"Could head back to Coldwater Springs. Hoskins said he'd have more work." "Or we could go somewhere else," Kaya said. "Somewhere new?" "Like where?"
"Anywhere. The frontier's big. There's always work if you know where to look." Sani spoke up, her voice thoughtful. "What do you want, Cole?"
The question caught him off guard. Nobody had asked him that in longer than he could remember. "I want to not get shot at for a while," he said finally. Lyra laughed. "Good luck with that."
"What about you three?" Cole asked. "What do you want?" The women exchanged glances. Then Kaya leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table.
"We want to stay with you," she said. "Until the debt's paid." "Yes." Cole shook his head. "You've been saying that for months. When does it end?"
"When we decide it ends." "That's not an answer." "It's the only answer we have." Cole drained his glass, set it down harder than he intended. "This doesn't make sense."
"You don't owe me months of your lives. You don't owe me anything." "We disagree," Sani said simply. "Why?" Cole's voice rose, frustration bleeding through.
"Why are you so damn stubborn about this?" Kaya met his eyes, her expression steady. "Because where we're from, a life debt isn't just words. It's a bond, a promise, and breaking it would dishonor everything we are." "Then consider it broken."
"I release you. Debt paid. Done." "It doesn't work that way." "Why not?" "Because you don't get to decide when it's over," Kaya said, her voice calm but firm.
"We do." Cole stared at her, speechless. The absurdity of it all crashed over him like a wave. He'd saved three strangers in a moment of reckless stupidity, and now they'd woven themselves into his life so completely he couldn't remember what it felt like without them. And the worst part was, he didn't want to remember.
"You're all crazy," he muttered. Lyra grinned. "Probably." They left Canyon Bend the next morning, heading east with no particular destination in mind. The days blurred together in a rhythm Cole had grown used to, riding, camping, taking odd jobs when they needed money, moving on when the work dried up.
The women stayed close, always close, and slowly, imperceptibly, the dynamic between them shifted. It wasn't just a debt anymore. It was something else. Something Cole couldn't name and didn't want to examine too closely. Three months passed, then six, then eight, and then, on a cold morning in early autumn, everything changed.
They were camped near a dried-up riverbed, somewhere in the hills south of a town whose name Cole had already forgotten. He woke before dawn, as he always did, and found Kaya sitting by the fire, staring into the embers. "Couldn't sleep?" he asked, sitting down beside her. "Thinking," she said. "About?"
Kaya hesitated, then turned to face him. "About what comes next." "Same as always. We ride, we find work, we keep moving." "What if we stopped moving?"
Cole frowned. "What do you mean?" "I mean, what if we stayed somewhere, built something instead of just surviving?" "Like what?" "I don't know. A ranch, a homestead, something that's ours."
Cole stared at her. "You serious?" "Yes." "That takes money, land, time." "We have money. We can get land and time."
She smiled faintly. "We have plenty of that." Cole looked away, staring out at the dark hills. "I don't stay places, Kaya. Never have." "Maybe it's time to start."
Before Cole could answer, Lyra and Sani emerged from their bedrolls, stretching and yawning. Lyra caught the tail end of the conversation and raised an eyebrow. "Are we talking about settling down?" she asked. "Kaya is," Cole said. "And what do you think?"
"I think it's a bad idea." "Why?" "Because nothing good lasts out here. You build something and the desert tears it down. You put down roots and someone comes along to rip them up."
Sani sat down beside the fire, her expression thoughtful. "Then we build something strong enough that it can't be torn down." Cole shook his head. "You three don't know what you're asking." "Yes, we do," Kaya said.
"We're asking you to stop running." "I'm not running." "Then what do you call it?" Cole didn't have an answer. The conversation lingered in the back of his mind for days, gnawing at him like a splinter he couldn't dig out.
The women didn't bring it up again, but he could feel the question hanging between them, heavy and unresolved. And then, ten years to the day after the canyon, the women made their move. They'd stopped in a town called Stillwater Crossing, a nothing place with one street and a general store. Cole was inside buying supplies, and when he came back out, he found all three women waiting for him. Their expressions were different, serious, determined.
"We need to talk," Kaya said. Cole set the supplies down. "About what?" "About the debt." Cole's stomach sank.
"I thought we were past this." "We were never past it," Sani said. "We were just waiting." "Waiting for what?" Kaya stepped forward.
"For the right time. For you to be ready." "Ready for what?" "For us to repay what we owe." Cole's heart was pounding now, a sick, heavy rhythm.
"You've repaid it a hundred times over." "No," Kaya said. "We haven't." She took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was steady, formal, like she was reciting something she'd memorized. "Cole Mercer, ten years ago you saved our lives."
"By the laws of our people, that binds us to you. The debt can only be repaid one way, by offering our lives in return. Not as servants, not as companions, but as wives." The world tilted. Cole stared at her, certain he'd misheard.
"What?" "We offer ourselves," Kaya said. "Marriage, loyalty, a shared destiny, all of it, freely given." "You're joking." "We're not."
Cole looked at Lyra, then Sani. Both of them nodded. "This is insane," he said, his voice rising. "You can't just... People don't..." "In our culture, they do," Sani said quietly.