Page 26 of Knot Her Cowboys (Big Sky Omegas #2)

D akota practically sprinted out of the building with me in his arms, bundling me straight back into the truck.

My mom was alive.

What the fuck?

I knew it . Angela was a fucking liar. Thank god I had listened to my intuition when I’d gotten that damn email. Of all the fucked-up, shitty things to pull, this was a new low for Darlene Fletcher.

I yanked Dakota close, screaming straight into his chest while he cocooned his arms around me.

“I need to leave. Book a flight back to New York. I can’t—I can’t stay here.”

“Okay, let’s take a breath.”

“No breathing. I cannot stay here. You don’t know what she’s like.”

“I think I’ve got a pretty good clue if she tried faking her own death to lure you home.” He held me tightly, like he could keep me from flying apart. “Riley, we’re not going to let her have access to you. If you really need to leave, we’ll figure it out, but let’s talk to the others first.”

I burrowed harder against his chest, probably clinging too tight, but I needed an anchor or I was going to explode.

Huffing his sweetgrass scent helped. A bit.

What my instincts really wanted was to climb right inside his clothes and have him crush me until I disintegrated, but that wasn’t exactly practical.

“She doesn’t know where you are,” Dakota assured me. “She knows you’re in Montana, but not for how long, and not where you’re staying. We’re over an hour from here, so there’s a good chance she wouldn’t be able to find you even if she tried.”

My whine snuck out despite his logic. “The only reason New York worked to get away was that she couldn’t afford to follow me.”

He held me tightly, his purr rumbling in my ear, doing his best to soothe me. “Do you want to go back to the ranch right now? I can save the errands for another day.”

“Where’s the address?” I asked instead of answering.

Dakota unfolded the paper, reading it out to me.

I scrunched up my forehead, trying to recall where exactly it was. “Can you put it into the map?”

He fished out his phone, input the address for me, and turned the screen so I could see.

“Motherfucker.”

“What?”

“That’s, like, five minutes from the compound. If she’s trying to get back in bed with the Deckers, I swear to—” I let out a frustrated snarl.

Dakota cupped my cheeks, forcing me to look at him. “Riley, listen to me. What your mother chooses to do is not your concern. She’s an adult. The only thing you have to worry about is keeping yourself safe.”

“But—”

“No buts. You are our priority. We’ll figure out what you need to feel safe. None of us are going to judge you for staying no contact with your mother to protect yourself.”

Tears burned my eyes. “I feel so terrible for thinking everything would be so much easier if she was dead. I don’t want to see her, I don’t want to talk to her, and I don’t want her to know where I am.”

“We’ll do everything we can to make sure none of those happen, and if they do, those are bridges we can cross when we get there. The ranch is private property and we’ll put her on the blacklist.”

I nodded even though my brain wasn’t prepared to accept the idea at all. It kept screaming at me to run, to get as far away as I could and never come back. But all my trauma bucked up against my bond with Cash. I didn’t want to leave him… any of them.

My mom had stolen them all from me once, and I wouldn’t let her take them from me again, no matter how much my heart raced when I thought about staying.

I wanted to go back to the ranch and bury myself in a pile of blankets, but it also seemed unfair to make Dakota’s trip into town a waste. “Let’s do the errands.”

His kiss was soft on the top of my head. “You’re sure?”

“Not really.”

“Well, at the very least, let’s get you your fancy coffee.” He got me buckled into the middle seat and slid into the driver’s side, lacing our fingers together as he brought the truck to life. We passed multiple cafés before he stopped at one that was well out of sight of the clerk’s office.

I felt steadier with a cup of frozen hot chocolate in my hands, a copious amount of whipped cream swirled on top. Sugar usually made me feel better, and today was no exception.

I sighed, turning to look up at him from where I’d curled up on his lap when I’d polished off the first third. “Okay, crisis mode has calmed down a bit. Upset, but not at immediate risk of a breakdown.”

I still wanted to crawl up inside his clothes and press every inch of our skin together. Maybe that was just an omega compulsion toward a scent match and not a stress response. Either way, I craved it.

“I promise to be a reasonable adult while we finish errands.”

“We can go back to the ranch,” he offered. “It’s not the end of the world if I have to come into town again.”

“No, it’s okay. I have a treat to babysit me.”

He eyed me with skepticism but relented for now.

Most of the errands were simple pickups and I helped him load everything into the flatbed to work out my nervous energy.

Cash called and texted about twenty times, trying to find out what was wrong after I had dropped an emotional bomb in the bond, but I just told him I was okay and we would talk about it when I got back.

Dakota kept a steady gaze on me the whole time, and when we were finally on the road back, he pressed me to his side, wrapping his arm over my shoulder and coaxing me into talking.

“I’d like to fully understand the situation and what we’re dealing with. What did your mother do to make you go no contact?”

I shuddered, recalling the thousands of incidents.

“She has a short temper, a sharp mouth, and a heavy fist. If I upset her growing up, anything could be a weapon: the TV remote became a projectile, extension cords became a whip. She was always yelling about something. Sometimes I wondered if she was just stuck on max volume because she made everything a fight. When she found out I slept with Cooper in high school, she called me a good-for-nothing whore because I went for a Harris boy and not one of the compound assholes chasing after me.”

I had a hundred more stories, easily, but I focused on her greatest hits .

Dakota was tense the entire time I recounted the laundry list of bullshit and abuse my mother had put me through. “I’m so sorry you went through that and didn’t have the family you deserved. What she did was wrong.”

I shrugged, chewing my bottom lip to keep it from trembling.

“We’re not going to let her have access to you. We’ll put up a barrier so any vehicles coming in have to go through reception. Cash knows what she looks like, right?”

I nodded, still trying to control my stupid lip wobble.

“He can handle her, and we’ll let the staff know so everyone is prepared just in case. Once high season is over, we can keep the gate closed and people will have to use the doorbell on the gate to get through.”

“Feels kind of like a prison.”

“Temporarily,” Dakota assured me. “Morgan’s pack implemented similar measures at their hunting lodge to help her feel safe.

If you find it doesn’t make a difference, we don’t have to do it, but I’ll tell you right now, the whole pack wants you to be safe with us, for however long you want to be there. ”

“I don’t know. I hate having to look over my shoulder.”

“Riley, we’ll support whatever you need. I don’t want you to go anywhere, but if you’re not going to be happy here, we’ll figure something out. Cash has more than enough money to get you both situated elsewhere while we sell the ranch if it comes down to that.”

I nuzzled tighter into his arms, pressing my face to the curve of his throat. “I let her chase me away once. I’m not a little girl anymore and I don’t want her to do it a second time. You guys built the ranch together and I would feel like an absolute dick if I took that from you.”

“You wouldn’t be taking anything from us.”

I couldn’t get any closer to him, much as I might want to. Stupid traffic laws preventing me from crawling into his lap while he drove.

My mother wasn’t allowed to ruin this for any of us.

I didn’t enjoy the idea that I could turn any corner and see her, but waking up to Cash in exchange for that particular anxiety seemed like a pretty good deal.

Not to mention Dakota and Levi were fucking angels, both fully capable of ruining me in the best possible way.

Cooper was still a stubborn motherfucker, though.

He always had been. If he didn’t stop disappearing on me, I was going to have to tackle him into the fucking ground and force him to have a proper conversation about where we stood.

When we stopped at the crossing to let a bunch of trucks go by, I took advantage of Dakota not needing his eyes on the road, and drew his mouth to mine. Goddamn, the man knew how to kiss. I was going to melt into a puddle right there on the seat.

“Was that for a distraction or desire?” he asked when I pulled away.

“Both, but mostly option number two. You’re so pretty I couldn’t help myself.”

That got a laugh out of him. “I see we’re both struggling with the same thing, then?”

“No struggling. You don’t have to stop yourself if you wanna kiss me.”

Dakota’s mouth was on mine again in the next moment, sweet and delicious, enough of his scent filling the cab I knew he was probably thinking about sprawling me out for another round. Hell, I was thinking the same.

My life was fucking weird. If I hadn’t fallen in that river, maybe I’d be kissing a handsome German businessman instead of an unfairly beautiful indigenous equine therapist.

The divergence of my life path was impossible to ignore, and it brought into startling clarity just how much I could’ve missed out on.

I’d almost settled into a life built on survival and compliance, almost lost the opportunity to know my scent matches.

I’d learned stubbornness at Cooper’s side, and I was never going to let my mother take my future from me again.

I had already lost out on so many years with Cash and Cooper, and that wasn’t a mistake I would make twice.

Darlene Fletcher could do her worst, but Montana was my home, and these alphas were mine.