Page 2 of Crew

He left the barn and returned a few moments later with a handful of sweet grass he’d cut fresh, which he used to lure her from the bales.

“She’s so spoiled,” Ford said with a fond smile. She was their unofficial herd mascot, left behind by the previous farmer.

“Sheisspoiled,” Grey said as he returned from filling up the water troughs in the pen. “But she’s worth it.”

After securing the ornery goat in with the cows so they could graze and enjoy the morning, they worked together to get the rest of the chores done, and then took a break on the front porch with cold lemonade.

The rocker creaked as Crew sat in it, looking out over their yard. They all lived in the main house, which had eight bedrooms and three bathrooms. Their paid caretaker—Tris—was a wolf shifter who was mated to Khyle, and they’d recently moved into the home they’d built on property owned by Dexter and his mate Nancy, who lived about a mile down the road. For a while, Khyle and Tris had lived in the storage barn’s apartment, but they had a place of their own now and the apartment sat empty.

They’d all come to Little River from other herds. Crew had been seventeen when he’d been exiled from his herd and floundered for a while until he’d been directed to Dexter’s herd. Then Grey, Avi, and finally Ford had finished out their herd.

“The herd’s a lot different now than what it was when we all joined up,” Crew mused.

“Definitely,” Ford said. “But it’s good the way it is now—better, I think. We’ve got Dexter for an elder, but we were able to bring Khyle back in with Tris, and she makes kickass fresh-squeezed lemonade.”

“My ears are burning,” Tris said as she peeked out the front door. “Lunch is ham and cheese subs and fruit salad, on the counter when you’re ready. Crew, don’t forget you’re grilling tonight, the burgers are in the fridge. And it’s laundry day, fellas. Speak now or wear dirty shorts until Monday.”

Crew grinned. Tris was the best caretaker he and his herd could ask for, and it was icing on the cake that she was Khyle’s soulmate. The male had been lost without someone to anchor him.

Crew understood the feeling.

“I need to grab my laundry,” Crew said, draining the glass. “Then I’ll run into town for supplies.”

“I’ll go along,” Grey said. “I need to get chicken feed from the farm store.”

“Sounds good,” Crew said.

After getting their laundry into the big laundry room, they headed inside for lunch. As Crew dug into a piled-high sub, he couldn’t help but feel like something was going to change for them. Maybe one of them would find their soulmate soon. He would like to vote that he hoped it was him, but he’d be happy with any of his friends finding their forever-girl.

“Good things are coming to Little River,” he said.

“I hope you’re right,” Ford said. “I’m ready for all of us to find our soulmates and the herd to grow.”

With a nod, Crew agreed. He was definitely ready for that too.

“I just don’t see why we have to leave,” Zara said. She winced as her voice seemed to make everyone in the clearing go suddenly silent, even the new alpha, Colton.

She was the only female left in their stallion herd after human poachers found their people in their shifts in the clearing they had claimed as their territory in the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia and captured many of them. The alpha had wanted to plan the rescue to get their people back without revealing to the humans that shifters were real. But Colton, his son, saw it as an opportunity to prove his dominance. He’d underestimated the danger, and many of their people lost their lives in the melee—including his father and the human poachers.

When Colton returned to the clearing where they lived in a few small, rustic cabins cleverly hidden in the thick woods, he had only three others with him. Together, the six of them were the last of the Shenandoah Valley Herd.

Now, she was the lone female in a herd that didn’t prize females as anything but broodmares, cooks, and maids.

Lucky her.

Colton gave her an icy look. “Because the humans are hunting for whoever killed the humans.”

“You,” she pointed out.

Colton’s younger brother Weston rolled his eyes. “The humans needed to die. They couldn’t know why we set our people free.”

Zara hadn’t been there for the rescue, of course; she’d been tasked with preparing a victorious feast for their return with their people, and only Asher, one of Colton’s lackeys, had stayed behind.

There had been no victorious return, though.

Everyone was dead save for the six of them.

And now Colton wanted to leave the valley because he thought that somehow human investigators would figure out that horse shifters were real and were the ones behind the deaths of the poachers.

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