Page 10 of Saddle and Scent
One final shared look is all he needs to finally cave.
“You better be able to finish what you started, Bell,” he tries to say sternly, like he’s scolding me as usual, but it falls far from short while his eyes dance with so much lust, I could bathe in its glory.
For the first time in months, I don’t feel lost.
I don’t feel like a failure or a burden or a ghost in someone else’s house.
“Challenge accepted.”
To think…this all began with a saddle and an irresistible scent…
1
NEW BEGINNINGS IN THE HEART OF SCENTFUL MAYHEM
~JUNIPER~
They don’t tell you, when you inherit a thirty-year mortgage and three pasture-raised nightmares, that the real heartbreak isn’t the debt. It’s the terrain.
Case in point:
I’m currently stuck—like, terminally, cosmically stuck—on a backroad out of Saddlebrush Ridge, where the only thing looser than the mud is my grip on reality.
The Bell Ranch’s battered pickup is canted at an angle so severe, I half expect the next passing truck to offer me last rites and a tow chain.
Mud spatters the fenders, the axles, my boots, and has even managed, through some mystical wicking property, to dampen the back of my jeans. I don’t want to know how.
I thump my forehead against the steering wheel, inhaling the truck’s primordial stew of sweat, spilled grain, and leftover ranch hand. There’s the unmistakable tang of Omega hormones in the air, too—mine, obviously—running high and mean, cut through with a sharp note of road rage and fuck-all frustration.
I told myself I’d do this whole move in peace.
Swore I’d be different out here:zen, resilient, one with the land.
Utter bullshit…
I slam the door and swing my legs out, planting my boots in a puddle so deep it gurgles.
The air is bracing, not quite cold enough to numb the ears, but sharp enough that the world feels hyperreal—like a reality show, but I’m both the disaster and the camera crew. The sky is one endless gray bruise, pressing down on a landscape so flat it hurts. At the far edge of the horizon, the faint smudge of town beckons, but between me and deliverance: a half-mile of greasy ruts and a quarter-mile of pure, weaponized embarrassment.
I pop the tailgate with a rusty shriek. It’s loaded for bear—a week’s worth of canned food, a duffel of books, two horse blankets, and, for reasons I can’t explain, the world’s most awkward English saddle. I try to shoulder it, but the slick leather just slides, biting into my already-tender neck. There’s a series of expletives, escalating in both creativity and decibel, as I attempt to maneuver it one-handed toward the cab.
The second I get leverage, the entire rig tilts, teetering over the lip of the gate?—
—and then it’s gone, hitting the mud with a splatter so spectacular that it feels personal.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter as my hands clench into fists at my sides, and my words are swallowed by the expanse of open fields. Despite the isolation, I can practically feel the waves of Omega scent broadcasting off me like some kind of distress signal. It's a telltale mix of irritation, embarrassment, and something else—something that annoyingly circles back to need.
I should be used to this by now, but every time it surprises me. The way emotions bleed into the air around Omegas like me is as natural as breathing—or rather like an unwanted spotlightin this moment of solitude. It's one of many frustrating aspects of being what I am: vulnerable to those overwhelming scents that announce every mood swing to any nearby Alpha within a 100-meter radius. There’s a bitterness in knowing how the line between my thoughts and desires is often blurred by these very scents, leading to bouts of unnecessary longing and uninvited fantasies about strong arms, safe havens, and delulu thinking.
It’s not just about me either; it’s about them too—the Alphas whose presence prowls like a shadow across an Omega's senses. The distinctiveness of an Alpha's scent so potent that it drives us Omegas into fits of inappropriate daydreams, stirring up sensations that aren’t welcome right now when I have mud dripping down my boots and pride left somewhere back in the ditch.
My mind absently wonders if there is an art to existing without being dragged away by these primal instincts at every turn. If there is, I haven't mastered it, not with my scented trail blaring through Saddlebrush Ridge with all the subtlety of an untamed car alarm.
With a resigned huff, I bend to retrieve the saddle from where it lies disgraced in the muck—a formidable task considering my current state of flustered distraction. Just at that moment, the air shifts—a gentle caress against my cheek—and with it comes a new scent riding the breeze.
It crashes into my awareness with all the force and power peculiar to an Alpha in his element; heavy yet enticingly wild.
It’s more than just an Alpha scent: it's intoxicatingly complex—a seamless blend of sun-warmed leather reminiscent of rugged days spent under open skies, wild pine whispering secrets of ancient forests, and the smoky undertone of charred cedar that speaks to fires burned low through snowy nights. Underneath all of this lies something purely masculine and assertive—socommanding in its essence, it feels less like a greeting and more like a dare thrown down at my feet.
