I nodded, then held it out like a peace offering. “Backup for the losses.”
He reached for the box with both hands, careful, almost reverent. “Oh—God, I—thank you. I’ll set them up in the brooder.” He glanced up at Macon and Burke, his smile crumpling into shy confusion. For a second, he just stood there, clutching the box and vibrating in place.
I’d never seen a SEAL get taken off-guard by a farm boy with baby chicks, but it was a sight worth dying for. Burke’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “this is Jojo. My omega. And, as of yesterday, the mother of my child.”
The words landed like a flashbang. Silence, then Burke laughed—a real, reckless, happy sound, the kind that could shake off a week’s worth of death. “Damn, Steele. You move fast.”
Jojo blushed so red it was a minor miracle the chicks didn’t cook right there in the box. He hugged it tighter, then, as if remembering the rest of his body, curled one hand unconsciously over his stomach.
Macon just nodded, the way a man does when he’s too smart to put his feelings into words. He took a step forward, then surprised me by offering a hand to Jojo.
Jojo set the box down on the porch and wiped his palm on his jeans before taking it. His grip was firm, but his whole arm shook with the effort of being present.
Macon’s gaze flicked from Jojo’s eyes to his belly, then back, and for a moment something like awe leaked into his stone face. “Congrats, kid,” he said, voice low. “That’s a hell of a thing.”
Jojo ducked his head, but I caught the smile blooming at the edge of his lips. “Thank you,” he whispered. “It’s—it’s really nice to meet you both.”
Burke tipped his hat. “Likewise. You need anything, you ask. And if he’s an asshole,” he pointed at me, “you tell us. We’ll handle it.”
Jojo’s laugh was so bright it could’ve lit the barn.
With that, he scooped the box of chicks back up, cradling it like a box of dynamite, and retreated inside. The screen door gave a final squeak as it shut behind him.
We watched him disappear, the three of us lined up like a bad cartoon. Only when the house was silent again did Macon speak. “He’s good for you,” he said. “I can tell.”
Burke nodded. “And that—” he jabbed a thumb at the door—“is the happiest I’ve ever seen a man in the presence of poultry.”
I grinned. “Wait till you see him with ducklings.”
We stood there, not saying the thing that needed to be said, the thing about threats and death and how none of us had survived a decade in the SEALs by accident. But the air was thick with it. Under the easy talk, the gears were already turning.
“Let’s get the security set up,” I said. “We’ve got work.”
“Lead the way, boss,” Burke said, and it wasn’t just a joke.
We tromped off the porch and into the mud, three weapons in search of a target.
The barn was our war room. If you ignored the hay bales and the faint whiff of horse shit, you could almost imagine it was a command tent outside Mosul, every angle watched and every weakness cataloged in blood and sweat.
We left a trail of boot prints in the sucking mud—three sets, each with its own story written in the slop. Burke’s stride was long and a touch careless, Macon’s short and predatory, mine somewhere between, every step calculated for silence even when I didn’t need to be quiet.
Inside, I yanked the chain on the overhead light and swept aside a pile of tarps to clear the bench. I unrolled the county plat map, the one with every fence and creek marked in pencil, and stabbed a finger at our location.
“Hargrove wants this place,” I said. “He’s been here twice. The first time, he left with his tail between his legs. Second time, he sent a message.”
I told them everything—about the chick massacre, the white powder, the midnight break-in with the message painted in blood. I pointed out the river as a natural choke point, and how the water table made the property priceless to anyone farming on the other side.
Burke traced the river on the map, his nail scraping the path like he was flensing the skin off a corpse. “He needs your waterrights to irrigate his east fields. That’s not a rancher move. That’s a hostile acquisition, old-school.”
“Control the high ground, control the battle,” I said, and Burke smirked.
Macon circled the barn, silent as a cat burglar. He knocked on beams, rattled the hinges of the back door, then came back with a chunk of rotted wood.
“Your east door would last maybe two kicks,” he said, tossing it on the bench. “And the stalls are lined up for easy sightlines. If they want to take the barn, it’s a two-man job.”
I bristled, but only because he was right. “I had other priorities,” I said.
