Knotting the Cowboys (Cactus Rose Ranch: Cowboyverse #1)

Prologue Burning Reality

~WILLA~

T he taste of smoke filled my mouth before I even opened my eyes.

Something was wrong.

Terribly, horribly wrong.

I tried to move, but cold metal bit into my wrists with a sharp, unforgiving grip. The hollow clank of handcuffs against the bedframe sent a bolt of pure terror straight through my chest.

My eyes flew open to a nightmare unfolding in real time—one I couldn't wake up from no matter how desperately I wanted to.

"Blake?" My voice came out raspy, disoriented. The bitter taste of betrayal already forming on my tongue before I could even process what was happening. "What are you doing?"

My husband—no, my soon-to-be-ex husband—stood at the foot of our bed with a red gas can tilted in his hands.

The acrid smell of gasoline mingled with thickening smoke that was already beginning to burn my lungs.

His familiar face, the one I'd woken up to for five years, was twisted into something I didn't recognize, all sharp angles and cold calculation where there used to be warmth.

"Just finishing what should have been done a long time ago," Blake said, his voice eerily calm. The detachment in his eyes sent ice water through my veins. "An unmated Omega like you should have known better than to try to leave me."

I pulled against the handcuffs, metal cutting into my skin as panic surged through every inch of my body. My heart hammered so hard I thought it might crack my ribs. "You can't do this. This is our home. Our pack's home."

My childhood home. My parents' legacy. My last connection to them.

A humorless laugh escaped him, the sound so foreign from the man who had once held me through thunderstorms and promised forever.

"Our pack? My pack wants nothing to do with you anymore.

You were only ever useful on paper." He splashed more gasoline across the end of the bed, the fumes making my eyes water.

"The truth is, you were never one of us. "

The betrayal cut deeper than any knife could.

Every moment between us flashed before my eyes—all those nights I'd spent comforting him when the bank threatened foreclosure, all the paperwork I'd signed to save his family's legacy, using my inheritance to keep his pack's land.

I had given him everything, believing I was saving not just his future, but building our own.

"I married you to save you," I whispered, tears streaming down my face, my voice breaking on each word. "I gave you everything."

"And I never asked for it," Blake snarled, his Alpha scent souring with contempt. The once-comforting smell of pine and mountain air now twisted into something rotten. "I never asked for an Omega who couldn't even bond properly. You're defective, Willa. Always have been."

The cruel words hit their mark with surgical precision, reopening old wounds that had never fully healed.

Born with a rare condition that made proper scent-bonding difficult, I'd spent my entire life terrified I'd never truly belong to anyone.

That I'd never be enough. And now my worst fears were being thrown in my face by the man who had once promised it didn't matter, who had sworn he loved me anyway.

Liar. He'd always been lying.

Through the window, I could see the first hints of dawn breaking over the Montana mountains—the same view I'd woken up to every morning since I was a child.

Pink-gold light spilled across the horizon, oblivious to the horror unfolding inside these walls.

The home my parents had left me when they died, the land my grandfather had taught me to love. And now it was all going to burn.

"Our divorce isn't even final," I said, fighting to keep my voice steady while trying to reason with a man who had clearly lost his mind. "You still need my signature."

A cold smile spread across Blake's face, transforming the features I once loved into something monstrous. "Not if you're dead."

He struck a match, the small flame dancing between his fingers like a terrible promise. In that moment, I saw with perfect clarity what I should have seen years ago—the calculation behind his charm, the emptiness where love should have been.

"Please," I begged, my Omega instincts screaming for mercy from an Alpha who no longer recognized me as his to protect.

The primal part of me couldn't comprehend that my mate would harm me so deliberately, even as the rational part of my brain finally accepted the truth: he had never truly been my mate at all.

"Blake, don't do this. We can talk about this. "

"There's nothing left to say." His eyes were empty, soulless, as he dropped the match.

Flames erupted instantly, racing along the gasoline trail he'd laid.

The whoosh of ignition stole my breath as Blake backed toward the door, watching with detached fascination as fire crawled up the walls and licked at the curtains my mother had sewn by hand.

In seconds, the small bedroom was transformed into an inferno, heat pressing against my skin like a physical weight.

"Goodbye, Willa," he said, his voice nearly drowned out by the roar of the flames. Then he turned and walked away, closing the door behind him with a soft, final click that somehow sounded like a gunshot to my ears.

Smoke filled my lungs as I thrashed against my restraints, panic giving way to pure animal fear. The metal bed frame rattled but refused to give. Fire climbed the walls like living things, devouring the floral wallpaper my mother had picked out twenty years ago.

I'm going to die here, I thought, the realization crystallizing in my mind with terrible clarity. This was how I would die—betrayed and alone, in the home that was supposed to have been my sanctuary.

"Help!" I screamed, though I knew no one would hear me. Our nearest neighbors were miles away. "Please, somebody help me!"

The smoke grew thicker, making each breath a desperate struggle. My vision blurred, tears evaporating from the heat before they could fall. All around me, the home I loved was disappearing into ash, taking with it every photograph, every memory, every piece of my history.

I stopped fighting. A strange calm settled over me as the ceiling began to crack and groan above my head. If this was the end, at least the pain of Blake's betrayal would end with it. At least I wouldn't have to live knowing how completely I'd been used.

The wedding photo on my nightstand curled and blackened in the heat—me in white, Blake standing proud beside me. I'd been so young then, so painfully hopeful. Twenty-three and thinking I was saving not just Blake and his pack's legacy, but my own future too.

What a fool I'd been.

Just as the edges of my consciousness began to fade, the bedroom door crashed open with a splintering of wood.

Through the smoke and flames, silhouettes appeared—broad-shouldered and moving with purpose.

Alpha scents cut through the burning, four distinct notes that somehow reached me even through the chaos.

Strong arms lifted me. Someone worked at the handcuffs, metal giving way with a snap that I felt more than heard. Words were shouted around me that I couldn't quite make out through the roaring in my ears.

And then I was being carried, my face pressed against the protective gear of a firefighter whose heartbeat I could feel even through the thick material. The steady thump-thump grounded me as my world dissolved into smoke and heat.

"Stay with us," a deep voice commanded, the Alpha tone impossible to ignore even in my fading state. Something in me responded to that voice, reached for it like a lifeline.

Four scents surrounded me, different yet harmonizing in a way I'd never experienced before. Each one distinct, each one calling to something deep inside me that I'd always believed was broken:

Pine and leather, like a forest after rainfall. Rain-soaked earth and sun-warmed hay, the scent of living things growing. Smoke and cinnamon, warmth and spice and danger all mixed together. Clean linen dried in mountain air, simple and pure and safe.

As the firefighter carried me from the burning ruins of my past, something broken inside me reached instinctively toward those scents. But the darkness was pulling me under too quickly to hold on.

The last thing I remembered was being placed on a stretcher, oxygen pressed to my face, and those four scents beginning to fade as consciousness slipped away.

I didn't know their names. I didn't see their faces. I didn't get to say thank you.

But somewhere in the deepest, most primal part of my being, my Omega recognized something my conscious mind wouldn't understand until much later.

This wasn't the end of my story.

It was only the beginning.