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quietly, enjoying the sense of camaraderie between man and mount. They had a long history, bound by a promise not always easilykept. Reeve promised to see to the animal’s care if Zeus brought him safely home.
    “Feels good being in for the night, don’t it, boy?”
    Ears pricked forward at the sound of his low tones.
    “Yessir, was a time when I wondered if we’d ever be dry again, but here we are, roof over our heads, snug as bugs. What more could we be wantin’?”
    Zeus tossed his great head, throwing it over the divider to the next stall as if pointing out its emptiness.
    “Company, eh?” The big stallion wasn’t alone in that wish. Unbidden, the image of Patrice Sinclair tantalized. He shook off the unlikely mirage. “Well, you got me through the thick of it, didn’t you, boy? Least I can do is turn you out to the best grass this side of heaven, with your pick of the fillies.”
    “Think he understands you?”
    Though startled by the intrusion of his father’s voice, Reeve didn’t look around. He stretched down to pick up a curry comb and went to work on the shaggy mane. “Why, sure. Me and Zeus have shared many a conversation over the last four years. He’s a fine listener.”
    “Well, don’t go promising him his pick of the mares just yet. I’m afraid he’s the only blooded animal the Glade has.”
    He paused in his movement of the comb. “Zeus don’t belong to the Glade. He’s mine.” A quiet statement of fact.
    “And you don’t belong to the Glade either, I suppose.”
    Reeve didn’t answer his father’s curt rejoinder. Instead, he squatted down to prop one of the stallion’shocks upon his knee to pick at the hoof. Zeus fidgeted, sensing his tension.
    “It’s good to have you back.”
    Again, Reeve said nothing, remembering their parting words after he’d brought Jonah home.
    “I give you a home and this is how you repay me! My son is dead. You should have been there to protect him instead of helping the enemy pull the trigger. It wasn’t enough to put a knife in my back with your betrayal. Now you’ve stabbed me through the heart. Do you hate me so much? You’ve not only murdered my son, you’ve killed the future of the Glade. You ungrateful bastard! You’ll never have what was his. Never!”
    Now that same man who’d ordered him off the Glade at gunpoint, refusing to hear what he would say in his own defense, was extending the olive branch in truce after using it to whip him.
    “You haven’t said how long you’ll be staying.”
    “No, I haven’t.”
    More silence, ragged around the edges with strain.
    “The Glade could use you, Reeve.”
    “The Glade?” He glanced up then, intense gaze demanded a more personal concession. Getting it, after a long pause.
    “I could use you.”
    Showing no sign that his father’s admission pleased him, Reeve bent back over the hoof. “To do what?”
    “Rebuild.”
    “What makes you think the Glade matters to me one way or another?”
    For a moment, he sensed his father’s panic, a cold, shaky thing, smelling of sweat and fear. It ran through the troops like a fever during the quiet beforea charge, in that instant where losing all meant more than loyalty, more than pride. A hesitation when strong men faced the reality of having no future. And it either broke them or made them more determined.
    Byron Glendower didn’t break easily.
    “Because you’re my son,” was the bulwark he threw up before him. “You can’t pretend with me, Reeve. I’ve seen you hunger after these acres all your life.”
    Reeve flung the pick he was using across the stall, the noise startling both man and animal. With hands gripping the knees of his Union trousers, Reeve glared up with uncharacteristic ferocity.
    “Your son? Really? Now that you’ve got nothing left, you want to embrace me with sudden fatherly love? Or are you jus’ planning to use me like you did my mama, to get what you want?”
    His father slapped him. Reeve didn’t move to put a