Page 39 of The Cowboy and the Stray

I stopped at the crest of the red dirt hill, squinting into the hard midday sun. Reid and Gray ran up beside me. Below us, the Coleman ranch stretched out, a wide, sorry piece of overgrazed hardpan studded with greasewood and dry washes. We shifted back and looked at the neighboring ranch.

"You know they hit a vein," Reid said.

I grunted in reply, jaw tightening. I'd heard. "This could ruin us," I said. Ruin our way of life.

My dad used to say good land could outlast a man, if you worked it right. Tended it, let it be what it needed to be. That's how we Maddoxes had run cattle on the same hard hills for nearly a century, through droughts and blizzards and every lean year between. The land endured, and so did we.

But he also used to say oil could sour the earth faster than any flood or fire. Poison the water, drive off the game, choke out anything that tried to grow.

"I thought oil meant money?" Gray asked, frowning.

"It wrecks the water table. Ruins grazing." I wiped sweat off my neck, searching for short words for a long problem. "The noise alone drives the cattle half-mad. And we feel it more than the cows. Vibrations through our bones, chemical reek we can't shake. Our animals spook, our land sours, our wolves can't breathe right."

Reid nodded, stone-faced. Gray just exhaled slowly, mulling it over. After a second, he stepped back, boots squelching in a fresh cow pie. He looked startled, then disgusted. Reid and I pretended not to notice, saving him the embarrassment, but it was hard not to chuckle.

We loped back home in a run, each of us chewing over the prospect of an oil boom on our doorstep like a bitter chaw.

I couldn't stop turning over the numbers, the logistics of it. Grazing rotations and watering schedules, all knocked cock-eyed by noise and mess. I tried to force it away, think on something else, but my mind kept circling back like a fly on a carcass.

"Keep eyes on that property line," I said as we shifted again and walked on two legs back into the yard. "And mouths shut, for now. No need to rile anyone up 'til we know more."

They murmured assent and split off to do their chores. I headed inside with my mind a thousand miles off. I was scarcely through the door before a peal of bright laughter shook me out of the dark reverie.

In the big den, Noah and Tess were sprawled on the rug, flicking cards at each other in some game I couldn't puzzle out. Noah had a rare unguarded grin on his face. Tess's eyes danced, coppery hair falling loose as she scooped the cards back up and shuffled, slim fingers nimble.

Something twisted soft and sharp in my chest, watching them. Domestic tranquility, I thought they called it. The kind of peace that could vanish quick, as soon as the wrong kind of trouble came knocking. I tried to memorize the moment even as I felt the fear of losing it. The delicate way Tess held the cards. The easy slope of Noah's thin shoulders, relaxed in a way they so rarely were. The buttery afternoon light, the smell of black coffee and old wood. I wanted to bottle it all up, keep it somewhere safe. Somewhere far from oil rigs and droughts and the slow teeth of time.

"That oil's not gonna sit quiet. Money stirs snakes."

Midge's gravel-rough voice startled me. I hadn't even heard her come up, but there she was at my elbow, staring hard at the same scene. Her eyes were flinty. "That place next door's gonna bring us trouble 'fore it's done," she said, matter of fact and certain as sin. A beat of silence, heavy with meaning. Then she turned her steel-trap gaze on me full bore. "I got a feeling."

A prickle ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the spring heat. Midge's "feelings" weren't vague womanly notions. They were cast iron and old blood, the kind of knowing that sank right down to the bones. I held her look, searching her tilted mouth, her crow's feet, for any hint of hedging or humor. There was none. Just that flat foreboding, as immutable as the land under our feet.

I didn't put much stock in word curses or spooky premonitions. But Midge's "feelings" were another matter. And this one settled in my chest like a hot stone.

I looked away first, gaze drawn helplessly back to Tess and Noah. Something clenched in my gut, a deep animal instinct to defend and protect. To stop any threat before it could darken our door. Midge walked away without another word, the tread of her boots heavy and resolute on the plank floor.

I didn't linger long after that. Didn't have the stomach for pretending all was well. I slipped out quietly to head upstairs but Sloane cornered me, stalking down the hall on silent feet as I tried to head to my bedroom.

"You couldn't keep it in your pants for one month?" Her voice crackled with accusation, sharp as a green branch snapping.

I stiffened as her eyes cut like flint. I met her glare even as something inside me flinched from it.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said through gritted teeth.

Sloane didn't even blink. "You know she smells like you now, right?"

It hit me like a buck to the chest. I'd been too distracted by the oil rigs, the suffocating threat of upheaval, to even consider. Of course Sloane had scented our little make out session last night. Just like every wolf in a ten-mile radius could.

Tess. The sweet musk of her skin, the hot salt of her sweat, all wound through with the wild smell of my own want. The kind of scent that lingered, that marked and claimed even from a distance. Even without meaning to.

I could still feel her under my fingers. Could still taste her on the back of my tongue when I inhaled. It seemed impossible that something so private, so visceral, could be detected, dissected, but I knew better. Had always known better.

"You know what that means for the pack?" Sloane pressed, cold and relentless.

I didn't reply. The snarl building in my chest felt too feral, too raw for human words.

"It means confusion. Disruption." She bit the words out like bullets. "A human, an outsider, walking around with the alpha's scent? Might as well declare her your mate in the town square."