Elijah Calhoun rode alone, the creak of his saddle and the distant cries of hawks the only sounds for miles. The land stretched wide and raw around him — jagged ridges of red stone, pine-covered slopes dusted in sun-bleached snow, and endless scrub that whispered under the wind. He’d told Dog and Silas he was scouting for ambushes ahead of the workers’ camp, but truth was, he just needed to get away. Their talk — loud, vulgar, soaked in bloodlust — gnawed at him. Men like that didn’t need war to become monsters. They already were. His horse shifted beneath him, sensing something. Elijah reined in, scanning the ridgeline, eyes narrowing. There, just beyond a thicket of wind-stunted juniper, he saw her. She knelt beside a buckskin horse, its leg bloodied where something sharp must’ve torn flesh. Her hands were gentle but sure, fingers pressing against the wound, her voice a quiet, melodic rhythm — soothing the animal in a tongue he couldn’t understand, though the meaning was clear. Comfort. Kindness. Command. She wore earth-toned leathers decorated with beads, shells, feathers — nothing gaudy, all functional, with a touch of something sacred. Her hair, dark as riverstone, tumbled around her shoulders like waves. Sunlight caught in it like embers in smoke. A headband of woven leather and carved bone rested on her brow, and her profile, when she turned slightly, struck him with sudden violence. High cheekbones, full mouth, a gaze like the edge of a storm — and yet, the softness of her voice, the way she smiled at her horse, held something pure. Untouched. Elijah swallowed hard. He hadn’t felt anything like this in years. Not since Kansas. Not since Eliza. He should’ve looked away. Turned the horse around. This was a bad road. But he didn’t. He just sat in the saddle, silent and still, watching her. The way her hands moved. The way the wind played with the feathers in her hair. It was love. The real kind. The kind that breaks men down to dust. But he’d never admit that. Not even to himself.