thirty-five
Major
I’m sure you know what she is by now.
Arrangements can be made if you want to keep her.
My hands shake as I hold the note left by the mailbox. No sign of a car but the tracks led back down the hill to Willow Ridge. The note has no signature or identifying marks, but I know who sent this.
The sun is just up. No one is awake yet. In the past two weeks, Derrick and Jesse started sharing the nest with her.
It’s been two weeks of hell.
They take each other every day, anywhere. I don’t see them doing it—they at least spare me of that—but there’s no mistaking her needy scent around the house. Clinging to my skin. It’s syrupy goodness and makes me hard all day long.
I started avoiding the house altogether. I don’t eat breakfast with them anymore. I let them have their honeymoon, knowing that I can’t partake in their fun. I know well who I am, and I’m not a man who can let his woman go.
And that’s how Veda feels. She feels like mine even now, when I never touched her. It’s my job to protect her. The intense feeling takesover and pushes aside everything else. My eyes flick back to the note, and I take the phone into my hands, pressing the numbers I know by heart now.
“Damn, Major, not everyone lives on the damn ranch,” Dominic answers. “It’s six in the morning.”
He always complains, no matter what time I call. But he always answers.
“He left me a note.”
I hear the shifting of fabric, and his voice turns clear as he pushes the sleep away. “St. James?”
I grunt, and instead of replying, I read the note to him. Word for word.
Dominic lets out a string of curses. “He’s braver than I thought. I didn’t think this was the game.”
I crumple the paper in my hands. “He’s trying to sell her to me?”
“That much is obvious,” Dominic replies, and he doesn’t sound as disturbed as I am. “But I’ve been thinking about it. He could have sent her anywhere, but he chose an Alpha pack. He thinks he can control anyone.”
“He can control me, and he knows it.”
I drop into the seat. A few curses line up on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t bother with them. “I’ve been depending on him for a while now. The harvest is approaching, and he always buys the whole acre of sunflowers.”
“He’s asking a broke man to buy something?” Dominic summarizes in surprise, ignoring the dagger sinking into me as he puts it like that.
I swallow the hurt, putting that aside. Since I came to terms with who Anderson St. James truly is, I knew the ranch was done. I don’t have time to try finding another processor this close to harvest. Theplants are almost ready, and they need to be moved once they are, or I’ll lose the crop. It’s clear as day that this is the last season of Wilde Ranch.
“He wants me for something.” My voice is hard even to my own ears. “He knows I don’t have money to pay.”
Dominic is quiet for a long moment, putting the pieces together just as I am until he sighs. “He wants a breeding farm out of you. This would work in many packs, you know?”
“Don’t I know?” I chuckle darkly. “He dangles an Omega in front of them, then asks them to dance.”
“He wants your pack to become part of the breeding,” he puts it bluntly. “Veda was able to produce an Omega even with a Beta. It’s bleeding money to leave her as his granddaughter. I knew that much. But placing her with you is a new low. Let your pack fall in love and then tell you to keep and protect her…”
“As long as we send him our offspring.”
“Lesser men would take the deal.”
I don’t know what he’s asking of me. It doesn't seem like a deal to me. Asking me to forget about Veda’s daughter and not just that, but give away any future kid? It’s unthinkable.
“He would let you keep the boys,” he adds.
