Until the hum shifts.
Not storm. Not cattle.
Her.
“Goddammit!” I grumble under my breath.
Sunlight streaks her hair blue as she heads toward a new rocky outcropping. This one closer to the Starborn Range.
Then she crosses it.
The air thins. Birds lift from the scrub before she even steps through. Even Winnie flattens her ears.
My skin tightens.
I can’t do anything while she persists.
“Obstinate,” I murmur, nudging Winnie forward.
Josephine turns when she hears the gallop, eyes blazing and arms crossed over her chest.
I shake my head, almost snarling. “You’re too close.” I point toward a sign.
Her face hardens.
“You.” Her voice lowers. “Again.”
“You don’t understand what you’re stepping into.” I regret it the moment it leaves my lips. But it’s already too late.
She shakes her head, rolling her eyes. “Can’t scare me with those ghost stories anymore. Haunted ranges? Unexplained happenings? There’s always an explanation.”
It’s the explanation that concerns me.
I rub the saddle horn into the back of my hand, preferring flesh pain to the hum lodged beneath my skin.
The air shifts, thick and heavy, my pulse synced with the distant mountains.
“I already told you, I’m fine. You don’t need to watch me.” She scowls.
“That’s what you say, and then I find you testing boundaries. Not respecting the land.”
“Not respecting the land?”
She pauses, then adds, “Kind of like how you’re trespassing?”
“That’s different.”
“Because you say so?”
“Martin and I have an unspoken agreement. Always been this way.”
“Convenient.” The corners of her mouth dip. “I assume that’ll stand when I want to check your property for petroglyphs?”
“For God’s sake, this is getting out of hand.”
“Why, Ash?”
The way she says my name breaks something loose in my chest. I hunch in the saddle, reflexively shadowing my face. “What are you doing, anyway? Those rocks are old as dirt. Probably less valuable.”
