Chapter 1 - The Descent into the Ridge
The altitude in western Colorado always got to people who weren't born here, thinning the air until every breath felt like pulling lint through a needle. But as I navigated the final, gut-wrenching switchback toward Gavin Hale’s property, the weight in my chest had nothing to do with oxygen. It had everything to do with the fact that my mother—practical, fiercely independent, five-years-in-black-mourning Claire Mercer—was about to become a wife again.
And I was about to become something worse: a stepsister to a man whose very existence felt like a plot twist written by a malicious deity.
My Honda Civic groaned, its transmission whining as the tires crunched over frozen gravel. The GPS had given up ten miles back, reducing the screen to a blank gray plane with a single glowing arrow floating in a void of green pines.
“TURN LEFT AT THE OLD WATER TOWER,” my mother’s final text had screamed in all caps. “YOU WILL THINK IT IS THE WRONG ROAD. IT IS NOT THE WRONG ROAD.”
She was wrong. It was definitively the wrong road. It was a scar carved into the flank of a mountain, choked with spruce and hemmed in by sheer drop-offs where the guardrails had long since rusted away into the brush. Every true-crime podcast I had ever consumed—the ones where college students went missing during weekend road trips—played on an aggressive loop inside my skull.
“You’re an idiot, Chloe,” I muttered, my knuckles turning white as I death-gripped the steering wheel. “You could be in your apartment in Boulder, eating cold lo mein and failing Professor Lang’s charcoal unit in peace.”
Instead, here I was, plunging deeper into a landscape that looked less like a vacation spot and more like a wildlife preservation zone designed to hide bodies.
Then the headlights cut across a shape in the middle of the track.
I slammed on the brakes. The ABS ground against the ice, the Civic skidding three feet before stopping with a pathetic jolt.
The creature standing dead-center in the lane didn’t flinch.
It was, without hyperbole, the largest bear I had ever seen outside of a specialized documentary. Its shoulders sat easily four feet off the ground, a massive, muscular mound of dark, coarse fur that absorbed the headlights like velvet. A heavy ruff of lighter brown fur framed its jaw, and when it turned its head toward my windshield, the sheer intelligence in its small, dark eyes made my breath hitch. It didn't look feral. It looked deliberate. As if it owned the strip of dirt beneath my tires, and I was merely an unwelcome guest tracking mud across its foyer.
“Okay,” I whispered, staring straight into those ancient, flat eyes. “Nice bear. Good bear. Go find a salmon.”
The bear tilted its massive skull, let out a low, vibrating huff that rattled my side mirrors, and then—with impossible, silent grace—slid off the road and melted into the black timber.
I sat there for five full minutes, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
When I finally reached the timber lodge ten minutes later, my nerves were completely frayed. The place was an architectural masterpiece of heavy cedar logs and floor-to-ceiling glass, glowing warmly against the violet dusk. Gavin Hale met me at the edge of the crushed-stone driveway, his face creased with an easy smile that immediately put me on edge.
“Chloe?” he asked, stepping out of the chill without a coat.
“Please tell me there is a cocktail waiting inside that involves heavy grain alcohol,” I said, stepping out of the car and immediately shivering as the mountain wind bit through my jacket.
Gavin laughed, a rich, baritone sound. “I think we can manage something stronger than that. Rough trip?”
“I encountered a ursine citizen down the road who looked like it could bench-press my car.”
Gavin’s smile faltered. Just for a fraction of a second, his gaze snapped past me toward the dark tree line, a sudden, shuttered look passing over his features. “Where?”
“About two miles back. Near the fork.”
“Probably just passing through,” he murmured, though his voice lacked conviction. “Come on inside. Your mother’s been pacing a trench into the hardwood floors.”
The interior of the lodge smelled of woodsmoke, old leather, and pine needles. It was breathtaking, but my brain was too fried to appreciate it. Within minutes, my mother had enveloped me in a bear hug—a word I was currently trying to banish from my vocabulary—and shoved a mug of hot cider into my hands.
“You missed the sunset,” she scolded affectionately, smoothing down my hair. “It was gold over the ridge.”
“I was too busy negotiating right-of-way with local wildlife,” I muttered, taking a scalding sip of cider. “Where is the infamous stepbrother, anyway? Is he cowering in a cave, or does he actually grace civilization with his presence?”
Mom and Gavin exchanged another one of those identical, invisible glances—the kind parents use when they’re hiding a dead dog from a six-year-old.
“Rowan’s checking fences on the upper ridge,” Gavin said smoothly, turning to stoke the massive stone fireplace. “He’ll be down for dinner. He’s... looking forward to meeting you.”
“Right,” I said, unconvinced. “Fences against what? Cattle?”
May you like
“Cattle,” Gavin repeated without missing a beat.
There were no cattle anywhere within fifty miles. That should have been my first, second, and third clue that nothing on this mountain operated under the laws of normal human reality.
