“What about you?”
“I need to check the fence line. See how the Krulaati got spooked.” He stood and grabbed his ruined shirt. “The supplies from town… You could... if you want to decorate. For your Christmas. I won’t stop you.”
Before she could say anything, he was gone.
She slumped against the kitchen counter, bandaged hands pressed to her chest where her heart was doing something complicated and painful and wonderful.
Shit. She was in so much trouble.
Lady’s teeth, he ached.
Good. He needed it. Needed something to cut through the chaos in his head, the taste of her still on his lips, the phantom weight of her body in his arms.
Goraath strode toward the krulaati pasture, the wounds on his back pulling with every swing of his arms. The shoulder was the worst, a deep throb that radiated down into his fingers. He welcomed it. Pain was simple. Pain made sense.
Nothing else did.
The herd had settled in the far pasture, grazing like nothing had happened. Like they hadn’t almost?—
Cutting off the thought, he kept walking. The ground sloped upward here, and his calves burned as he pushed through the long grass. Years of ranch work kept him fit, but he’d taken a beating. His body wanted to remind him of that with every step.
The field told its own story. Trampled grass, deep gouges where hooves had torn up the earth, a fence rail splintered where a panicked beast had clipped it. He’d need to fix that before nightfall.
Later. First, answers.
Following the path of destruction backward, past the feeders and the broken rail, he headed toward the northern boundary where his land met scrub. The morning light caught something in the grass up ahead. A glint that didn’t belong.
Crouching, he felt the wound on his lower back scream in protest. His fingers brushed charred earth. A rough circle of blackened grass, and half-buried in the burned patch… Metal. Twisted and melted at the edges.
His hand closed around a piece of casing. Still faintly warm from the blast.
Not military grade. He knew military grade. He’d packed charges like this into krin nests, set them to blow on a timer while he cleared out. This was different. Civilian. The kind the colony used for blasting rock.
Mining equipment. Three casings. Picking through the blast radius, knees grinding into the cold dirt, he found them one by one.
The blood in his veins ran cold.
One wouldn’t have done it. One would have startled the herd, maybe scattered them. But three was thunder and lightning, noise and flash, enough to send even placid krulaati into blind panic.
Whoever did this knew that.
Draanth.
Standing, knees cracking, he scanned the fence line. Old instincts stirred, sharpening his focus. His gaze swept the terrain: elevation, cover, sightlines.
The placement was smart. Far enough from the house that he wouldn’t have heard the blast over the sounds of morning, positioned to drive the herd southwest toward the feeders. Toward where someone doing chores would be standing.
His chest seized, breath locking behind his ribs.
Not him. He knew krulaati, knew their patterns. He’d have been out of that field the instant the ground started shaking. But Juni wasn’t supposed to be in that field at all. She’d gone out on her own, some draanthic impulse to prove herself useful, to haul feed bags she had no business hauling.
The only way someone could have timed this right was if they’d been watching her.
He frowned as he looked down.
Boot prints in the soft earth at the fence line, partially scuffed by the blast but still visible. There were multiple impressions. Someone had stood here long enough to shift their weight, to get comfortable.
Tracking the sightline from feeders to field to house, he saw it clearly now. Someone had stood right here and watched her leave the house. Watched her cross to the feed shed. Watched her haul those bags into the field, one after another, until she was far enough from safety.
