Page 33 of Scent to the Feral Cowboys

I ran my finger along the lamp’s metal edge below its glass chimney, feeling the warmth radiating through it. Not hot enough to burn, just enough to remind me I was alive. The flame inside wavered slightly, causing the shadows on the wall to elongate and contract like living things. In the hushed midnight quiet of the ranch house, with my pack brothers all asleep, these shadows were my only company. Fiddling with the knob, I lowered the wick until the glow turned blue, teetering on the edge of snuffing out. I raised it higher again, letting it burn a fraction brighter. Lower. Higher. Fading. Thriving.

That's how I felt these days—like that flame, constantly wavering between brightness and near-extinction. One moment burning strong with hope and purpose, the next flickering so weakly that a single breath might snuff me out completely. I sighed, raising the wick high enough that it burned steadily, confidently.

I glanced at the ceiling, where the knots and whorls in the wooden beams above looked like constellations. I'd spent my whole life under this roof, under those false stars. Most days, it felt like enough. Like more than enough. But lately...

Like my brothers, I'd been doing anything to keep myself moving, my mind busy. Mending fences that didn't strictly need mending. Reorganizing the tack room when it was already in decent order. Reading and rereading my animal husbandry books until the words blurred together on the page. The problem with exhausting your body, though, was that it didn't always quiet your mind. Sometimes, like tonight, it just left you too tired to outrun your thoughts but not tired enough to sleep.

When rest evaded me, which happened often these days, I lit the old lamp. It made me feel connected to something older, something enduring. Like I'd traveled back to when this land was first settled, when people carved out existences with nothingbut determination and grit. It had to be easier back then, less complicated.

"Congratulations, you've made it to Sagebrush Ranch without dying of dysentery," I murmured to myself, a smile tugging at my lips.

I'd played that old Oregon Trail game obsessively as a kid. Something about the pixelated covered wagons and the constant threat of catastrophe had captured my imagination. Little Billy always died of something awful, usually involving his bowels. Yet somehow, I'd developed a romantic notion of pioneer life from that death-filled educational game.

The reality would have been brutal. Shitting in holes. No showers. Backbreaking labor from dawn until dusk. I glanced down at my calloused hands, thinking maybe ranch life wasn't so different after all, minus the indoor plumbing and electricity. Though even that was questionable sometimes when the well pump decided to be temperamental.

The Animal Husbandry book lay open before me. I tried reading the same paragraph again. Didn’t work, so I started flipping through it mindlessly. Nothing was sticking in my brain lately. Even this, my go-to comfort reading, failed me. Usually, I could lose myself in it. Tonight, it may as well have been written in Chinese.

My fingers traced the diagram of a horse's digestive system without really seeing it. My mind kept circling back to the same thought:it had been a month already.

A full month since those Eros people had shown up with their needles and sample collectors and promises. That day was vivid in my mind. Boone had ridden off on his horse after his brutal testing and stayed gone for nearly a week. We'd given Cooper endless shit about tormenting our pack brother, but he’d taken it all with his typical good-natured shrugs, promising the results would be worth it. The only thing that seemed to rattle Coop waswhen Boone returned and started making thinly veiled threats about payback.

And, unbeknownst to our pack, a timer had started ticking.

Eros was all our pack talked about for a few weeks.

Our Omega.

Our future.

Now, we'd all gone quiet on the matter.

We’d stopped talking about how to make our Omega comfortable when they arrived. The magazines we’d grabbed in town—Omega Digest, The Pioneer Omega, Omega’s World—sat gathering dust on the coffee table. We’d all been fired up to learn everything we could, but now the desire smoldered like a dying campfire’s embers.

A month wasn't long, not really.

A month was nothing when you were talking about finding someone who would fit with all five of us, someone who could handle not just one Alpha's intensity but five, someone willing to leave whatever life they had behind to come to rural Wyoming and start anew with us at Sagebrush. When I thought about it that way, I felt better.

But how many months would it take?

Fuck, what if it took years.

Outside, wind picked up. It whistled sharply through gaps around the backdoor. Rain began pattering against the roof. The ranch house creaked and settled around me, its familiar sounds grating my nerves instead of comforting them. On nights like this, Sagebrush seemed to exist in its own pocket of reality, miles from the nearest neighbor, even further to town. Most people would find the isolation unbearable. To me, it used to be perfect—the endless sky, the rolling hills, the space to breathe. But lately, the vastness was emptiness. Five Alphas under one roof, and I was lonely.

A scratching at the back door made me hop up. I pulled it open, letting Tripp and Tater push inside the house. They shook violently before I could grab the old towel from its hook, the one we kept especially for them. Good they weren’t soaked through yet, or I’d have had to wipe down wet cabinets and floor. Tater shook a second time, scattering more droplets.

“Hey, hey! Wait a minute!” I laughed, holding my hands up uselessly, as if they could armor my entire body against the rain the dogs had carried inside.

Grabbing the towels, I rubbed them both down quickly and then pointed over to the old comforters folded on the floor near the tiny pantry’s bifold door. Both dogs walked that way instinctively, plopping down on the padding and closing their eyes. The whole kitchen smelled of wet dog now. Didn’t hate it, was just another scent note in the fabric of Sagebrush Ranch. Still though, made me a bit wistful. There was one very important perfume note our pack didn’t have yet.

I wanted the scent of an Omega—that intoxicating perfume which made an Alpha feel simultaneously protective and protected—soaking into every corner of my life. I was starved for it, atrophying without it. Almost a year ago in Casper, a pretty brunette at a singles mixer had smiled my way. She’d let me buy her a drink. She’d smelled pleasant. Not a true match, but even a pale imitation helped curb desire. It took the edge off.

The real thing had to be fucking amazing.

If we ever found it…

The thought settled like a stone in my gut.What if there wasn't an Omega out there who was compatible with all of us? What if we were asking for the impossible?

Wyatt would never say it out loud, but I knew he was torn up over everything. He stayed outside alone longer in the mornings. He changed the subject gruffly anytime something came up that could remotely connect back to Omegas or Eros. He was workinghimself to the bone each day, then crashing into bed to catch a little sleep before busting ass again on the ranch. My twin was going to make himself sick if he wasn’t careful.