Epilogue
SLADE
The storm had blown through overnight, leaving the ridge wrapped in a hard, bright cold that would sink straight into a man’s bones if he stood around long enough.
I’d been up since before sunrise, same as every day, checking fence lines and counting cattle, trying to get ahead of the mess the wind liked to make this time of year.
By midmorning, the sky was clear, the kind of sharp blue that only showed up a few times each winter. I took advantage of it, loaded new wire into the truck bed, and headed up toward the north boundary.
That stretch of land was older than anything else on the ranch…
older than the buildings, older than the roads, older than the Kincaid name itself, if I believed my grandfather’s stories.
I’d spent half my life riding it, working it, memorizing every curve and cedar tree.
So when something didn’t look right, I felt it before I saw it.
I hopped out of the truck and scanned the ridge. The storm had knocked down a good section of fence overnight. Nothing new there. But the ground… there was something about the ground that felt off. I moved toward the disturbed snow and crouched, brushing away the frost with my glove.
Metal glinted underneath. It was a survey marker. An ancient one. Older than anything that should’ve been sitting on my family’s land. I brushed it clean with the back of my hand, and the engraving came into view.
H.M. Below it, someone had engraved a date that didn’t line up with any Kincaid history.
My stomach sank. “Well, hell.”
I wasn’t a man who panicked easily, but this?
This felt like the start of a headache that wasn’t going to fade on its own.
I stood and looked out across the ridge, letting the cold steady me.
The land had always felt like an extension of my body…
solid, known, and loyal. But today, it felt like it was keeping secrets.
I didn’t have time for secrets. Or for whatever fight this was going to start between my family and the Hollisters. Neither needed much of a spark to set off generations of bad blood, especially when I was trying to get all of us to work together on bringing the rodeo back to town.
I’d just grabbed the roll of wire from the truck bed when a pair of headlights crept up the road. It wasn’t a ranch truck, and I didn’t recognize it as belonging to one of my neighbors.
“Perfect.” I sighed. First the mysterious marker and now an uninvited guest.
The small SUV stopped on the side of the road, parked at an angle that suggested the driver wasn’t used to mountain roads or snowbanks.
Then the door swung open, and a woman climbed out.
Her coat was too thin, her boots not nearly sturdy enough to be traipsing around uneven ground, and her expression way too determined for her own good.
Morgan Carter. She was Mustang Mountain’s new town planner.
I hadn’t had to work with her yet, but I’d heard the rumors.
She wasn’t from around here. Folks said she was a city girl whose daddy pulled some strings to get her a job a few levels above her pay grade.
She seemed hellbent on proving herself, and my buddy Dawson said she was more stubborn than every mule within a hundred miles combined.
She trudged toward me, her boots sinking deeper and deeper into the snow with every step.
“Slade Kincaid!” she called, her breath puffing out in clouds. “We need to talk.”
I resisted the urge to close my eyes and count to ten. “Based on you driving all the way out here, I figured you might say that.”
She stopped in front of me and thrust out her hand. “I’m Morgan Carter, the new town planner, and we have a problem.”
Before I could reach for her hand, she slipped on a patch of ice, her arms flailing as she tilted backward. I grabbed her arm without thinking. “Careful, ma’am.”
She straightened, trying to pretend she hadn’t almost face-planted into a snowbank. “I’m fine.”
“Sure you are.” I waited until she seemed steady before I let go.
Instead of thanking me, she shot me a glare that should’ve knocked me flat on my ass. “I got a call this morning. Someone reported unauthorized structures on publicly questionable land.”
“Publicly questionable land,” I repeated. “Is that what Mayor Nelson called it?”
“That’s what he wrote on the form.” She blew a chunk of dark brown hair out of her face. “We need to review the northern boundary. Officially. Which means I need access to the ridge.”
“This is my ridge.”
“So it seems, but that’s what the paperwork is trying to determine.”
I stared at her for a long second. She shifted her weight but didn’t back down.
“Look,” she said, softening enough to take some sting out of the words, “I’m not here to stir up trouble.”
“That’s exactly what you’re here to do.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I’m here to do my job. Which requires verifying property lines. Which requires your cooperation.”
“And what if I say I’m busy?”
“Then I’ll wait.”
I snorted. “You’ll freeze.”
“No, I won’t.”
Right on cue, a gust of wind blasted a pile of loose snow off a pine branch and dumped it straight onto her head.
Her lips formed a tight line as she brushed it off her shoulders. “That was unfortunate timing.”
I couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped. “Sure was.”
She let out a slow exhale, her breath fogging the air in front of her. “This isn’t personal. If the Kincaids have nothing to hide, the review won’t change anything.”
My jaw tensed. “What makes you think we have something to hide?”
“Nothing,” she said. “But people talk. And if this ridge really does have a contested history, the sooner we figure it out, the better.”
I didn’t like the way her words hit. Too close to the truth. Too close to the marker burned into my mind.
“You’re going to piss off half the town,” I said.
“They can take a number and come see me down at town hall during office hours.”
I huffed out a dry laugh. “You really think you’re ready for Mustang Mountain?”
“I moved here, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” I said, starting to doubt the rumors that she hadn’t earned the job. “You did.”
For a second, her expression softened, like maybe she wasn’t just here to draw lines on a map. Like maybe she saw something in the snow and the trees and the ridge that reminded her why people fought for land in the first place.
“It’s beautiful up here,” she said.
“It is.”
“And remote.”
“That too.”
Snowflakes drifted sideways, clinging to her hair. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Will you show me the boundary line?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t pushy this time.
I studied her for a long moment… her flushed cheeks, her determination, the way she was trying to act like she wasn’t freezing.
“Fine,” I said. “But be careful. I don’t want to have to haul you back down the ridge if you get hurt.”
“I’m not going to—” She slipped again.
I caught her by the arm again.
She sighed, her breath shuddering. “Okay. I might have worn the wrong boots today.”
“Might have?” I asked.
Her lips twitched but she bit back her smile before it could form.
I turned and started up the ridge. She followed, crunching through the snow, muttering under her breath every time the wind shoved her sideways.
We finally reached the crest. The valley spread below us, open, quiet, and glowing under the winter sun. Morgan stopped next to me.
“It’s even prettier from up here,” she said, her voice full of the soft kind of awe I still felt when I came up here.
“Gets into your bones,” I told her.
She glanced up at me. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. So I didn’t. Instead, I took a few more steps and nudged snow away from the disturbed ground. The survey marker glinted again.
She sucked in a small breath. “What’s that?”
“Something that shouldn’t be here.”
She crouched, studying it, her eyes sharp. Then she pulled her phone out of her pocket and muttered something to herself. When she finally looked up at me, her expression set off warning bells in my chest. “Slade, this marker predates the official Kincaid settlement records.”
“Yeah. I figured.”
“This could change everything.” She snapped a few pictures then stood.
“Or it could change nothing.”
“We need to look into it.”
“We don’t need to do anything.”
“But—”
“Not now,” I said, cutting her off.
Her mouth closed, but the fire in her eyes didn’t dim.
I didn’t know what the marker meant. Not yet. But I knew it wasn’t the kind of information that stayed hidden. And even though we’d just met, I could tell already that Morgan Carter wasn’t the type to let anything stay buried.
She brushed snow from her gloves. “This is going to get messy, isn’t it?”
“It already is.”
She nodded. “Well. Then I guess we’ll deal with it.”
We? There was no “we” when it came to Morgan Carter and me. Not when she’d blown in with her rules and her big-city confidence like she understood this land better than the people born on it.
She stepped next to me anyway, brushing snow off her sleeve like she hadn’t stumbled through half a mile of terrain she had no business climbing.
Her chin lifted, proud and defiant. Like she was ready for a fight she didn’t even fully understand.
And damn if something in me didn’t tighten at the sight.
Whatever storm this marker was about to unleash, it wasn’t going to be simple. It wasn’t going to be clean. And it sure as hell wasn’t going to be friendly.
Morgan wasn’t here to make my life easier. She was here to challenge every inch of what I thought I knew about this mountain. I didn’t like the way she looked at the ridge… like it was territory she intended to claim, one ordinance at a time.
I let out a low exhale. I might not be facing this alone, but I sure as hell wasn’t facing whatever trouble that would come out of this with her. We were adversaries circling each other, playing nice until things got mean and ugly.
And hell help the mountain when the two of us finally collided.