Chapter 155 Chapter 155

Chapter 155 Chapter 155
Talons pov

I woke up at five in the morning on Wednesday to the high-pitched whistle of air forcing its way under the eaves of the house. Beside me, Kira was completely passed out, curled up against my side with one hand resting over the edge of the heavy wool duvet. I slid out from under the covers as quietly as I could, pulling on a shirt, my pants, and my heavy field jacket. The wind outside was no joke. The second I unlocked the front door to check the porch, a massive gust nearly ripped the brass handle right out of my grip, blowing a spray of wet grit across the entry floor.

I shoved the door shut, locked the deadbolt, and walked downstairs to get the woodstove going. While the fire caught and started throwing off heat, I turned on the espresso machine and poured myself a dark roast. Marcus was already out doing his rounds. His status update popped up green on the master control tablet by the kitchen counter: North perimeter fence check complete. Secondary generator fuel lines secured. All sensors running fine. I pulled on my leather work gloves, jammed a beanie down over my ears, and stepped out into the storm.

The wind hit me like a wall the second I cleared the mudroom. My main worry with a storm like this wasn't the temperature, it was structural torque. If the heavy cedar framing on the barn or the new glass panels on the greenhouse weren't properly braced, lateral pressure from fifty-mile-an-hour gusts could pop joints right out of alignment.
I headed down the sloping path toward the timber barn first, shoving the side door open and stepping inside to get out of the wind. It was dim inside, echoing with the low rumble of the storm buffeting the outer cedar siding. I walked the entire perimeter of the ground floor, checking the main support beams and the steel anchoring cables we had put in back in the fall. Everything felt rigid, solid, and locked in place. Marcus had spent the previous afternoon reinforcing the windward wall, and it showed.

I turned around to head toward the loft ladder, but a sharp metallic clatter rang out from the back corner near the storage bins. I froze instantly. Months of living a quiet life on a farm vanished in a microsecond. My body reacted before my brain even processed the sound. My hand dropped straight to the utility knife at my belt, my stance shifting into a low, defensive guard.

"Marcus?" I called out, my voice cutting sharp through the noise of the wind. Nothing. Just the hollow rattle of loose tin somewhere up on the roof.
I moved fast and silent, staying close to the shadowed edges of the horse stalls until I reached the back corner behind the old tractor attachments.
There was nobody there. No corporate hitmen, no federal agents, no ghosts from Manhattan.
A heavy iron bracket had shaken loose from an overhead shelf because of the wind shear and dropped straight into an empty metal bucket on the floor.

I stood there in the dark barn, letting out a long, slow breath as the adrenaline spike started to fade out of my chest. I shook my head at myself. Months of absolute peace, and the moment a piece of metal fell off a shelf, my first instinct was to prepare for a tactical breach. Paranoia dies hard when you spend years living on high alert.
I picked up the bracket, threw it into a plastic storage crate, and climbed up the loft ladder to make sure the rest of the tools up there were tied down so nothing else fell off. Thirty minutes later, I walked back out into the yard and headed down toward the lower greenhouse.

The wind was still howling across the pastures, kicking up dust and loose leaves, but the greenhouse was holding up fine. We had set the frame deep into concrete footings and cross-braced it with steel cables, so even though the glass panels were vibrating under the pressure, nothing was cracking or shifting out of place.
When I turned around to head back up toward the house, I spotted Kira standing out on the front porch. She was wearing a thick cable-knit sweater, holding her arms tight against the wind and shielding her eyes while she looked down the path for me. I picked up my pace, taking the steps two at a time and pulling her against my side as I shoved the front door open to get us out of the cold.

"What are you doing standing out here without a jacket?" I asked, closing the door behind us.
"I saw the wind telemetry spike to sixty miles an hour on the tablet," she said, pulling off her sweater as we walked into the kitchen. "I wanted to make sure you hadn't gotten blown down the ridge."

"I'm fine," I said, pulling her in and kissing her. She tasted like coffee. "The barn is fine, the greenhouse glass is holding, and the only casualties were a metal bracket that fell off a shelf and my own nerves."
She looked up at me, her eyes softening. "Did you think someone was in the barn?"

"For about two seconds," I admitted, stepping over to the counter to pour her a mug of coffee. "Heard a metal bang and instantly went into perimeter breach mode. It's annoying how fast that instinct kicks back in."
"It takes time, Talon," she said quietly, taking the mug and putting her hand over mine. "You spent years constantly looking over your shoulders and waiting for something to go wrong. You don't just turn that off in a couple of months. But look around. Nobody is coming for us. We're fine."

"I know," I said, pulling her close and resting my chin on top of her head. "I know we are." We stayed inside for the rest of the day while the wind kept tearing at the outside of the house.

Since there was no point in starting any big outdoor projects in the middle of a gale, we cleared off the big dining table and turned it into a makeshift double workspace. Kira spent the morning working through the soil cataloging, for some reason she needs a soil sample form every part of the property and she made notes on them.  While I pulled up our maintenance schedules on my laptop to plan out the summer work. I drafted fuel orders for the equipment, Planned out a cleaning schedule for the solar array, and figured out how much pipe we needed to expand the lower water cisterns.

It was quiet, easy work. No pressure, no rush. Just two people doing their own thing in the same room, completely on the same page. Around four in the afternoon, the wind finally started losing its edge. The howling stopped, settling down into a steady mountain breeze as the storm front moved out toward the east.