Even louder.
Even angrier.
The entire table freezes.
“It’s Hamish and Ragnar,” Jamison adds unnecessarily.
“Of course it is,” Finn mutters beside me.
Maggie rises with the dignity of a queen marching into battle.
“Let us go see what is happening.”
The second she moves, the entire family surges toward the windows overlooking the gardens.
Maggie’s herb garden—the one she has lovingly cultivated for forty years, the source of her pride and medicinal teas, the garden she proudly shows every visitor as proof of her patience and expertise—is currently being annihilated before our eyes.
Hamish stands in the middle of what used to be a perfectly organized patch of thyme, rosemary, mint, and sage.
At this exact moment, he is methodically ripping up mint plants with his teeth, chewing them with visible satisfaction before trampling through the thyme like a tiny wool-covered bulldozer.
He’s already created a crater roughly the size of a small car and is now moving onto the rosemary.
Ragnar stands several feet away watching the destruction.
I’ve seen things in my veterinary career.
Cows trapped in ditches.
Cats stuck inside chimneys.
A horse that somehow managed to wedge its head inside a bucket.
But a sheep methodically organizing the destruction of a forty-year-old herb garden?
That’s new.
“My garden,” Maggie whispers faintly.
Beside me, Finn murmurs:
“Why isn’t Ragnar moving?”
“He’s observing,” I whisper back tightly. “Evaluating.”
“Evaluating what?”
“The level of destruction necessary to outperform Hamish.”
As if to confirm my theory, Ragnar suddenly emits a sound somewhere between a wolf growl and a lion’s roar—which should not even be physiologically possible for a sheep.
Then he charges.
Not toward Hamish.
Toward what remains of the herb garden.
And there, before our horrified eyes, he gets to work.
