He gave me a hard look. “I believe it. Just don’t let your dick override your instincts. You’re better than that.”
“Thanks, coach,” I said. “Now eat your protein and let’s go make some money.”
He grinned, just a little, and we finished breakfast like we always did: fast, focused, and ready for whatever kind of trouble waited outside.
The sun was all the way up when we walked out, the heat building off the asphalt. The crowd had doubled, maybe tripled, and the smell of burnt coffee was almost drowned out by the diesel and old leather.
Arsenal clapped me on the back, hard enough to rattle my teeth. “Let’s go,” he said.
I looked over my shoulder once, searching for something I wasn’t sure was there. A sign, maybe, or just a reason to hope.
All I saw was a sky so blue it almost hurt.
They say you never forget your first auction—the press of bodies, the perfume of hot steel and parched earth, the way men’s voices cut through the din like they were sharpening knives on hope. Most of the world figured stockyards belonged in another century, but step into the Exchange and you’d see: Texas ran on the blood and sweat that soaked these old planks, and the men who called it home never grew tired, just grew meaner.
The barn was a cathedral of noise and dust. Cowboys stacked five deep around the gates, arguing the merits of Brangus versus Hereford, and every other hand held a Styrofoam cup of coffee or a can of cheap domestic that nobody was old enough to admit to drinking. The auctioneer stood on a dais that looked salvaged from a failed high school musical, microphone cord coiled around his fist like a bullwhip. His voice rolled through the rafters, rising and falling, a river of numbers and nonsense that carried every man with it.
Arsenal kept to my shoulder, quiet, scanning for threats but not expecting any. This wasn’t our kind of war, just a marketplace with higher stakes. The only real violence here was the way men’s egos bruised when they lost a bid.
We drove the trailer up just after seven, in line with three other rigs. Two belonged to outfits from the Hill Country, fancy names and fancier paint jobs, a third was from outside of Waco. Arsenal caught the name—R.Ponderosa—and gave me a nod, like he’d already clocked the whole family tree.
I walked the pens with him, checking every head, fingers trailing along hides slick as blacktop. My steers looked good. Better than good. They were cut glass, all muscle and low mean eyes cool as pond water. I caught two buyers watching from the catwalk, trying to look casual. They wore city boots, probably out of Dallas, and one already had his phone out to snap a photo of my lead steer. I winked at them, just to see if they’d blush. One did.
Arsenal grunted. “Told you, Walsh. You breed ‘em mean, people notice.”
I shrugged, but the pride buzzed warm in my gut. “Mean’s all they know.”
He started to say something else, but that’s when the auctioneer’s call rolled out, and the barn went dead quiet. First lot up was a run of Charolais—decent, but not mine. I watched the action anyway, paying attention to which hands went up and who had the deep pockets. You learn quick in this business that most men are cheap, but when they want to win, the checkbook opens faster than a lawyer’s zipper.
They got to my steers just before ten. The auctioneer read off the notes—“Champion stock, Iron Valor breeding, guaranteed weight and vaccinated up the wazoo.” The pen gate swung open, and my boys swaggered out, hooves clicking like they owned the place. The crowd shifted, interested.
“Who’ll start me at fifteen?” the auctioneer barked, and three paddles went up at once. He didn’t even pause, just rolled right into the chant, numbers flowing like water off a tin roof.
I didn’t watch the bidders; I watched the cattle. They paced the ring slow, tails flicking, ears alert, sizing up the men as much as the men sized them. My wolf bristled with satisfaction. This was our territory, even here.
“Twenty-two hundred!” someone called, and the crowd murmured. That was higher than I’d dreamed, and it wasn’t even noon.
“Twenty-two, now twenty-three, do I hear three?” The auctioneer’s voice could’ve cut through a tornado.
A hand from the Hill Country crew went up. “Twenty-three!”
Another, from the city boys. “Twenty-four!”
It ping-ponged like that, back and forth, the numbers rising faster than the dust. By the end of it, the top steer went for twenty-six fifty, and the rest followed just behind.
When the gavel came down, I felt it like a punch to the chest. Arsenal clapped me on the shoulder, harder than needed, and I let myself grin. It was a damn good haul.
We moved on to the heifers, and the action didn’t slow. The calves got more attention than I expected—good genetics always paid off, but it was something else, the way buyers argued in low voices about my breeding line. I caught the words ‘Iron Valor’ more than once. By the end, we’d cleared nearly twenty thousand for the whole run.
It should have felt like a victory, and in a way, it did. But every time the auctioneer called my name, every time someone mentioned the Walsh bloodline, my mind skipped like a stone, bouncing from the barn to Brie’s last message, the sly way she’d said “maybe” when I asked if she was wet.
I wondered what she was doing now. Painting, probably, or arguing with her mother over the merits of American breakfast food. I pictured her at the little table in Aspen’s bakery, hunched over a sketchbook with paint on her fingers and hair falling in her eyes. The image made my cock twitch, which was as inappropriate as it was inevitable.
Arsenal noticed. Of course, he did. He was a predator, too.
“Gunner, you with me?” he said, voice low, nudging me back to reality.
“Always,” I said, but my own voice sounded far-off.
