HIS BREEDING FARM

THE RIVAL

by DevotedSub

Chapter 71 — "The Offer"

The morning starts with Elena on her back in their bedroom, twenty-one weeks round and glowing, and Damion's mouth on her belly.

This is how every season of her life begins now — with his worship. She wakes to the weight of his hands spread wide over her bump, his thumbs drawing slow circles through the oil he warmed between his palms before she even opened her eyes. The sun is coming through the sheer curtains in pale ribbons. Darian nursed at dawn and is back asleep in the cradle. The house is quiet.

"Morning, my queen," Damion murmurs against her skin.

"Daddy," Elena breathes, and her body arches a little into his hands before she's even awake enough to be embarrassed about it. "You always start with the belly."

"The belly is where the farm is growing," he says, and his voice is low and sure, the voice that owns every inch of Cedar Hollow. He kisses her navel, slow, then lower, trailing his lips down the taut curve where her body has gone heavy and round with his second child. His fingers slide between her thighs, and she is already wet — she is always wet for him these days, round and hungry and his. "And this," he says, stroking her gently, "is how we check that the queen is ready for her day."

"She's ready," Elena whispers, breathless. "She's so ready, Daddy."

He pushes into her slow and deep, and she sighs the long sigh she only ever sighs for him — the sound of being filled by the man who put the roundness in her belly in the first place. He moves in her with that deliberate, unhurried rhythm that has ruined her for any other pace of life, his hand cradling her bump the whole time, and when she peaks it rolls through her in long waves, her whole body tightening around him and her fingers clutching at the black sheets.

"Good girl," he murmurs, and floods her deep — pulse after pulse, hot and full, his seed finding her already-full womb and staying there. "My queen. My round queen."

She holds him inside her, greedy, not letting him go. "Ledger?" she whispers, smiling.

He laughs against her shoulder, low and fond, and later — after he's washed her gently and oiled her belly again and she's dressed in her softest dress — she watches him write it in the study. Elena, my queen — dawn breeding, slow and deep — twenty-one weeks and glowing. Bred full.

The day should be ordinary after that. Ordinary is the farm's favorite word.

· · ·

It isn't.

The rider comes at midday.

Elena is in the kitchen with Vivian and Odette, rolling out dough for supper bread, when Tessa bursts through the back door with flour on her hands and her eyes wide.

"There's a man at the north fence," Tessa says, breathless. "On a horse. A big bay. And he's — he's wearing a suit, Elena. A suit. On a horse."

Elena's hands go still on the dough.

Vivian sets down her rolling pin with deliberate calm. "A suit," she repeats.

"Like he's going to a bank," Tessa says. "And he's smiling."

Out at the north fence, Sable is already there — of course she is; Sable was a ranch hand before she was a sister, and nobody rides up to Cedar Hollow's fence line without Sable deciding whether they live to tell about it. Elena, Vivian, Odette, and Tessa walk the path together, and by the time they reach the fence, Mara is there too, arms crossed, green eyes narrowed, and June is hovering at the edge of the group, and Roxy is bouncing on her toes like this is the most entertaining thing that's happened all week.

The man on the bay horse is in his mid-forties, silver at his temples, teeth very white, smile very wide. His suit is charcoal. His boots are polished. He looks like a magazine advertisement for money, and he tips his hat with the easy confidence of a man who has never once been told no.

"Ladies," he says. "Good afternoon. My name is Hollis Crane. I own the Bar-C, just over the ridge —" he gestures vaguely north, "— two thousand acres, finest cattle operation in the county. I've been admiring this little spread of yours for some time."

Little spread. Mara's jaw tightens visibly.

"Mr. Crane," Elena says. She keeps her voice level. She's the queen; the queen doesn't let her voice shake. "This is private land. The fence is the boundary."

"Oh, I know, I know — I'm not trespassing, I promise." He holds up one gloved hand, smiling. "I'm a neighbor being neighborly. I just had to come see for myself." His eyes move along the line of women — slow, appraising — and Elena feels every one of them go still. "Because word travels, ladies. Word travels about Cedar Hollow."

"What's your business, mister?" Sable asks. Her voice is flat. Her hand rests on the fence rail, and Elena has seen Sable's hand on a fence rail before — it's the same way it rests on a rifle stock.

Crane's smile widens. He looks directly at Sable — tall, bold, long black hair shining in the sun — and his whole manner shifts into something honeyed.

"Well now," he says. "You must be the one I've heard about. The bold one." He leans a little in the saddle. "A woman like you shouldn't be shared, sweetheart. That's all I'm saying. You belong at the head of a ranch, not —" he glances around the farm, the Quarters, the barn, with the faintest wrinkle of his nose, "— not in a bunkhouse."

Silence. A long one. Sable's grey-green eyes don't blink.

"I'm Hollis Crane," he says again, softer, like he's confiding. "I run a real operation. I'd pay you double whatever you're making here. Your own cabin. A foreman's title, if you want it. A life, sweetheart. Not a —" he searches for the word, finds it, "— rotation."

Elena feels Mara go rigid beside her. She feels the whole line of women draw one shared breath.

Sable tilts her head. "Double," she says.

"Double," Crane confirms. "Maybe triple, once I see you work. And I take care of my people. Ask anybody."

Sable looks at him for a long moment — and then she laughs. Not a polite laugh. A ranch-hand laugh, short and sharp and utterly unimpressed.

"Mister," she says, "you don't know the first thing about what I am here. And if you think wages is the currency that buys me, you are standing at the wrong fence."

Crane's smile doesn't falter — it's the kind of smile that doesn't falter, the kind that's been laminated. "Think it over. The offer stands."

And then his gaze slides to Odette.

Elena sees it happen — sees him clock the soft honey-blonde curls, the blue eyes gone wide, the youngest face in the line — and something cold moves through her chest. Because Sable is iron, but Odette is soft, and soft is what men like this aim at.

"And you, little one," Crane says, and his voice goes warm as poured syrup. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

Odette's fingers twist in her skirt. "Odette," she whispers.

"Odette." He says it like he's tasting it. "You know what, Odette — I've been thinking about building a new house on the Bar-C. A real house. Not a bunkhouse room." He lets that land. "A woman like you deserves a house of her own. Respectability. A life where nobody —" he glances at Elena's round belly, and Elena feels the glance like a touch, "— where nobody shares you. Where you're somebody's wife, not somebody's — well."

He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't have to.

Odette has gone very pale. Her hands are shaking in her skirt.

And Elena — Elena, who is twenty-one weeks pregnant with her king's child, who has been bred and kept and worshipped by the only man she will ever want — steps forward until her belly is nearly touching the fence rail, and looks Hollis Crane dead in the eye.

"She's kept," Elena says. Her voice doesn't shake. It rings. "Every woman on this fence line is kept. You don't have anything we want, Mr. Crane. Ride on."

For just a second — just a flicker — the laminated smile slips. Then it's back, brighter.

"Well," he says, "I admire loyalty. Truly. But loyalty doesn't pay for a future, ladies." He tips his hat to the whole line, slow and deliberate. "I'll be back. The offer stands."

He turns the bay and rides off along the fence line, unhurried, like a man with all the time in the world.

Nobody moves until the sound of the hooves fades.

June is crying — quiet, steady tears rolling down her brown cheeks, her hands folded tight in front of her. "He talked about you like you were things," she whispers. "Like you were horses he was buying."

"June," Tessa says softly, and puts her arm around June's waist. Tessa's own hands are shaking a little — she holds them behind her back so the others won't see. "He's gone. He can't — he can't do anything. Damion would —"

"Damion will decide what Damion does," Mara says, but her voice has lost its edge. She looks at Odette, small and pale, and something in Mara's fierce face softens. "You okay, little one?"

Odette nods, but her blue eyes are glassy. "I just want to go inside."

Sable watches the fence line a moment longer, her jaw working. Then she turns, and her whole manner shifts — the ranch-hand iron folding away — and she puts a gentle hand on Odette's shoulder. "Come on," she says quietly. "Walk with me. Just us, down to the pond. Before supper."

Odette goes.

· · ·

The pond is glass-still in the late afternoon, ringed with cattails, the water catching the sun in long gold ribbons. Sable and Odette sit on the bank with their skirts spread around them, and for a while neither of them speaks.

"He scared me," Odette says finally, in a small voice. "And I hate that he scared me. I'm supposed to be — I'm supposed to be proven now. Devotion tested, devotion proven, that's what the ledger says. And one man in a suit looks at me and I shake like a leaf."

"Odette." Sable turns to face her fully. Her grey-green eyes are serious. "Listen to me. I wasn't scared, and you know why? Because he didn't see me. He saw a job title. A foreman. He could offer me the moon and it wouldn't touch me, because he was bidding on something I'm not." She takes Odette's cold hands in her warm ones. "But he saw you. He saw soft, and he went for soft, and that is a different kind of ugly. Being shaken by ugly doesn't make you unproven."

Odette's lip trembles. "He said a house of my own. Respectability."

"Do you want a house of your own?" Sable asks. Direct. No syrup.

"No." The word comes out fast and fierce, and Odette surprises herself with it. "No. I want — I want the Quarters. I want my little room with the quilt Elena helped me pick. I want supper at the big table. I want —" Her voice drops to a whisper. "I want him to look at me the way he looks at me. Like I'm precious. Nobody ever looked at me like I'm precious before Cedar Hollow."

"Sweetheart," Sable says, and pulls her into a hug, and Odette cries into Sable's shoulder — the good tears this time, the clean ones. "Then you're home. That's what home is. Not a house. A man who looks at you like you're precious, and sisters who hold your hair when you cry about it."

From the path above the pond, unseen, Elena watches for just a moment — and smiles, and walks on quiet feet back toward the house, her hand resting on her belly.

The ground here is already planted, Vivian had said at supper. Full.

Elena can feel it under her palm: the farm, growing. The child, turning. The roots going deeper than any man in a suit could ever dig.

· · ·

Word spreads through the farm by supper, the way everything spreads through the farm — fast, and with commentary.

Mara is furious. She slams the stew pot onto the farmhouse table hard enough to rattle the bowls, and her green eyes are throwing sparks.

"Shared," she spits. "Did you hear him? Shared. Like we're — like we're livestock he's doing a favor." She points her spoon at Sable. "Double wages. A foreman's title. And you just stood there laughing at him —"

"I laughed because it was funny," Sable says evenly. She's sitting very straight, carving bread with her ranch-hand knife, and there's something fierce and bright in her face. "Mara. He offered me money. He thought money was the thing. I've never been so sure I was in the right place in my life."

"Good," Mara says, fierce. "Good. Because if any woman on this farm even thought about —"

"Nobody thought about it," Vivian says. She hasn't raised her voice once since the fence line. She sits at the head of the women's side of the table, serene, her hands folded around her cup, and her calm is doing more work than Mara's fire. "He came to plant a seed, and the ground here is already planted. Full. There's no room for his seed."

Roxy snorts so hard she nearly chokes on her stew. "His seed," she crows. "Oh my god. Can you imagine? Somebody offering Hollis Crane's seed? I'd rather —" She looks around the table, wild and grinning. "I'd rather let the goats — no. The goats are too good for him. I'd rather be celibate."

The table erupts. Even June laughs through the tears that are already in her eyes — June cries at everything, but these are the outraged kind, the loyal kind.

"He looked at my belly," Elena says quietly.

The laughter dies.

"He looked at my belly when he said 'where nobody shares you.'" Elena's hands rest on her twenty-one-week roundness, protective, possessive. "Like my child was — like this was something to be rescued from."

"He doesn't get to look at you," Mara says, low and dangerous. "Nobody looks at you like that."

"Girls." Vivian's voice, calm as still water. "Listen to me. Men like Hollis Crane don't see women. They see assets. Sable was a foreman to acquire. Odette was a wife to install." She looks down the table at Odette, who has been very quiet, pushing stew around her bowl. "Little one. Talk to us."

Odette's blue eyes come up, wet. "I was scared," she whispers. "Not — not of going. I never — I would never —" Her voice breaks. "I was scared because he saw me. The way he looked at me, like I was something he could just — take home. Like I was stray."

"You are not stray," Elena says. She gets up — slow, round, deliberate — and goes around the table, and kneels beside Odette's chair, and takes the girl's shaking hands. "You are kept. You are ours. You are his. Do you understand me?"

Odette nods, tears spilling, the good kind starting underneath. "I'm his," she whispers. "I'm yours. I'm — I'm home."

"Sisters," Tessa says softly, and reaches over to squeeze Odette's shoulder, and one by one every hand at the table finds another hand, until the whole table is one linked chain, and the stew goes cold while nobody cares.

June lifts her tear-streaked face. "Can I — can I say something?" Her voice is small, but the table goes quiet for her, because June doesn't ask for the floor unless she means it. "He said safer." She looks at Elena. "He'll say it to all of us, I think. Different words for each of us, but the same word underneath. Safer. Like this —" she gestures around the table, at the linked hands, at the lamplight, at Elena's round belly, "— like this is the dangerous thing. And I just want it written down somewhere —" she looks toward the study, toward the ledger, "— that I was never safer in my life than the night Sir took me at the rail and I cried on his chest after. That's the safest I've ever been. Somebody write that down."

"I'll write it down," Elena says, her own eyes wet now. "I'll tell Damion, and he'll write it in the ledger, June. I promise."

"And I'll say this." Roxy plants both elbows on the table, wild grin back in place. "When he comes back — because he's coming back, that smile doesn't quit — I get to talk to him. I have things to say. Filthy things. About what Sir does to me. In detail. I want to watch that laminated smile melt right off his face."

"Roxy," Vivian says, but she's laughing.

"What? It's a strategy. He wants to talk about respectability? Fine. I'll tell him exactly how respectable I feel when Sir —"

"Supper," Elena says firmly, but she's laughing too, crying a little too, her hand on her belly where the baby is kicking like it wants in on the joke. "Eat your supper, wild girl."

· · ·

Damion hears about it after supper, the way Damion hears about everything — Elena tells him, in their bedroom, sitting in his lap with her head on his shoulder, her belly big and warm between them.

He listens to the whole of it without interrupting. The suit. The bay horse. Double wages for Sable. The house for Odette. Shared. The look at Elena's belly.

His face doesn't change. His hand strokes slow circles on her back. When she's done, he's quiet for a long moment, and then he says:

"Let him talk."

Elena lifts her head. "What?"

"Let him talk," Damion says. Calm. Deliberate. Absolute. "He'll come back. He'll say his piece to whoever will stand at the fence. And you —" he cups her face, his grey eyes steady on hers, "— you will answer him yourselves. Every one of you. In your own voice."

"He called us shared, Damion."

"I know." His thumb traces her cheekbone. "And what are you, my queen?"

Elena's breath catches. The answer rises in her like it's been waiting there all day, since the fence line, since the look at her belly.

"I'm yours," she whispers. "I'm not shared. I'm kept. I'm claimed. I'm —"

"Good girl," he murmurs, and kisses her, deep and slow, and she melts into him the way she always does, the way she will until she's old and grey and still his.

Later, in the dark, with his arm heavy around her and his hand spread wide over the child growing inside her, Elena thinks about Hollis Crane's laminated smile, and his polished boots, and his two thousand acres.

And she thinks about the ledger in the study. About the line Damion wrote that morning: Elena, my queen — dawn breeding, slow and deep — twenty-one weeks and glowing. Bred full.

Money can't write that line. Money can't read that line.

She sleeps with her king's hand on her belly, and she does not dream about the man on the bay horse at all.

Chapter 72 — "Silver Tongue"

Hollis Crane comes back three days later, and this time he doesn't ride to the north fence.

He drives.

The black truck rolls up the farm's gravel drive at midmorning like it owns the gravel, and Elena — shelling peas on the porch with June and Tessa — watches it come with her whole body gone still. Darian is napping in the cradle beside her chair, and her hand moves to the cradle's edge without her thinking, protective, automatic. The truck parks in the yard. The door opens. The suit is navy today. ...