The wind carried an unfamiliar scent that morning...metal, fuel, and something darker. Mason Creek had always woken gently, to the rustle of wheat and the murmur of roosters. But today, the air was wrong. It hummed with quiet tension, the kind that made the skin prickle even before the danger showed its face.
Cordelia felt it before she understood it.
She was kneading dough in the back of her little farmstand, sleeves rolled up, flour dusting her hair like early snow. The radio was playing an old folk tune, the kind she’d grown fond of since settling here. But beneath the soft chords, she caught something else...an engine revving in the distance, heavy, unfamiliar. Then another.
By the time she looked up from the counter, three men on bikes had passed down the road leading toward the cr
