“Are you still unspoiled, woman?”
“Unspoiled—?” she stuttered, still confused.
“I mean are you still a virgin?” Thomas spat.
Her face turned hot and red with embarrassment. “Oh, yes. Yes, of course.”
He gave a laugh that chilled her. “Good. I’d have had you anyway, even if he’d had first go. But I’m glad he didn’t. I like breaking in my own ponies!” a chuckle followed.
She bowed her head, her stomach churning. All she felt at his words was humiliation and disgust.
Ezra shifted at the edge of the firelight, his expression stiff. He said nothing, but she felt his silence like a presence standing between her and despair.
?
Back at the camp, Grey Horse stood like stone long after Violet’s form had vanished among the trees. The firelight flickered across his face, but his eyes were fixed on the dark horizon.
“She chose,” Pale Moon said softly behind him.
His jaw tightened. “She was torn.”
“She is not ours,” Pale Moon pressed. “Her promise belongs to another. You cannot take what is bound.”
Grey Horse turned to her, his gaze fierce. “A promise made in words is not stronger than a promise made in the heart.”
Pale Moon’s eyes glittered, hard with jealousy. “Yet she walked with him.”
He did not answer. His chest burned as though a lance had pierced it. The sight of Violet’s hand in Thomas’s, the sound of her voice sayingI will go—it replayed in him with every breath. He wanted to follow, to tear her back from the man who had no real right other than some words on paper. Yet he knew to act in rage was to fail.
Still, he could not let her go. Not without trying.
He would follow. Quiet, patient, as the wolf follows the herd until the time is right.
?
Sleep escaped Violet that night. She lay on a thin blanket near the fire, the night sounds pressing close. Thomas snored beside her, loud and steady, while Ezra kept watch at the edge of camp.
Every time she closed her eyes she saw Grey Horse’s face, the pain in his eyes when she stepped away with Thomas. Pale Moon’s words whispered in her ear:His heart belongs to the past. If freed, it will be mine.
But she knew that was not true. His heart had turned toward her, Violet. She had felt it in his gifts, in his hands braiding her hair, in the quiet way he looked at her when words were not enough.
Her chest ached. She had walked away from that, turned toward the man who now slept heavily beside her, reeking of ale and rotten sweat. She had chosen obligation over desire.
Had she had chosen wrong?
?
The days that followed blurred into one another. Thomas drove them hard, his temper quick to spark, his words sharp. He complained of the pace, of the heat, of the rations. He spoke of his ranch, of the work awaiting her there: cooking, cleaning, tending stock.
“You’ll earn your keep,” he told her, his eyes cold. “I don’t keep idlers. You’ll pull your weight.”
She nodded, her throat dry.
Ezra remained distant, though his gaze often lingered on her with quiet sympathy. Once, when Thomas had gone to fetch water, Ezra spoke low.
“You don’t have to like the road you’re on,” he said. “Just remember there are forks in it yet.”
Her eyes stung, though she forced a small nod.
