Page 62 of Wilder

“Quit it,” I grumbled, swatting Pelly’s mouth away from the rim of my hat for what had to be the third time since I’d stepped into her stall.

The damn mare had a fixation on stealing it and using the brim of it as a file for her teeth whenever I was in here trying to clean up her stall when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. I’d already had to retire two of my hats from being chewed through and I wasn’t about to lose a third in two days.

With Asher gone, she’d been relentless.

Bending back over, I grabbed at the mess of hay she’d already yanked out of her feeder and started shoving it back in through the metal bars, gritting my teeth as I worked.

Since Asher’s departure, Pelly had been nothing short of a petulant toddler.

She’d refused to listen to any of us—wouldn’t mind her manners, wouldn’t stop nipping at the other ranch hands who’d come by to refill her trough and feeder, or their sleeves, or anything she could get her mouth on.

And if that wasn’t enough, she had a new favorite pastime: tearing all her damn hay out of the wall feeder and spreading it around like she was throwing a temper tantrum.

As much as I hated to admit it, the damn horse missed him, too.

“Hey.” I stuck out a hand to shove against her hindquarters when she tried to herd me back into the wall. “You know, this would go a whole lot smoother if you weren’t being a brat.”

Pelly responded with a slow, bored blink, her ears flicking lazily as if the concept of cooperation was something she’d never quite heard of. Ironic, since she’d taken to Asher’s coaching perfectly fine.

I sighed, standing up again to give her hip a few good pats, ignoring the way her tail swatted at my back. “Listen, you have to deal with me for at least another two days. So, we might as well get along till then.”

She let out a long, exaggerated snort. Her nostrils flaring as she turned her head just enough to look at me as if to say, I don’t think so.

I scowled when she swatted me again. “Real helpful, thanks.”

Before she could make another attempt at bullying me into the corner of the stall again, a voice called out from the other side of the door.

“Boss?”

I turned, catching the sight of a head of dark hair appearing over the stall door, pushed back with a green bandana that was tied around his forehead.

Laken.

He threw his arms over the top, leaning hard against it until it groaned slightly. His chin rested on one of his forearms while he shot me an unmistakably amused look.

“You talking to her like that sounds just like Asher.”

Pelly took that exact moment to turn in the stall and nudge my shoulder with her nose, almost like she agreed.

“At least she’s polite to him,” I muttered, reaching up to rub at my shoulder where she’d pressed her nose. “Can’t say the same for myself.”

Laken’s grin widened. “Yeah, I think that’s everyone’s consensus. Least she behaves for one of us.” He snorted.

I exhaled, still undecided if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

We took in our rescues with the objective of rehabilitating them, giving them the care they’d been denied before. Whatever personality quirks came out of that process, we took in stride. Whether that meant skittishness, stubbornness, or in Pelly’s case, a clear preference for certain people.

None of that was bad, but it did make things a little more complicated with Asher being gone.

And if he ever decided to leave for good?

That would make things even trickier.

At the equine hospital, Pelly’s paperwork had come back with a rough estimate of her being around six years old—young, healthy, and firmly in her prime. If she was properly cared for—and she would be, as long as she stayed under our watch—she could easily live well into her twenties.

But I doubted Asher would stay that long. Even five years was a hell of a long time for a kid his age.

He had family ten and a half hours away, a whole life waiting for him outside of the ranch if he ever decided to put those talents of his to good use at a job that would make him way more money than what I could ever hope to give him.