“Good. I don’t trust those Armstrong kids as far as I could throw them.” The family who owned the neighboring Lonely Creek Ranch had never liked living next to a shifter family. Recently, there’d been a spate of accidents around the Golden Horse—broken fence lines, contaminated water, brush fires. Josh was pretty sure the Armstrongs were to blame, but he hadn’t been able to definitively prove it.
“Let’s go check out the sheep pasture,” he said.
They shifted back and galloped towards the large pasture north of the main house, following the boundary of the property line. As they neared the sheep pasture, Josh’s sensitive ears began to pick up something that didn’t belong. The distant noise quickly began to resolve into rhythmic thudding.
Josh felt his ears pin angrily back against his skull. In the distance, he saw a group of three or four people gathered around one of the fence posts on the Lonely Creek side of the boundary. People who definitely didn’t belong there.
He let out a furious scream, the sound of an enraged stallion. Behind him, Connor echoed with his own ringing call. The intruders’ heads jerked up in panic as they heard the two horses charging towards them.
“Shit!” one of them yelled. Josh got a good look at him–Harry Armstrong. Eighteen, six feet tall, and as mean as he was cowardly. He and the other Armstrong kids abandoned their attempt to knock over the fence post and bolted into the brush on their side of the fence, tools in hand.
Josh jumped the barbed wire fence, clearing it easily. When he landed, he turned to Connor and stomped his forefeet as Connor backed up and prepared to jump, indicating that Connor should remain where he was. Connor pulled up short and shifted. “You sure?”
Josh bobbed his head, the closest he could get to a nod in this form. He wheeled and chased after the kids, but he could see the truck they were heading for. Still, he kept up pursuit until they had clambered into the vehicle and were pulling away.
He skidded to a halt and snorted in disgust. The Farris family had never been friendly with the Armstrongs, but they’d tolerated each other for years. Then Joe Armstrong had died, and his kids and grandkids had started their campaign of harassment. Josh secretly wondered if they held hopes of forcing his family off the ranch, but they had to know it would never happen.
He trotted back towards the fence and leaped over it. After he landed, he shifted and indulged in a leisurely stretch. Going from two legs to four legs and back again made some of your muscles do weird things.
“Anything?” Connor asked.
He shook his head. “Just the usual. I keep thinking they’re going to escalate somehow, but right now, they seem happy just pulling this stupid kid stuff.”
“It won’t be stupid if all of the cows get out,” Connor pointed out. “It’d be nice if the sheriff cared.”
“He doesn’t really believe it is the Armstrongs, and if it is, he thinks it’s just kids acting up,” Josh said. “You know he’s never really been a fan of ours. We just have to keep our eyes open.”
“And our ears up,” Connor agreed.
“Come on,” Josh ordered. “Time to head back. I’ve got something I want to talk to everyone about.”
They reached the main house just in time to wash up for dinner. The quality of Rick Farris’ cooking meant that most of the family turned out for the big meal each night. The long table groaned with the spread of brisket, mashed potatoes, green beans, cornbread, and salad, and even marinated tofu for the two vegetarians.
Josh let the clamor run unabated through the meal; members of this family learned to eat and argue at the same time, because anyone who didn’t get loud got shouted down. He figured that this wasn’t normal for other families, but even when two of his cousins started shouting at each other over some trivial matter of local politics, it was obvious that love filled the room.
When his uncle Rick shoved back from the table to grab the pies from the counter, Josh tapped his fork on the edge of his plate to silence everyone. “Before we have dessert, there’s something I wanted to talk to all of you about. You know I’ve been wanting to get married—”
“You proposed to Rosie!” squealed his twelve-year-old cousin Taylor.
“Of course he didn’t!” Her older brother smacked her on the arm and immediately set off a scuffle.
“Hey!” he roared. They immediately stopped, and though they continued to toss each other sullen glances, neither of them were stupid enough to defy the herd’s head stallion.
“I haven’t seen Rosie in months, and I already told you she’s not my mate. As I was saying,” he continued, “the town’s getting smaller every day, and we’re related to half of them anyway. So I signed up with a matchmaking service, and they found someone for me, and I’m heading to Chicago to meet her.”
Everyone the table immediately erupted with shouted questions, so loudly that Josh found it hard to hear individual questions at first.
“How is this supposed to work?” asked Mark, one of his uncles.
“I told the service that I wanted to find a wife. Someone like me, who wanted to get married and was willing to move out here.”
“But how much do you really know about this woman?” Mark pressed.
“She’s a writer. Around my age, lives in Chicago.” He looked over at Rick, who’d been suspiciously quiet during the conversation. Rick raised his eyebrows, inviting Josh to comment on his silence, an invitation Josh decided to pass on.
“You really think you can find your mate this way?” Mark said.
Josh crossed his fingers under the table where no one else could see them. “I guess I’m just hoping that destiny’s on my side. With any luck, when I come back, she’ll come with me, and we can all start planning a wedding.”