Chapter 6 - The Unspoken Bond
After the wolf incident, everything changed. Silas no longer saw Sadie as a housekeeper. He saw a warrior. He began to teach her how to use the rifle, not just for protection, but for the hunt.
"You have the heart for it," he told her one evening as they cleaned their weapons.
"I have the heart for living, Silas," she corrected.
May you like
The children, too, shifted their allegiance. They stopped asking for permission to sit with her; they simply moved their chores to be near her. Sadie taught them how to read by the fire, using old scraps of paper and charcoal. She was shaping them, and in doing so, she was shaping herself.
She wasn't the barren widow of Oakhaven. She was the matriarch of the Rim. She realized she didn't need to give birth to be a mother; she had been mothering this family since the moment she opened the wagon door.
