Dread filled her. She could feel the emotion as if it were an actual being, pouring inside her like an insidious monster, robbing her of her ability to breathe, to think, to do anything but sit still, her mouth dry and her heart pounding too fast. She jammed her fist into her mouth for a moment—the absolute wrong thing to do.

When she was in a full-blown panic attack she couldn’t even move. She was frozen to the spot, useless to her family. A liability. She worked out every single day. She went religiously to self-defense training. She could shoot a gun and throw a knife accurately at any target—even moving targets. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t be like her other sisters?

She swallowed a sob and forced her mind to work properly. Nothing was wrong. Nothing. No one could get on the farm with their warning system. Each of her sisters of the heart was bound to an element, and the three men residing with them were just as gifted. Should anyone wishing them harm come to the farm, Air would call to Max and Airiana. Earth would tell her. Water would summon Rikki. Judith, bound to Spirit, would feel any disruption at all. Fire called to Lissa. And Blythe just knew.

No one could possibly slip through the power rippling throughout the farm, not with the men, Judith and Blythe amplifying it, she reminded herself.

She forced air through her lungs, always grateful her family rarely witnessed these moments of weakness. She’d been certain the addition of the men to their family farm as well as all the self-defense and weapons training would help her through the panic attacks, maybe even make them stop altogether. It hadn’t happened.

“What’s wrong with you?” she murmured aloud and started the ignition. “You’re such a freakin’ baby.”

Straightening her shoulders, she drove determinedly toward the back entrance, the gate that led to the road that came into their property through a forest. She felt as if the towering trees were guardians watching over those living on the farm. She loved that they were surrounded on three sides by forest. Some of their acreage remained part of a mixed forest, but behind them the trees were thick and untouched. She drove down the road to the entrance to the next property. She coveted that acreage—she had from the moment it had come up for sale.

Lexi turned off the engine and sat for a moment just drinking in the sight of all that beautiful soil, untouched. No one had ever lived or worked the property, and she’d often pushed her hands deep into the dirt and felt the rich loam just waiting to grow something beautiful.