Page 19 of Saddle and Scent
“See you around, Bell.”
I want to say thank you…goodness, I should…but the words don’t make it past my teeth.
Instead, I stare at the mailbox, the pie tin, the future lined up like a row of old, empty stalls.
The three of them retreat as a unit, Wes already giving Callum shit about his “hero complex,” Beckett laughing under his breath.
I watch them until they’re gone, the air slowly clearing of their scents.
It feels…lonelier than I expected.
The house is still half a field away.
I set my jaw and march the rest of the distance, the pie tin heavier in my hands than any saddle.
If this is what starting over looks like, I’m going to need a bigger fork.
The mailbox isn’tthe only thing dying of neglect.
The front gate of the Bell Ranch—if you can call a pair of rusted cattle panels zip-tied to sagging posts a gate—creaks open under the barest pressure, scraping a groove in the brittle dirt. Someone once painted the arch above it, but the lettering is mostly flakes and bird shit now. Underneath the ruin, I make out the name:SADDLEBRUSH SANCTUARY.
Sanctuary. That’s a laugh.
The house sits a hundred yards off, hunched and wind-battered, its roof patchy as a mangy dog. Every window is different:some boarded, some shattered, one or two intact but clouded with years of grime.The porch sags so badly on the left side that it looks like it’s bracing for an earthquake, even though we’re a good thousand miles from any fault line. The barn, visible just beyond the paddock, is even worse—paint peeling, the doors barely clinging to their hinges, fences gone wild with creeper vines and invasive willow.
I drag my duffel through shin-high grass, boots snagging on burrs and nettles every third step.
The air out here is less scented with testosterone, more with dust, dried manure, and the faintest undernote of honeysuckle—like the land is trying to remember something soft.
The wind cuts across the paddock, rattling the brittle remains of last summer’s weeds.
On cue, a sound like the world’s angriest trombone blares from behind the barn.
Pickles, the resident mule, comes barreling into view, ears laid flat, mouth open in a braying scream.
“Nice to see you too, asshole,” I mutter. The mule slams to a halt at the fence line, glaring at me as if to say,You. Again.
I drop my duffel by the porch and square up, hands on hips.
The sensation of being watched is intense, but this time, it’s not the Alphas. It’s the house, the barn, the land itself. The oppressive weight of legacy and expectation, all of it bearing down on me with the gravity of a small black hole.
“Not going to break me,” I say, to no one in particular.
The wind answers, snapping a shingle loose from the barn roof. It hits the dirt with a sound like a starter pistol.
I roll up my sleeves, ignoring the goosebumps that race down my arms.
My hands shake, just a little, but I ball them into fists and stare down the property like it’s my oldest enemy.
“Let’s try this again,” I say, and for the first time all day, I almost believe it.
Pickles brays, loud enough to scare off a murder of crows from the skeletal tree in the front yard.
I grin, just a little.
“Yeah, I hear you.”
The porch groans under my weight, but it holds.
