Nothing looked wrong. Nothing felt wrong.
He whistled the dogs out and worked them hard in the round pen. Kip clapped when the youngest Anatolian Shepherd slammed into a perfect down-stay. Trace felt his mouth curve into a smile without permission. She fit here. She just didn’t know it yet.
Soon enough, they finished the morning chores. By mid-morning, they were ready to head back to the lodge. The house hit them with a wall of heat, sugar, and Nat King Cole crooning about chestnuts while sleigh bells jingled in the background. Flour hung in the air like smoke.
Kenzie spotted Kip first and pounced. “Perfect timing, red! We’ve all been drafted by Ruby to decorate Christmas cookies. You’re on snowflake detail.” She slapped a piping bag into Kip’s hand hard enough to squirt royal icing onto her wrist. With a sly grin, she added, “No mercy. Ruby’s judging symmetry.”
Ruby didn’t even look up from the tray she was flooding red. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! It’s not like they’ll go in the reject pile for the ranch hands if they’re a bit crooked. If I said that, I’d have cowboys bumping into you girls all day long.”
Joy twirled past with a candy cane between her teeth like a cigarette. “We’ve already eaten half the rejects just to be safe. But I’ll have to admit, so far, our bar for being too crooked has been pretty low.”
Kenzie grinned. “That just means more cookies for us!”
Tildi leaned over Kip’s shoulder, eyes bright. “Do the fancy lattice ones. Trace likes the fancy ones.”
“I do not—” Trace began.
“Liar!” four voices shouted together.
Kip shot him a laughing look, white icing already smeared across one cheek. “You’re not staying to help?”
He lifted both hands in surrender, backing toward the door. “Those fences won’t fix themselves, darlin’. You’ve got this.”
“Coward!” Kenzie called out as Ruby finally cracked a grin.
“Traitor!” Kip added, flinging a red cinnamon dot at his head. It bounced off his shoulder and landed in the dog’s waiting mouth.
Female laughter chased him down the hall while Bing Crosby promised a white Christmas over the speakers, whether they wanted one or not.
Bastion was already at the barn gate when Trace stepped out of the house. The big blue-roan Percheron stood steady in the snow, a wall of muscle in his winter coat. Goldie thumped her tail once from her cedar-bed dog box but didn’t bother getting up. It was too cold to play, even for a puppy built for the snow. She wasn’t old enough or experienced enough to venture out to the outer pastures yet anyway.
Trace scratched Bastion’s thick neck, feeling the heat radiating off eighteen hands of honest horse. “All right, big guy. Let’s go pretend I’m not running from Christmas cookies.”
Bastion snorted a cloud of steam and lowered his head so Trace could slip the bridle on. No saddle today. Trace just vaulted up from the mounting block, settled onto the broad back, and nudged him toward the north pasture at a long trot that ate up ground without hurrying.
The wind cut straight through Trace’s coat, but Bastion moved steady, hooves punching clean holes in the crust. Snow squeaked under each stride. Trace kept one hand buried in the thick mane for warmth, eyes scanning the fence line, talking half to himself, half to his horse.
“Supposed to be a quiet winter, Bastion. Only a few calves to handle. The bison are fattening up on schedule. Now we have Kip with us, so we need to teach her to ride. I’m thinkin’ Daisy would be a good first horse. What do you think?”
Bastion flicked an ear back and nickered. Trace nodded. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
The fence looked great for the first couple of miles, but when he reached the bend of Stillwater Creek, he spotted the first break. Three strands had snapped, half-buried in the snow with ice glittering on the barbs. Trace cursed, swung down, and sank calf-deep in the snow. Looping Bastion’s reins over a post, he went to work with the fencing pliers.
The first two lines went fairly easy, but the wire on the last line fought him. When he finally had the line repaired, he gave a final hard twist and damn near dropped his pliers when a barb pierced his glove and sliced clean across the edge of his palm. Blood welled hot and instant, dripping in perfect red beads onto the snow.
“Son of a—” Trace hissed, shaking his hand once, before wrapping the cut in his bandana. With only one functioning hand, he had to knot the cloth in place one-handed with his teeth. Bastion stood twenty yards off, watching and probably wondering why he was making such a fuss.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he muttered. “Stupid human tricks.”
With the fence secured again, Trace gathered Bastion’s reins and nudged the large Percheron toward the feed bins to top off the winter pellets. The wind hissed across the snow crust, carrying the steady grunting and snorting of the herd.
That was when Dodger suddenly showed up out of nowhere.
One second, the snow was empty. Then a huge black shape appeared between Trace and the bins, his head level with Bastion’s chest. It took Trace a moment to realize the beast was Dodger. He’d never seen the wolfdog like this—ears flat, hackles half-raised, amber eyes fixed on the metal lids. Dodger hadn’t been anywhere near the barn when Trace had saddled up.
He reined Bastion to a stop. “Dodger? What in the hell are you doing out here, boy?”
Dodger didn’t even flick an ear in greeting. He planted himself squarely in Trace’s path, lips peeled just enough to show ivory fang, a low rumble rolling in his chest like distant thunder.
