Kurt slapped the loop of rope against his thigh and cut his horse the other way. He’d been working with Remedy, a spirited gray filly who had a good shot at being a decent cutting horse. She was naughty as hell, but she just needed chores. She did better when she was busy. And right now, her job was to help Kurt separate this little brown half-grown calf from the rest of the herd because he looked sick as hell. If he was gonna have a shot at living through the next couple of nights, Kurt needed to be pumping him full of antibiotics and electrolytes. Only problem was, something had riled up the cattle, and they were agitated. The momma of that sick baby was half Brahman and full-on mean-as-sin. She reminded Kurt of Deadfast, the bull that Colt had killed. That cow was a beast to deal with and protective to boot, and this momma had already charged Remedy twice with zero fear in her eyes. Rabid female.

Everything fuckin’ hurt. His whole torso was on fire, and he was bleeding like a stuck pig today. Bouncing around on Remedy wasn’t helping.

Fuck it, momma could come, too. Kurt let out the loop on his lasso and spun it slowly over his head until it was steady for a throw, and then the second momma cut to the side, he threw it at that baby.

Missed. Sheeeyit. He never missed, but his ribs were on fire, and it was messin’ with his ability to help with the ranch. It was only gonna get worse. He was going to have to tell Trig what was happening to him at some point. He was going to have to tell the Clan he was dyin’ and beg them to take Gunner as their own. Fuck. The thought of not being there for his son gutted him.

He sniffed hard and pulled the rope back in an arm’s length at a time. He circled around the cluster of cows that momma and the calf had dove into the middle of.

“I never seen you miss before,” Colt said from right behind him.

Startled, Kurt hunched his shoulders and rounded on him, a cougar snarl in his throat. Remedy skittered to the side and threw him off balance, and he winced at the pain of trying to right himself quick.

“Shit, Colt! Don’t sneak up on a man like that.”

Colt’s eyes were green today, human, but they narrowed under his hat. “I was plenty loud, Kurt. What’s goin’ on. You’re favorin’ that right side, and like I said, I ain’t never seen you miss.”

He was sittin’ up on his bay, looking at Kurt like he was suspicious as hell. Kurt had plans to tell him and Trig how screwed he was at some point, just not today. He didn’t want them to pity him. He wanted to go out the way he wanted—tough as leather, and suffering in silence so they could remember him well.

 “What do you want?” he asked Colt.

“Brought you lunch.” The Warmaker held up a brown paper sack with some weight to it.

Now it was Kurt who was suspicious. “What’s goin’ on? You’ve never cared about pamperin’ me before.”

Colt squinted at the herd of cattle, now moving away from their horses. “I wanted to talk to you about Genie.”

Uh oh. Tenlee had acted weird this morning when he’d gone looking for her so he could see her before he started the work day. She stayed squirrel and was hugging onto his jeans like she was upset about something. Then she’d scrambled up a tree and watched him until he left. Something hurt her, and Kurt didn’t like feeling helpless. “Genie ain’t her name.”

“You know what I mean,” Colt murmured. “I gotta tell you something I noticed about her.”

“Something bad?”

Colt ticked his head and made a single clicking sound. “I don’t know if it’s bad or it’s her normal, but I think it could be a problem for her.”

Kurt pulled Remedy up to Colt’s horse and leaned on the saddle horn. “I’m listening.”

“Did you know she slept as a human last night?”

“What? She did?” Why hadn’t she come over and slept beside Kurt then? That stung. He would’ve given his left femur bone to spend a whole night holding her.

“Last night she climbed in her cage, left the door open, made her nest like usual, but this morning I woke up and she was sleeping on the couch under a ton of blankets, shiverin’ like she was cold or upset maybe. Talked a little, but she got emotional and Changed back to her animal, but it didn’t look like she did it on purpose. It looked painful. And she told me before she did she was trying to stay a girl for you. And I can’t stop thinking about the look on her face right before she Changed. Like she was trying so hard to hold onto her skin. I can’t pretend to know what that woman has been through, but it’s hard watching her struggle, you know? With identity?”

“I’d guess you know how that feels,” Kurt murmured.

“Yeah.” Colt licked his lips. “She said something the other day about having a hard time watching me hate my reflection in the mirror. She hated her reflection, too. And that sits heavy with me. I needed an anchor to accept the scars on my face and the reasons they are there. Karis fixed the way I look at myself, but with Genie…I mean, Ten? I think she needs more.”

“More anchors?”

“Yeah. I can see her trying so hard for you, but there’s a disconnect with her and the rest of this place.”

“What do you mean?”

“We ain’t accepted her yet. It’s partly our fault, you know? The Clan needed a minute to adjust to something being so different than what we thought, but she’s sensitive, man. She feels everything. You can see it on her face. She don’t know how to hide a single emotion. She’s a watcher, she absorbs a lot, and right now I have a feeling she sees herself as an outsider. I think she needs experiences to anchor her more to the human world.”

“Experiences like what?”

Colt shrugged up one shoulder and turned his horse, kicked him into a trot, and called over his shoulder, “That ain’t for me to figure out. That’s her man’s job.”

Huh. Kurt bit his bottom lip as he watched Colt disappear into the tree line. What he’d said made a helluva lot of sense to Kurt. He was building something special with Ten, something he wished he’d found years ago, long before the end of his life. And now he didn’t have to only find a place for Gunner when he was gone.

He needed to make sure Ten would be okay, too.

****

This body was weak and pitiful. It made Tenlee angry. She scooped another pile of horse crap and hay into the wheel barrow but didn’t make it look pretty. She was sweating, her hair plastered to her forehead, cursing the clothes she had to wear to be proper and not make other people uncomfortable, and she had blisters all over her hands from cleaning out two tiny stalls. But she was no quitter, and this morning had lit a fire inside of her. She needed better control of this body so she could take care of her people. She needed to be strong so she could play with Gunner whenever he wanted, and help Kurt with his chores around the ranch. Like today. He was out with the cattle but would have to come back here after a long day and clean out stalls, and she was bound and determined to make his life easier so his injuries didn’t hurt so much.

Gunner was hanging out with Karis today, but Tenlee wished she was the one who could take care of him while Kurt was out. She understood, though. This body didn’t hold long enough. She didn’t trust it to stay like this a whole day for Gunner yet.

But she would.

Ouch. One of her blisters on her palms ripped against the handle of the pitchfork. Weak body.

Flap, flap, flap.

Tenlee jerked her attention to the rafters above her. And there sat Ramsey in his human form, newly Changed, naked, with one leg dangling down. His eyes roiled black with anger. All of his tattoos and muscles and dominance had never done anything for her. All the females fell all over themselves around him, but Tenlee never had.

He dropped down into the stall with barely any impact on his legs. He cocked his head and dragged his gaze down her body and back up. “I don’t understand you.”

Every instinct inside of her said to run, but the first thing she’d learned during her time with the crows was you never gave them your back. They turn to birds of prey if anyone ran from them. It was the instinct of a monster. “Not surprising. You never did understand me.”

“It’s time to stop this and come home.”

“I am home,” she murmured. Damn her voice as it shook. Weak body. Weak voice. Weak Tenlee. She gripped the handle of the pitchfork and lifted it threateningly as he stepped toward her.

“You’re changing, and I don’t like it. I can feel you turning into someone you’re not. I watch you, and you are changing to match a man who doesn’t deserve your attention. You are a queen, Tenlee. An Origin. He’s a washed-up Alpha on his last legs.” He jerked his head and held out his hand. “Let’s go. Your throne is ready for you.”

“But I was never ready for that throne, Ramsey. I never will be. You don’t get that, do you? It’s something I’ve said to you a hundred times, and it’s like you don’t hear me. You don’t listen.” She lifted her chin and straightened her spine. “I want to be happy.”

Ramsey’s blond brows lowered over those pitch-black eyes, and his lips twisted into a snarl. “You don’t know what that means, Tenlee. You were happy, and you threw it away.”

“I was never happy with you,” she argued softly. Shaky, shaky voice. Her back hit the stall wall as he approached, and she kept distance between them with only the length of the pitchfork.

Ramsey looked so dark. So angry. So much like a crow. She could never go back to that cage—that’s what Red Dead Mayhem had been. Each crow had been an iron bar keeping her stagnant, and she wanted something different. She wanted to move and improve and be a better shifter. A better woman. A better person. A stronger one. “You are right. I’m changing, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t like it. I do.”

Ramsey shoved the pitchfork out of the way and reached for her, but the anger she’d been trying to control blasted through her, and the second he gripped her arm, she turned and bit him so hard her human teeth hurt and her mouth filled with the taste of warm iron.

Ramsey huffed a pained breath and yanked away from her. His eyes were swimming with complete shock as he stared at her, body angled away, holding his bleeding forearm close to his body.

“Don’t you touch me. Screw your throne. I’ll never sit on it.”

There was a small hiss from beside her, and when she looked down, a cougar cub was crouched down beside her ankle, blazing green eyes on Ramsey, his little needle teeth on display as he hissed at the intruder. Gunner. The little badass charged forward a few steps and snaked his claw out. His ears were flattened, his face twisted up in fury.

“Cute kid,” Ramsey snarled. “It would be a shame if anything happened to him.”

Enraged at the threat to her boy—because that was Gunner was, hers—Tenlee gave into the devil inside of her telling her to end this. She adjusted her grip on the handle of the pitchfork, took a step forward, and put her weight into launching those daggers forward. She released the handle just as Ramsey’s eyes went wide, and he imploded, Changed into his crow, and beat his wings, lifting just in time to avoid the weapon she’d thrown like a javelin. Black feathers floated down as the pitchfork slammed into the other side of the stall and stuck, the handle vibrating with the force.

When Ramsey disappeared out the loft window, the hiss died in Gunner’s throat. And as she looked from the ferocious little cub beside her to her hand, the blisters all torn and bleeding from throwing the pitchfork, she had a moment. The type of moment that changed the course of a doomed life. A moment of hope.

For the first time in this body…she didn’t feel weak.