Taking the Bull by the Horns

by Chant, Zoe

  “Oh. Wow. That sounds incredible,” Tora said, as Wyatt poured the sheep’s milk into the baby’s bottle. “I love ice cream. I just haven’t gotten to eat that much of it in the past few years.”

  Wyatt glanced at her curiously as he filled the saucepan with water and set it on the stove to warm, placing the baby bottle down in the water. “Why’s that?”

  “Uh, training,” Tora said, dropping her eyes suddenly, a shadow passing over her face. “I’ve had to watch my diet.”

  Our mate is sad, the bull said, snorting. Comfort her at once.

  “You’re training for an event?” Wyatt asked cautiously, ignoring the bull, and wanting to be careful not to overstep Tora’s boundaries.

  Tora laughed, a little bitterly.

  “You could say that. Several events, I guess. I was about to be on the national track and field team, but I got injured. So I don’t think that’s going to happen anymore.”

  Tora’s voice had grown softer and softer the longer she spoke, and Wyatt could see in her eyes that she wasn’t very willing to go into much more detail than that.

  “I’m really sorry to hear that,” Wyatt said. Everything in him wanted to go to her, to gather her up in his arms and tell her that everything would be all right, that he would take care of her and never let her be hurt ever again – but he knew that was his animal instincts talking, and a human would probably look at him like he was crazy.

  The national track and field team was what Tora had said. Wyatt didn’t keep up with any sports but football, but even he knew that was a big deal. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Tora must have been one of the elite – which explained her strong, sturdy build. To have that suddenly ripped away from her must’ve been heartbreaking.

  “These things happen,” Tora said, sounding matter-of-fact, but Wyatt could still see the sadness in her eyes. “It’s just one of the hazards of athletics. Some people’s bodies can handle it. Some can’t.”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Wyatt said. He lifted the bottle from the gently simmering water, squeezing a little onto the inside of his wrist to check the temperature. Not cool, not hot – it was perfect for the lamb. “I’d say it’s more like a matter of luck.”

  “You may be right,” Tora said, shrugging. “Either way, I guess my luck just ran out.”

  Wyatt came to kneel by her side in the living room, next to the now almost completely dry lamb, which was standing on the pile of towels.

  “You want to have a go at feeding him?” Wyatt asked, holding out the bottle to her.

  “I don’t think I’d know what to do,” Tora said doubtfully. “Why don’t you go first, and I’ll watch?”

  The lamb, perhaps smelling the milk, pranced a little, lifting his hooves and bleating.

  “I guess he must be really hungry,” Wyatt laughed as the lamb pushed its face into his hand, trying to get at the bottle. “I don’t blame him, either.”

  The lamb latched onto the bottle immediately, sucking down the milk greedily, eyes half-closing in bliss. Wyatt cupped its chin with his hand to support it, letting it settle back against him as it drank.

  “Wow,” Tora said, watching. “You really look like you know what you’re doing there.”

  “Comes with the job,” Wyatt said, smiling down at the lamb. “Sometimes we get brought young lambs without their mother, or other times the mom doesn’t realize the baby is hers. Feeding the lamb in front of her is usually enough to get her instincts to kick in.”

  “Your work must really be a labor of love,” Tora said softly, watching as the lamb finished the last of the milk.

  “It is,” Wyatt confirmed. “It’s hard work sometimes, but it’s all worth it in the end. I wouldn’t be able to do it without the volunteers who work with me – even the local vet donates her time when she can if I get a sick animal. And I get enough donations from around the place to keep the lights on. So it’s not just me out here. It’s definitely a group effort.”

  “Still – I really admire you, doing something like this.” Tora was still watching the lamb as he shook his head around, clearly wanting more milk – but Wyatt knew it wouldn’t be good to overfeed him. “I guess everyone knows about little puppies and kittens that need homes, but you never really think about, well, farm animals needing the same thing sometimes.”

  Wyatt nodded. “Usually it’s through no fault of their own – horses are expensive to keep, and people fall on hard times. Or someone who already has a life in the city and no interest in running a ranch or farm inherits one, and they don’t have the knowledge of auctions or the local community to know what to do with the animals. That’s where we come in.”

  He glanced up, his shifter senses alerting him to the fact that the rain was finally beginning to pass. Sure enough, the fat, heavy droplets that had been pelting against the windows began to slacken off, reduced to a light sprinkle in the blink of an eye.

  “Seems we’re done with the rain for now,” he said. “Rainstorms tend to be brutal but quick around this time.”

  Tora blinked, biting her lip and looking at the window, to where the sun was now beginning to struggle through the clouds. “Oh – I guess that means you’ll need to be going, then.”

  “I should,” Wyatt said reluctantly. “I should get this little fella back to his mom. Not to mention get on with the other jobs that need doing around the place.”

  Invite her back with us, his bull snorted. You saw her face – you sensed how she feels. She’s curious about our life and our work. She will need to know more about it, if she’s staying here with us.

  I don’t know if that’s what she wants, Wyatt argued back. She just got here! She doesn’t even know she’s my mate!

  Then why don’t you tell her? What are you waiting for? The bull honestly could not see any logical reason why Wyatt shouldn’t just blurt out everything right at this second. Wyatt resisted the urge to grimace.

  He had to admit, though, if everything in life were as simple as the bull seemed to think it was, then things would be a lot easier.

  It did have a pretty good point about asking Tora if she wanted to see his place, however. No shifter could expect to impress their mate without first showing them what they had to offer them in the way of home and hearth.

  “If you’re interested, you could come back with me,” Wyatt said, watching Tora’s reaction closely. If she seemed nervous or put off, he didn’t want to push things by going too fast. “I’d be happy to show you around, introduce you to some of my residents.”

  Tora looked up quickly, eyes wide. “Really?”

  “If you didn’t have any other plans.”

  A brilliant, beautiful smile spread across Tora’s face, before, maybe feeling embarrassed at seeming over-eager, she quickly suppressed it, which Wyatt thought was a shame.

  “I mean, I’d really like that, if you have the time,” she said. “You said you have some jobs that need doing, I’d hate to just get in your way.”

  “You wouldn’t be in the way at all,” Wyatt reassured her. “Far from it. I have a couple of volunteers out with my cows today so I can get a few odd jobs done closer to home. It’d actually be good to have an extra pair of hands – you look like you could swing a hammer or scatter some chicken feed.”

  I hope she doesn’t think that means I think she seems unfeminine, or something like that, Wyatt thought – Tora might have been an athlete, but she was clearly also a city girl. Maybe telling her she looked like she could do farm work was the wrong thing to say to flatter her.

  Nonsense, his bull told him. What higher praise could there be than saying that someone looks strong and capable?

  Whatever the case, Tora didn’t seem to mind at all.

  “I probably could, too,” she said, her smile returning. “I’d love to help out, if I can. My only real plans were going for walks and reading, and I can do both of those things anytime.”

  “Then it’s a date,” Wyatt said, his mind too filled with happine
ss and his bull frolicking like a calf at the idea of getting to spend more time with Tora to think before he spoke.

  He swallowed, watching Tora’s expression.

  Is it a date?

  Tora’s smile grew bigger. “Yep. It sure is.”

  Chapter 3

  Oh, my God. It’s a date, Tora thought dazedly as Wyatt headed into the laundry to wring out his wet shirt and dry it as best he could before they headed off.

  She felt a little like she’d wandered into a dream – had she really just sat and watched the hottest man she’d ever encountered in her life sit in front of her and shirtlessly bottle feed a baby lamb? That really didn’t seem like the kind of thing that actually happened.

  As if to affirm his real-life status to her, the little lamb bleated loudly, snuggling up against her side as she held him in her arms. Now that he was warm and fed he seemed way more inclined to be co-operative with her, though he’d been calm enough while she’d been drying him off with the towels.

  She thought that had mostly been Wyatt’s influence, though – he truly did seem to have a way with the lamb, and she assumed that extended to all the other animals in his care too. Somehow, she could just… sense the love and trust the little lamb had felt toward him.

  Wyatt reappeared from doing what he could about his shirt – though Tora had to admit that the rumpled, slightly damp, slightly muddy look really worked for him.

  He’s just one of those guys who looks better a little scruffy, she thought, as she handed Wyatt the lamb after he’d finished putting his boots on. She got into her own shoes – which weren’t sturdy work boots like his, but she hoped they’d be up to the task – and together they walked out into the post-rainstorm sunshine.

  Tora gasped as she looked around. She couldn’t help it – now that the rain had passed, everything was glistening and shining, from the leaves on the trees to the grass on the ground. She could still smell the rain too – a fresh, clean smell that made her feel like the world had just been made anew.

  “We’ll take the back way down to my place,” Wyatt said, leading her past the cabin and a short way into the trees that surrounded it, until they came to a sturdy metal gate. “I can show you the view across the hills and fields. It may not be all that spectacular really, but it’s what made me fall in love with this place and made me so determined to stay. I guess you could say I’ve always loved wide open spaces.”

  “Me too,” Tora said, and it was true. “It was a little bit of a shock to the system when my family moved to the city. I grew up in a place just like this.”

  Wyatt looked surprised. “Really? I totally had you down as a city girl, born and bred.”

  Tora laughed, shaking her head. “Well, I was there long enough that I suppose I can see how you might think that, but nope – I’m a small-town girl at heart.” She bit her lip, wondering just how much else to share about herself. She wasn’t usually so open with people she’d just met, but there was just something about Wyatt that made her feel totally comfortable with sharing things about herself.

  “My dad needed work, and my mom’s restaurant folded, since more and more people were moving out of the place,” she said after a moment, deciding what the hell, Wyatt could be trusted. He bottle-fed baby lambs! What wasn’t there to trust?! “So it was off to the city with us. But even though I missed the space I had as a little kid, moving there did give me a lot of opportunities I might not have had otherwise.”

  “Like your athletics?” Wyatt asked, glancing at her, as if gauging whether it was okay to ask her about that. Which Tora could understand – and to be honest, she still felt pretty guarded about what had happened and what it would mean for her future.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Scouts came to my school, looking for talent – that’s the reason I got to go to college. I was offered a full ride. I told my parents I wanted to stay with them and get a job and help out, but they wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Tora swallowed past the painful lump in her throat. For all that her athletics career would come to now, she may as well just have stayed where she was.

  Though that’s not quite true, she tried to tell herself. She had a degree she never would have gotten otherwise, and she’d had the chance to train and learn. Her time hadn’t been wasted. She had to try to remember that if she wasn’t going to go crazy, or become too full of bitterness to function.

  “So you got the best of both worlds, I guess,” Wyatt said with a quick smile. “Space when you were young, and opportunities when you were older. Me, I’ve always been a country boy.”

  “I can kind of tell,” Tora said, letting her eyes slide over his broad shoulders.

  They emerged from the trees, and Tora found herself gasping all over again at the view that was suddenly revealed to them – a view of rolling hills topped by large green trees, and, in the distance, peaking mountain tops, blue in the shadow of the storm clouds that had by now blown off to the horizon. And the – well, the –

  “Are those, uh, crop circles?” Tora asked, looking down at the yellow field that covered the ground between them and the next set of hills.

  Wyatt grimaced a little. “Yeah. Those would be crop circles.”

  Tora stared. She knew about crop circles, of course – she’d seen those cheesy documentaries claiming to have IRREFUTABLE PROOF!! of the existence of aliens, but she’d always kind of taken them with a huge grain of salt, and assumed the filming crew had just run around stomping a few bits and pieces of a wheat field flat before filming them with a dramatic voice over.

  But these…

  These were nothing like that. These crop circles were intricate loops and patterns, interweaving with each other, and covering an obviously vast amount of space. They were actually beautiful.

  “Hm. Well, Lori Marsden’s not going to be happy about her barley crop,” Wyatt mused as he looked down at the circles. “So far she’s been spared any alien invasions, but it looks like her number’s up at last.”

  “Oh – of course,” Tora said. She supposed the crops couldn’t really be harvested if they’d been made into an alien pattern – or the ones that had been flattened couldn’t, anyway. She hadn’t thought of it like that before. “What’s making them? And how?”

  “I don’t know,” Wyatt said. “Like I said, I don’t really put much store in aliens, but I don’t really know what could be making them either. So for now, it’s a mystery.”

  “Local kids doing a prank?” Tora suggested.

  “You’d think so, but the number of school-aged kids around here is really less than you’d think,” Wyatt said. “And they’ve all been accounted for by their parents on the nights the circles have popped up.”

  “Outsiders, then?”

  “I suppose that’s the most logical explanation,” Wyatt said, sounding a little tense. “Though no one’s been able to see or catch them. And I guess it doesn’t really explain the lights people have been seeing either. If it’s a prank, someone’s very dedicated to it.”

  “And it seems like some people are really taking it seriously,” Tora said, thinking back to what both the convenience store clerk and Wyatt had told her about alien hunters.

  “They sure are,” Wyatt agreed, before he stood up a little straighter, narrowing his eyes. “Which, speaking of…”

  Tora followed his gaze, and saw what he was talking about immediately.

  A small group of people wearing bright raincoats were making their way hurriedly toward the field with the crop circles, stopping to climb over a fence – though one seemed to force open a gate – before continuing on their way.

  Wyatt sighed. “Alien hunters. And I don’t think they closed that gate.”

  “Should we go, uh, talk to them? Explain to them why it’s important they do?” Tora asked. She pointed at the lamb, who was sitting contentedly in Wyatt’s arms. “Look, we even have living proof with us what carelessness can do.”

  Wyatt laughed softly. “You might be onto something there.” He reached d
own, scratching the lamb gently beneath its chin, to which it reacted by closing its eyes and stretching out its neck – if it’d been a cat, it would have been purring like mad.

  “Come on – they really need to be told,” Tora said, feeling suddenly very annoyed. What would have happened if she hadn’t happened to have found the lamb? Well, probably Wyatt would have found him eventually, but only after he’d spent several more minutes getting muddier and colder, and bleating for his mommy.

  Together, they made their way down the hill, finding the open gate and closing it firmly behind them. Ahead of them, Tora could see a group of people talking excitedly to one another – one of them even seemed to be filming the others on his phone as they pointed and shouted. Clearly, they were recording something for their YouTube channel, or whatever it was the kids got up to these days – Tora said kids, because, as they drew closer, it was pretty obvious that none of them could have been much older than nineteen or twenty.

  Now that they were closer it was also clear to Tora that the barley hadn’t just been flattened to make the crop circles – it’d also been burned. Not severely, but enough that Tora could make out the blackened, singed edges of the crops. She frowned.

  What on earth could’ve done that?

  One of the girls looked up as Wyatt and Tora got closer. She’d been talking pretty excitedly, but now she made a stop filming gesture to the guy with the phone by waving her hand quickly across her neck. The guy turned, swore under his breath, and lowered the phone.

  “So, have you come to yell at us too?” demanded the girl, striding across to where Tora and Wyatt had come to a halt.

  Tora could feel her hackles rising at the girl’s tone, but Wyatt just regarded her steadily.

  “Not yell,” he said. “To ask you, politely, to be a little more careful about where you’re going, and closing gates after you’ve been there. Since I assume you have the owner’s permission to be filming on her land?”

  The girl bit her lip, but she obviously wasn’t ready to back down. “Are you the owner?”