** Picks up where The Edge of Hell (Mitchell Brothers Series Book One) left off**
If there's one thing Declan Mitchell learned from watching his mama almost die from the heartbreak of losing his daddy to a war nineteen years ago, it was that a great...
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Early the following morning, when the sun was starting to wink above the soaring, jagged peaks and paint the sky in brilliant shades of pinks, oranges, and purples, Luella lay in the grass staring at Declan, naked from the waist up while he finished shaving, his small travel mirror carefully propped in the crook of a cottonwood tree.
He'd had a rough night, tossing and turning on his bed from his aching leg and unable to drown out Wren's admission of 'You're wrong. I reckon it was the both of you I needed,' running through his mind.
It had shocked, delighted, and undoubtedly terrified him to his core because, in all his twenty-nine years, no one had ever needed him. Not the way he knew Wren meant it, he thought with a frown, wincing as he nicked himself, then jumped and lowered his razor when Mae bolted out the front door in her nightgown and vomited around the corner of the cabin.
Muttering a curse, he wiped the residual soap from his face and held the towel to his jaw, pulling it away to see a bright red smear of blood staining the fabric just as Wolstan exited the cabin barefoot, wearing only a pair of trousers and holding a glass of water.
"I have a pocket full of ginger chews and some water," he said, slowly approaching the corner of the cabin she'd disappeared behind, "you want either one?"
Her answer came by way of more vomiting.
Wolstan cast a worried glance at Declan.
Declan pressed the towel to his face again, looked at it, and grunted when it came away with a small spot of blood, then draped it on his left shoulder and settled his hands on his hips. "Want me to wake Uncle Em?"
"No need," Emerson yawned from the doorway, dressed in his calf-length sleep shirt and trousers, scratching his head. "Pretty hard to sleep through someone on a mad dash down a ladder followed by violent retching."
"You and Mama sleep all right?" Declan asked as he and Luella followed Emerson over to Wolstan.
Emerson nodded. "Bed's a little lumpy, but sheer exhaustion and having full bellies—"
"Can you please," Mae groaned, bracing herself against the cabin where she knelt on the grass, "not talk about food right now?"
"Sure thing, my dear," Emerson murmured, eyeing her with concern. Then with a pat on Wolstan's left shoulder, he stepped around him and approached Mae, "You still feeling the same as you have since leaving Independence?"
She slowly nodded, hesitating before saying, "I was hoping it would go away once we stopped traveling."
"You think it's something serious like dysentery?" Wolstan asked, his brow puckered in a frown.
Emerson studied her as he murmured, "I think we all would have shown symptoms long before now if it was that. We ate and drank the same things she did the whole way."
