Not as the girls you were, but the women you've become. " For a heartbeat, none of them moved. Then the three women smiled. And in those smiles, Thorn saw it. Hope, warmth, and something close to relief. "We'll stay," Alona said gently.
Then her expression turned a little more serious. "But there's something you need to understand, Thorn. In the end, you will have to choose one of us. In our ways, a woman may come forward, may offer her heart, but marriage, that belongs to two. " She glanced at her sisters. "We know this.
We accept it. And the one you don't choose will still stand beside you, as family, as a sister. " Thorn swallowed, the weight of that settling in his chest. "I don't want to hurt any of you," he said quietly. Ayanna stepped closer, her voice soft but certain. "The truth doesn't wound the way lies do," she said.
"Just be who you are. The rest will find its place. " The days that followed felt unreal, like something borrowed from a life he'd never believed could be his. The ranch changed, not in its bones, but in its spirit. Alona rose with the sun each morning, tending to the small patch of earth behind the house. She moved through the garden like she belonged to it, identifying wild herbs, planting seeds she had carried all the way from Alona's circle.
Under her hands, the dry soil seemed to breathe again. She showed Thorn how to use each plant, how to ease pain, how to close wounds, how to fight fever. And when they spoke, it wasn't rushed, it wasn't shallow. It was quiet, steady. Conversations about the land, about life, about things that didn't need to be said loud to matter.
Bidziel was already awake before the first light touched the horizon. She took to the horses like they answered only to her. Even the wildest ones settled under her presence. She didn't just train them, she understood them. Taught Thorn things he'd never learned, ways to move with the animal instead of against it.
She was sharp, honest, and when she laughed, it rolled free like wind sweeping through the high country. Ayanna brought something else entirely. She reshaped the house itself. Curtains she had woven now hung by the windows, catching the light in soft patterns that made the small space feel alive. In the afternoons, she sat near the window, working beads and leather into quiet works of art, telling stories as her hands moved.
Stories of her people, old ones. Her voice carried like music, and more than once Thorn found himself slowing his work just to hear it longer. But beneath it all, he knew a choice was coming, and it scared him more than anything he'd faced before. On the fifth day, something shifted. Thorn was out by the stable when he noticed it first.
The sky. Out west, it had turned a sick yellow shade, unnatural, wrong. The horses felt it, too. They grew restless, stomping, snorting, their nerves snapping tight. Thorn didn't need a second look.
"A storm," he muttered, "and a bad one. " He ran for the house. "We got to move," he called out. "Storm's coming in fast. " No one wasted time. Alona was already outside, securing anything that could be torn loose by the wind. Bidziel moved the horses into the main stable, sealing the doors tight behind them.
Ayanna shut every window, every crack, stuffing damp cloth into the gaps to keep the dust out. Thorn climbed onto the roof, working fast to secure the loose boards. Then he saw it. Far off, cutting across the open land toward the ranch, a single rider. Small.
Too small. Elara Voss. She was pushing her pony hard, racing the storm, but she wasn't going to make it. Behind her, the wall of sand rose like a living thing, roaring, swallowing the horizon. A storm like that didn't just blind you, it buried you.