“Good advice.”
“I choose the woman who stood beside me when everything I believed about my family collapsed.”
Her laughter faded.
Ethan stepped closer.
“And I choose you because you were the first person in my life who wanted nothing from the name Walker.”
Ayana’s eyes filled with tears.
Ethan reached for her hand.
“But there’s one condition.”
Her eyebrow rose.
“You are making conditions?”
“One.”
“What?”
“You have to choose me again.”
Ayana looked past him toward the same open ground where more than one hundred warriors had once waited for her answer.
Then back at Ethan.
She squeezed his hand.
“I already did.”
“Do it again.”
She smiled.
Slowly.
Beautifully.
Then pointed at him exactly as she had that first day.
“I want him.”
Ethan laughed.
“That will do.”
But Ayana wasn’t finished.
She stepped closer until almost no distance remained between them.
“The first time,” she whispered, “I chose you because you wanted nothing from me.”
“And now?”
“Now I choose you because I know what you will do with what I give you.”
Ethan’s voice softened.
“And what’s that?”
“My trust.”
He understood then.
The hundred warriors had believed they were competing for a woman.
Crowe had believed men could own land, water, identities and futures.
Ethan himself had spent most of his life believing survival meant holding tightly to whatever little belonged to him.
They had all misunderstood the same thing.
The most valuable things in life were never conquered.
They were entrusted.
A hand.
A name.
A river.
A future.
A heart.
Ethan pulled Ayana gently toward him.
And beneath the cottonwoods, where months earlier a dusty stranger had accidentally interrupted a marriage ceremony and walked straight into a twenty-four-year conspiracy, Ayana Walker made her choice one final time.
Or so Ethan believed.
Because the following morning, Chief Whitehawk came to their fire carrying the original map that had been tied behind Jasper’s saddle.
“There is something you should see,” he said.
Ethan groaned.
“Every disaster in my life begins when you say something like that.”
Whitehawk ignored him.
He unfolded the map.
At the bottom was the mysterious symbol Ethan had noticed the first day.
He had assumed it belonged to Crowe.
It did not.
Whitehawk turned the page over.
In the corner, nearly invisible beneath years of wear, appeared two initials.
A.W.
Anna Walker.
Ethan stared.
“My mother drew the map?”
Whitehawk nodded.
Ethan looked at the black cross.
“The date was added later?”
“Yes.”
“By who?”
Whitehawk looked toward Ayana.
She looked equally confused.
Then another rider entered the village.
An elderly man.
Thin.
White-haired.
Ethan had never seen him before.
But the old man began crying the moment he saw Ethan.
Whitehawk spoke quietly.
“This is Daniel Mercer.”
Ethan waited.
“He worked for your father.”
Daniel removed his hat.
“And your mother.”
Ethan stood slowly.
The old man approached.
“I was supposed to bring your horse here when Crowe finally moved against you.”
Ethan’s heart accelerated.
“You?”
Daniel nodded.
“I frightened Jasper in the wash.”
Ethan stared.
“You made him run?”
“Yes.”
“You tied the map to his saddle?”
Daniel’s eyes filled with regret.
