Page 2 of Tusks & Saddles
Shit.
Boone twisted back to Jacobus, swearing to Sun Bringer and anyone else who was listening…if Welborn was still around when he got back from the Ranch, he was going to find him. And maybe throttle him a little.It’s good for him.His heart ached, the oath heswore to his pops weighing down on him painfully.Please…wherever you go, Welby, be safe, for where you go I cannot follow. I have other oaths to fulfill.Boone gave one last parting glance at his brother disappearing into the station on the heels of some stranger, hoping his prayer reached him somehow. Then he picked Jacobus up off the floor and carted the fool toward his sister’s ranch.
Where I’m definitely getting stabbed…probably in the kidney.
Chapter One
Willamina
“I’m gonna kill him, who let him go out drinking the weekend before the final push! About gods damn time he showed his sloppy ass back—Are those fuckingcrutches,Jacobus Herman Jones!” Willamina shrieked, flying away from the wooden post she was currently fixing. Roger stopped, narrowly avoiding smacking her with the mallet. She’d apologize to the baffled minotaur later. Willamina jumped over the hole Levi, their goblin farm hand, was currently digging, to storm up to Boone.Of fucking course. Not a day went by that she didn’t rue the day that Jacobus met Boone at the train station. She’d been there to drop off mail that needed to go to the stronghold, taxes and shit, and her brother tagged along. He ran into the massive mountain of an orc that day and Willamina would never forgive him for it.
I’ll strangle them both!Her fury filled her to the brim and spilled over like lava pouring out of the volcano. It scorched the earth around her. Thankfully all the grass was in the field and not on the dusty, gravel driveway the orc was stalking up.With my fucking brother on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes!Willamina’s hands shook as she closed the distance. “What the fuck happened?!”
Boone, the orc in question, leaned the crutches against the steam-powered tractor. His yellow eyes flashed to her in awarning that only made her insides roar.How dare you!But, he set her brother down swiftly after, letting the daemon on thin ice hobble a step or two to the crutches.
“Will, I am so—”
“You can’t ride like this!” she blurted out sharply, her gaze scanning him with worry. “Is it broken? Why are you on crutches? Boone, what the fuck! What did you get him into this time?”
Boone huffed, throwing his hands out to the sides.
Jacobus jutted in between them, “Will, I did this to myself. Boone tried to make me not go.”
“Should have tried harder!” Willamina snarled, sidestepping Jacobus.
“I was on a security detail,” Boone growled lowly, his right eyebrow quirked as if daring her to accuse him of something…when he wasn’t even there. And that was the worst part, Boone wasn’t even there to help Jacobus. For the last seven years, her brother only listened to one person other than their father, and that was Boone. Jacobus looked up to the Paladin, and not just because he was taller. It didn’t matter that Willamina kept that boy from dying since the moment he could crawl. The second he met Boone, it was like she didn’t exist.
And somewhere deep in her spitfire soul, she knew she resented Boone for it.
But she had to give him the credit he was due. Jacobus told her Monday of last week that Boone was on a week-long security detail. The flame-colored daemon pouted about it the whole week as he was left to his own devices. It’s the whole reason those idiots Timothy and Simon convinced Jacobus to go out drinking with them. Willamina thought she’d be scraping her brother’s hungover face off the floor, not…riding without him.
“Shit,” she hissed, ripping away from the pair. Her thumbnail was already in her mouth, her poor cuticles cut up from the anxiety in hopes of saving her unfortunate stomach lining. It didn’t help as much as she wished it would.
“Will, I’m sorry,” Jacobus whined.
“Jacobus! I told you this push was important. The last push is always the biggest one!” She turned on her boot heel, glaring at him.Not that he was going to listen to me. If Boone had been here, he’d just be hungover.She hated it. Hated him! Hated everything about this.Daddy would roll in his grave if he knew how far we’d fallen.
The truth was, without the last push of the ranch, they wouldn’t have the coin to pay anything. And they desperately needed it to hire people back to the ranch, to fund more seasons. Their father always ran the ranch an inch above even. It was the pillar of the town; those who didn’t work for the guilds, the train, or the mines worked at Last Chance Ranch. Unfortunately, until after the last push, they didn’t have the funds to bring on the workers for the next season. Which is why they ran a skeleton crew for the last push.
Gracie gave birth two months ago, but Willamina wasn’t going to separate her from her pups. Couldn’t do that, not when the werewolf was so excited to start her family.
Willamina glanced at Levi, popping their teal head out of the earth and smiling at her.Even if Levi could ride with us…It wouldn’t mean shit. They needed someone with arm strength and someone as good with horses. Gracie was usually the muscle with Roger, Jacobus and Will the speed.
Now she was looking at three hundred heads of angry moo…and desolation.
“I’m going to take his place.”
Her hackles rose up her back, rustling her metaphorical feathers and real ones. She bristled, left eye twitching.Oh, absofuckinglutely not.She slowly inched back to face him, snarl clear as day on her face. “You’ll what?”
Boone crossed his arms over his chest, settling against the tractor with that typical sigh of his. “I said I’m going in his place.”
“The fuck you are,” Willamina hissed.
“I’ve gone on a push with you in the past. I know the route,” he motioned with a slow, flick of his hand, “and you know I can ride. Who else is going to cover for him?”
Willamina’s face screwed up at the center, her fists curled.Gods damnit.Despite herself, she knew better than to tell him off. Boone, for all his faults, was a good man. He was a damn fine Paladin. The city was better for having him. He took jobs most wouldn’t—either because the pay was shit or the job was dangerous—and his record for saving people was impressive.One of the many reasons Jacobus loves him.Boone would be a blessing on the last push.
“Pay’s shit,” she grumbled, tucking her fists into her back pockets.
