“Stop Me When It’s Too Much…” the Lonely Apache Murmured to the Bride He Won by Fate.

Chapter 7

The calm after the storm lasted two days.

Evelyn was at the stream, filling water skins, when she felt it—a vibration in the earth, faint but unmistakable. Hoofbeats. Many of them.

She straightened, her heart suddenly hammering. Her eyes scanned the canyon walls, and she saw them—a line of riders, dark against the red rock, moving with purpose.

They had found her.

Kale appeared at her side as if summoned by the wind. His hand rested on the knife at his belt, his eyes fixed on the approaching riders.

“Get inside,” he said.

“No.”

He looked at her, startled. “Evelyn—”

“I said no.” Her voice was steady, even as her hands trembled. “I ran from them once. I will not run again.”

The riders crested the ridge, rifles glinting in the morning light. There were eight of them. At their head was Hollis, the mayor, his face red with exertion and rage.

Behind him, Evelyn recognized others. The rancher who had claimed Lucy. The men who had laughed at the lottery. The faces of a town that had sold her for a handful of silver.

“You’ve got something that belongs to us,” Hollis shouted, his voice carrying across the canyon. “We’ve come to take her back.”

Kale stepped forward, placing himself between Evelyn and the riders. His voice was calm, but it carried a warning like the edge of a blade.

“She belongs to no one. Least of all you.”

Hollis laughed, but the sound was hollow. “You think you can fight all of us, savage? You think that whore is worth dying for?”

Evelyn’s fingers found the rifle Kale had propped against the rocks. She had never fired a weapon with intent. She had never stood in the line of danger beside another person.

But she had climbed cliffs that would have broken her a week ago. She had carried water until her arms screamed. She had learned to build fire from nothing and to read the stars for direction.

She was not the woman who had stood trembling in that pen.

She lifted the rifle.

“I am not going back,” she said, her voice carrying across the canyon, clear and strong. “And he is not fighting alone.”

The riders exchanged glances. They had expected a frightened woman. They had expected a captive who would fall to her knees and beg for rescue.

Instead, they found a woman with dirt on her hands and fire in her eyes and a rifle aimed at the man who had sold her.

“Last chance,” Kale said. “Leave. And do not return.”

Hollis’s face twisted. “Take them,” he snarled.

The riders charged.