Page 5 of Harvest Moon

“Where would you come up with the money? How are you gonna pay your hands?” Pa asked. “There’s no future for you here. No future for us. So we’re selling the farm to Sterling, and that’s that.”

I sat there, floored, staring at my plate and all the food I’d been dying to dig into only minutes before. Now, it all looked rancid. My ma’d handed me a plate of poison with a smile and wanted me to thank her for it.

“Ridge,” she whispered, “we’ll make sure you get your cut.”

Pa sniffed, rubbing his nose with the back of his wrist. “Nice tidy sum to get you on your own two feet,” he agreed. “Put you on the right path.”

It was more than he owed me, and more than I’d ever thought to get after how things went between us. But that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t going to let me pay off my student loans. I’d be working a low-wage job forever. No way was I going to work with some corporation trying to kill off all the birds and the bees to make sure nothing got into the cabbages, who dyed their mealy tomatoes rather than grow them right.

“You can’t,” I begged. My hands were shaky and hot, all my attention narrowing to thin spots. I focused on Pa, but his lips were pressed into a hard line. “This is our land. You can’t—you can’t sell it to somecorporation.”

“It’s my daddy’s land, boy, and I can do what I want with it.”

I slammed my fists on the table so hard the silverware shook, and everyone gave a start. It wasn’t often that my temper got the better of me. It was awful for some alphas out there, but I’d always been able to find another path. I could be patient, bide my time. But I damn well wasn’t giving up what was mine.

“No. That is not happening. If you wanna sell the farm, fine. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow, get a loan, and you can sell it to me.”

“Ridge—” Ma reached for me, but I shoved my chair back from the table with a clatter and brushed past her, out of the kitchen and onto the farmhouse’s wrap-around porch.

The wooden boards creaked underfoot. They were worn, warping a little, and some of them needed to be replaced.

I could do that first thing in the morning, before I headed into town. And thank god for something I could fix. I needed that—one damn thing I had any control over in this life.

I put my hands on my hips, closed my eyes, and tilted my head back toward the stars twinkling in the velvet sky. Inside, my parents were arguing in low voices, but a deep breath of the farm’s familiar scents felt good and cool in my chest. It settled my nerves. Once the sun went down, even the unseasonable warmth this September disappeared.

It wouldn’t be long before autumn hit hard. Then, it was a waiting game till spring, but I’d be ready by then.

From under the rocking chair, I heard a soft mewl. Banjo stepped out from the shadows, already purring, and wound around my leg, blinking up at me with his one, big yellow eye.

Bending down, I scratched behind his ears, and his soft, scraggly fur made me forget my worries for just a second. I’d get this place producing again, and everything was going to go exactly how I wanted it to.

There was no plan B if it didn’t.

3

Alexis

“Oh, babycakes, I’m so sorry.” Coming from anyone else, the words probably would have pissed me off, but my cousin Claudia was everything I aspired to be in life. She also wasn’t pitying me; she really was sorry everything had gone wrong.

I’d spent years telling her about Ridge and my hopes for our future, and she’d gone so far as to compare him to her own mate. Frankly, comparing anyone to Birch Wilson was like comparing them to Prince Charming from a fairy tale. The man was strong, supportive, and constantly there for her. Even my mother approved of him, though he was neither rich nor famous.

On the other hand, Mom didn’t approve of Claudia all that much. She didn’t disapprove of her exactly—at least not out loud. Just got that tight, too-bright smile and squinty-eye look whenever I talked about her, and her voice went all high and tense. “Oh, you mean your Uncle Christos’s daughter? With the, ah, leather jacket? And all the red lipstick?”

And hell yes, that was who I meant.

Mom’s real complaint wasn’t about Claud’s clothes and makeup anyway. It was the ridiculous old-fashioned shock that Claudia had taken a position of power with a nearby wolf pack.

She’d joined the Grove pack by marriage, and when the Groves had realized how awesome she was, they’d snapped her up and put her in the middle of things. She’d started out a fighter and a pack boss, and spent her days dealing with disputes between alpha and beta wolves twice her age. Then, just a few weeks earlier, she’d been made second of the entire pack.

“What would you do?” I asked her, glaring at the wall next to my bed since I was talking on the phone and couldn’t randomly scroll the internet. I was draped all the way across the coverlet, as I’d been for most of the afternoon. My head hung over the end of the mattress, bent back to stare aimlessly at nothing.

She hummed thoughtfully, and we were both quiet for a moment.

“Alexis,” my mother said, knocking on the door to my room. “Dinnertime.”

I cringed. Just what every adult person wanted their personal hero to hear while on the phone with them. Their mother summoning them to dinner like they were ten.

Claudia wasn’t the type to make a snarky comment, though, not even if it was warranted. Instead, she made a strange little noise in her throat, like she’d just discovered something interesting. Maybe I’d gotten lucky, and she’d been distracted and missed my mother’s summons.

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