“We’ve been neighbors long as I can remember.” He studies me. “You’re family too, Ash.”
I don’t answer.
The car rolls to a stop beside the fence. The window slides down.
“Grandpa!” Her voice is lower than I remember. Not a child’s anymore. She steps out of the car, and the air shifts pressure.
The starlings lift again. Not in panic, but in correction. The pattern tightens, redraws, then breaks apart entirely.
Even Winnie goes still.
The land notices her. So do I.
Short black hair cut sharp at her jaw. Hazel-green eyes that take everything in before reacting. Freckles across her nose as if someone dusted cinnamon by accident.
Layered skirt. Worn boots. Statement earrings that look handcrafted and expensive in the same breath.
Anthropologist.
The hum detonates.
Pain tears across my chest so abruptly I nearly lose the saddle. The glyphs ignite beneath my skin—not visible yet, but close. Too close.
She leans against the fence post. Sage, honey, and something warmer drift toward me.
I clamp down on the reaction before it reaches the surface. The saddle horn bites into the heel of my palm.
For an instant, I smell rain on iron.
This is not proximity to the mountains.
This is…
No.
Wildblood resonance is rare.
Rare enough that most of us never experience it. Rare enough, it’s treated like theory.
Drift.
Error.
I tell myself it’s nothing. Nerves. Memory. Sunlight on wire.
My pulse knows better.
She laughs, bright and unfiltered, and then snorts softly, startled by herself. A hand flies to her mouth as her eyes widen in embarrassment.
The sound drives the vibration deeper.
Her gaze lands on me. Recognition flickers there. Curiosity, too.
She studies me the way she’d study an artifact, cataloging inconsistencies.
“It’s been what?” she says, tilting her head. “Twelve years?”
“You were twelve,” Martin confirms.
