur.
“I’ve been sitting on your bench for weeks, telling you things I couldn’t tell anyone else.
About Addy. About Colt. About how scared I was and how happy I was and how guilty I felt about being both at the same time.
” My voice wobbled. “I just didn’t know it was you I was talking to.
But I think... I think maybe part of me did.
Because I always felt better after. Like someone was listening. ”
I swallowed hard, fighting the brutal knot in my throat.
“They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about you.
At least, not until today. But Colt wears your necklace.
He touches it when he thinks nobody is looking.
And he has this smile... this ghost of a grin.
” I shook my head, feeling a little ridiculous and yet…
better somehow. “That’s what I call it. It’s this half smile, like he won’t fully commit to it.
It flashes across his face sometimes before he catches it and shuts it down. ”
I shifted in the grass, pulling my knees up and wrapping my arms around them while Dusty resettled, pressing his warm flank against my hip.
“He stands in the doorways of his own life, Easton. He thinks he isn’t allowed to come inside.
He thinks he has to stay out in the cold and pay off a debt he doesn’t owe.
” I traced the grain of the wood with my index finger.
“Do you know he blames himself?” I asked the wind, then sat in the silence like something might answer me.
The breeze shifted. Warmed. It was that same impossible warmth I’d felt the night after Stetson’s fight, pressing against my shoulder like a body settling in beside me.
Except this time I understood what it was.
Who it was. My eyes stung fresh and I whispered, “There you are.” The cottonwood leaves rustled overhead, soft and rhythmic, and Dusty’s ears pricked forward, his gaze tracking something in the empty air above us that I couldn’t see.
For a long moment, I just soaked up the quiet peace I knew was Easton. “I’m going to take care of him. I promise you. I’ll take care of him, and I’m going to make this garden beautiful for you.”
Cristenellos don’t cry, I told myself. We get angry. We get even. But we don’t cry.
The pep talk didn’t help. A hot tear spilled over my lower lash line, cutting a clean track down my cheek.
I scrubbed it away fiercely, but another one followed, and then another.
I hunched forward over my knees, burying my face in my arms, and wept for a man I had never known and the grief-ridden brother he’d left behind.
When the tears finally stopped, they didn’t leave peace in their wake.
But they did leave exhaustion. I crawled onto the cushioned bench and curled up, letting out an “oof” and an unexpected huff of a laugh when Dusty jumped on top of me and laid down like a forty-pound weighted blanket.
The cottonwood leaves whispered overhead, and the water feature trickled steadily beside us while I buried my fingers in his fur.
At some point my eyes must have closed because when I opened them, the light had changed.
The sun had dropped behind the western ridge, painting the sky in streaks of amber and deep violet. The solar string lights I’d hung that morning had kicked on, casting a soft, warm glow through the grove. I blinked, disoriented, and checked my phone.
Three hours. I’d been out here for over three hours.
Dusty jumped to the ground as I sat up slowly and scrubbed my palms across my swollen eyes.
For a groggy, merciful second, my mind was blank.
Then I looked at the plaque and everything flooded back.
Colt’s voice breaking. The article on my laptop.
The photo of two brothers leaning against a fence who didn’t know they were running out of time.
The Coldwater Creek County Arena. This weekend.
I stared out at the jagged line of the mountains, and the grief that had put me to sleep was gone, replaced by white hot anger.
I was furious at the universe for taking a good man and leaving my pack shattered.
And along with it, a new, suffocating terror had taken root in my chest, winding tight around my ribs.
The rodeo wasn’t just a date night. It wasn’t just a fun county spectacle where I got to watch my men show off on the backs of majestic animals.
It was a graveyard. It was the place that killed Easton, and it was the place where Colt still placed himself on the backs of wild horses to punish himself for surviving. I knew it was his way to tempt fate. To dare it to take him too.
I pushed myself up, my legs shaking but my spine locking into forged steel. I couldn’t ignore this. I couldn’t let them pack up their gear and haul the pack to the place that already took one of them from me.
I couldn’t let Colt step into that chute carrying the weight of a dead man.
I crossed to the plaque, pressed my hand to my lips then to the cool metal, right over Easton’s name.
“I’ll bring him back to you,” I whispered. “Alive.”
Dusty shook out his coat and trotted at my heels as I marched back toward the house. The string lights glowed behind me in the grove, warm and steady, keeping watch over Easton’s garden while I went to fight for his brother.
The rumble of a diesel engine hit my ears as I rounded the side of the house. The dually was rolling lazily down the long drive, towing the horse trailer, dust catching the last of the sunset.
They were back.
I cut across the front yard and planted myself in the middle of the gravel driveway.