Knot Her Ranchers (Big Sky Omegas #3)

Chapter 1

“Mama, doggy!” Nora strained against her stroller, reaching for the brown and white border collie waiting patiently outside of the store entrance.

Warmth filled my chest, knowing that seeing Foxtrot meant that her sweetheart of an owner wasn’t far away. I quickly shoved the sensation down, but not fast enough.

My phone buzzed and I pulled it out, trying to control the swell of dread as I did so.

Paul:

What are you doing?

Even years after forcing me to bond him, Paul still kept a close eye on me, assuming every flicker of happiness when I was away from the compound meant I was doing something wrong. I suppose by the rules of the family, I was.

I scooted the stroller closer so Nora could pet Foxtrot and snapped a picture, sending it to Paul.

Maisie:

Nora found a friend

I prayed it was good enough proof.

Paul:

Video

I didn’t have to ask what he meant. I opened my camera again and hit record, spinning in a slow circle to show him no one else was around, then sent it off.

It was part of the strict conditions for leaving the compound at all.

If I didn’t check in fast enough, I’d be punished for it when I got home, and the only reason I went home at all anymore was because I was never allowed to have all three of my children with me at once.

I had Nora today, but Cody and Paisley were in school.

The Deckers, the family I had been force-bonded into, had workers at the school to keep an eye on children from the compound.

While they didn’t value free thinking, they did value their time and wanted members with at least a modicum of basic skills.

My mother told me they went through a brief period of homeschooling everyone, but the alphas quickly grew annoyed that their omegas weren’t available twenty-four seven.

The switch had thankfully been made in time for me—and my children—to attend school normally.

Paul:

One hour

Get me a steak and brownies

I did a quick calculation. That only left me about twenty-two minutes for my actual errands and cut into my intended grocery budget.

I puffed out a breath. I guess I’d have a weekend of making applesauce and fruit leather from the last harvest ahead of me so the kids actually had snacks since I couldn’t buy any now.

I had to carefully balance the food budget, supplement it with food the compound grew—but not spend too much time on prep and preservation, because Paul didn’t like me being unavailable all day—and I was so tired of crunching numbers when it could all be blown up by one of his whims. Paul didn’t care if things were practical, or even possible.

When he handed down an edict, I was expected to obey, no matter how difficult it would be to do so.

The door swung open, Wyatt pausing with a huge smile on his face.

His long black hair was down today instead of braided, the cowboy hat perched on his head ornamented with a beaded rim of yellow, white, red, and black.

His face was warm brown with strong cheekbones, full lips, and gentle honey-brown eyes.

“Hey, stranger. I was hoping to run into you.”

“Hi, Wyatt.” My cheeks burned.

The compound alphas weren’t entirely incorrect about thinking that coming to town would give omegas dangerous ideas.

I had first run into Wyatt a few years ago, when Paisley was Nora’s age, and she’d fallen instantly in love with a baby Foxtrot.

The friendly pup had brought her person right over, and though I didn’t see Wyatt often, our trips to town coincided often enough that he had become a welcome and familiar face.

One I hoped to see each time I drove past the compound gates.

He was always so sweet to me and to whichever child I had with me at the time. That sweetness wasn’t safe. It made me fantasize about a life I could never have, with an alpha who smiled instead of scowled, who adored his children instead of tolerating them as a necessity to keep me on a leash.

Wyatt was a whole world away.

“Hello to you, too, Miss Nora,” he greeted my daughter. “Foxy missed you.”

He lifted his gaze to me, and I was probably imagining it, but I wanted to believe that quiet look meant he had missed me too, that we had more of a connection than just my children loving his dog.

“What are you shopping for today?” he asked.

“Goat supplements, steak, and brownies, apparently.”

“They moved the supplements,” he told me. “I’ll show you where they are now. I have time, so I can come with you to the grocery store afterward, too.”

I savored the excuse to stay in his presence longer. I was allowed to interact with so few people outside of the compound, but also too nervous to make real connections with people in town.

“Thank you.” He held the door open so I could push Nora inside, patting Foxtrot as we passed. Wyatt fell into step next to us, leading me to the back corner where I definitely would have lost precious minutes searching for it.

“Do you have time for tea today?”

I wilted. “No.”

Sometimes, if Paul forgot to give me a time limit, I would get myself a cup of hot water from the cafe, steep a bag of tea I brought from home, and take the kids to the park.

This past summer Wyatt had been joining me if our time in town matched up, letting the kids throw a stick for Foxtrot.

Every moment by his side was both peace and panic.

I was always afraid someone would see us and report back to Paul, but if anyone had, I hadn’t been punished for it yet.

I paid for the supplement while Wyatt went outside to pet Foxtrot. We rejoined each other around the corner and he walked by my side to the grocery store.

He’d caught me crying more than once, slowly working the story of my situation out of me.

The moment Wyatt had found out I was a Decker, he understood, carefully accommodating the boundaries that had been tied around my throat.

I think everyone knew what the compound was like, or at least had their suspicions.

Could he tell how desperately I wanted to spend time with him, how much I craved connection despite being afraid to reach for it?

Foxtrot lay down outside of the grocery store when we arrived, settling in to wait for Wyatt’s return.

“What kind of steak?” he asked.

“Paul only eats ribeye.”

Maybe one day he’d choke on it and free me from the life he’d chained me to.

Nora held Wyatt’s pinky finger while we walked and I tried not to look at it for too long so I didn’t feel too much and give Paul some reason to check on me again.

He was paranoid. I was fairly certain he kept every photo and video so he could compare and see if anyone showed up multiple times.

If I was lucky, I’d only get emotional when he was occupied by something else so by the time he checked in, I’d have been able to think of a plausible excuse.

“Maisie,” Wyatt said gently. “Is there anything I can do?”

I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths.

Emotional control was a required skill for surviving the Deckers, but my control had been cracking lately.

My older half-sister had come back to town, found a pack who adored her, and they had rid the world of Paul’s older brother when he’d tried to kidnap her.

Riley got out.

I wanted out, too.

“Invent a time machine?” I suggested, my voice breaking.

If I didn’t have my children, I’d have run so far, so fast they’d have never found me.

I’d almost made it, too. I was all prepared to move to New York to live with my sister, but Paul had found out, locked me in a room until I’d gone into heat, and forced me to take his bond.

He’d almost suffocated me in his quest to force me to give mine in return.

I’d gotten pregnant with Cody during that heat.

The next time I’d worked up the will to try leaving, the same thing had happened, and I’d gotten pregnant with Paisley. After the third time, and my pregnancy with Nora, I gave up.

I loved my children, but I never would’ve chosen to be a mother so young, let alone to have three with a truly awful human being before I’d even turned twenty-six.

Nausea swept over me so strongly I had to pause, pulling in slow breaths until the sensation calmed.

I always got so anxious for weeks before my heats, often throwing up from the panic that grew stronger each day.

Paul knew how to trap me, and what was worse, the way the Deckers handled heats was excruciating.

To them, heats were a divine punishment for omegas. We were supposed to suffer through them, and toward the end, our alphas would come in and free us from the torment.

The rumors had spread past the compound. People in town knew, the authorities knew—Riley had told me as much on one of the rare times I’d been able to see her—but no one came. No matter how much they hurt us, no one ever came.

I choked down the agony.

Since my sister’s return, escape had been on my mind. She had promised me a refuge if I got out, but the ranch where she lived with her pack would probably be the first place the Deckers looked if I went missing. I couldn’t put her in danger like that.

“There has to be a way.”

I turned to Wyatt. “How?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed.

“Why do you even care?” The words came out sharper than intended, but Wyatt didn’t criticize me for the lapse.

“Because no one deserves to live this way.”

I shoved the styrofoam trays of steaks into plastic bags and set them on top of the stroller, walking to the bakery next, where I picked out premade brownies and a can of frosting. I stacked them on top of the steaks, already dreading my trip home.

“It was nice to see you again,” I said quietly, still trying to keep my cracks from bursting open.

Wyatt nodded. He knew the rules to keep me safe, and that meant going our separate ways before anyone could decide to look deeper into us. Not that there was anything deeper to look into. He was a kind man who gave me a taste of normality, but we weren’t—couldn’t be—anything beyond that.

He extracted his finger from Nora’s grip. “Be good for your mama.”

I let him leave first, meandering slowly to the checkout despite my minutes ticking away. When I paid and got back to the truck, I carefully secured Nora and packed up the stroller, setting off for my own personal hell.

While I drove, I thought. What opportunities could possibly present themselves for me to get out with all three of my children? I didn’t think Paul would necessarily hurt them if I left on my own, but I couldn’t condemn them to a life growing up there without me to buffer their father’s rage.

Cody had a field trip coming up where the kids were going into the national park.

I had offered to chaperone for another excuse to get outside of the compound.

Natalie was chaperoning with me, too. She wasn’t strictly part of the compound, but her alpha was good friends with Paul, and Steven had used children to trap Natalie as surely as Paul had used them to trap me.

I didn’t know how I could get Nora out that day, but I would be taking Paisley to the field trip alongside Cody, so she’d be with me.

My mother would babysit, maybe she could take Nora for a walk and pass her under the gap in the fence.

I could park out of sight, and run away with her before I was noticed.

The thought was too ridiculous and relied on my mother breaking free from her mental prison to realize life here was horrendous.

Sometimes I thought she knew, after telling Riley she had spared her by preventing Riley’s mother from joining the compound, but far more often she seemed as under their thumb as the rest of us.

Maybe she thought the same about me.

If I asked her, would she tell Paul?

I put aside the question. Getting out wasn’t something people did. Riley hadn’t grown up under the sway of the Deckers, she had only avoided being forced in as an adult.

I was born inside this prison, and I tried to accept long ago that I would simply die there.

I glanced back at Nora in the rearview mirror, tears burning my eyes.

How could I let her grow up there, facing the same future?

The pressure of a truck sat on my chest.

Anything had to be better than home.

Maybe I wouldn’t survive getting out—Paul would prefer me dead than out of his control—but I didn’t want my children to look at me the way I looked at my mother, desperate for answers on how she could’ve kept us here and knowing that nothing she said would ever be good enough to justify our suffering.

“Don’t worry, baby. Mama’s gonna take care of you.”