I found the bathroom down the hall by following the sound of water running through old pipes. The door was unlocked. Iducked inside, washed my face with cold water, and ran wet fingers through my hair.
The face in the mirror looked back at me—a stranger with my eyes but not my expression, the split lip already healing at the edges.
I sighed and walked out.
The hallway led me to the kitchen—a big, open room with a scarred wooden table at its center and windows overlooking the property. Through the glass above the sink, I could make out two figures moving along the fence line in the early gray light—Decker and Rawley, recognizable by their height and the way they moved, military-trained even out of uniform.
Their breath was visible in the cold air, ghost-white against the darker sky. They were checking the fence, I realized—walking its length, testing its strength, looking for signs of damage or intrusion.
I opened three cabinet doors before I found the mugs, selected the least cracked one, and poured coffee from the pot on the stove. It was stronger than what I was used to—black and bitter with no hint of sweetness. I stood at the window, mug warming my hands, and watched the men on the fence line.
The awkwardness of my situation settled over me like a physical weight. I was not a guest—guests were invited, with clear arrival and departure dates. I was not a resident—I had no stake in this place, no claim on its resources, no role in its operation.
I was not a patient—though I was injured, no one here was responsible for my care. None of the roles I knew how to occupy fit the shape of what I was here.
I hated not having a role. Roles gave structure to social interactions, created boundaries that kept things manageable. Without one, I was just a body in space—a problem that hadbeen brought to this place for disposal rather than a person with history and value.
The front door opened, bringing in a blast of cold air and a wave of noise that broke the kitchen’s careful quiet. A man strode in, tall and rangy with a laugh that seemed to fill the space from floor to ceiling.
“Jesus Christ, it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” he said, stomping his boots on the entryway mat. “We brought—“ He stopped when he saw me, his expression shifting from surprised to assessing in the space of a heartbeat. “You must be Jasper.”
I nodded, keeping my posture deliberately neutral. “That’s me.”
“Burke Callahan,” he said, crossing the room with his hand already extended. “Tech wizard, occasional idiot, and—“ He broke off again as someone else entered behind him—a smaller figure with the careful movements of someone who’d learned the cost of making noise.
“And this is Danny,” Burke finished, his voice dropping to a gentler register. “My partner.”
The man—Danny—was smaller than Burke by a head, with dusty blond hair and eyes that did a quick inventory of the room before settling on my face. He offered a small smile—not the kind that people use to signal friendliness, but something more genuine, like he’d decided I was worth the effort.
“It’s good to meet you,” he said, his voice soft enough that I had to lean forward slightly to catch the words. “Decker told us you’d arrived last night.”
I looked between them, trying to place them in the ranch’s social landscape. Partners, clearly, though their dynamic was harder to read—Burke all easy confidence and expansive gestures, Danny quieter but somehow steadying, like a counterweight to Burke’s momentum.
“Our place is just west of here,” Burke said, correctly interpreting my confusion. “Down the road a ways.”
I nodded, filing this information away. The ranch’s social map was complex, with layers I was still trying to sort out.
Burke dropped into a chair at the kitchen table, already reaching for the coffee pot. “You a nurse, right? Decker said something about babies?”
“I worked in neonatal,” I said, the familiar response coming automatically. “Eight years at Omaha General.”
“Shit, really?” Burke’s expression lit up. “That’s fucking impressive. Those little ones are what, two pounds? One and a half? I’d be scared to breathe on them.”
The conversation moved quickly after that—Burke asking questions about neonatal nursing with genuine curiosity, Danny offering quiet observations that showed he’d been paying closer attention than his silence suggested. I answered where I could, keeping my responses factual, avoiding anything that might hint at why I’d left the job or what had happened after.
I read them the way I read families in hospital waiting rooms—Burke’s volume as armor, a performance designed to keep certain questions at a distance; Danny’s careful stillness as something earned rather than given, the watchfulness of someone who’d learned the cost of letting their guard down.
We were in the middle of discussing the challenges of rural healthcare when the front door opened again, bringing in another gust of cold air and two new figures—a man who moved with the caution of someone balancing on a knife edge, and behind him, a taller figure with the steady focus I’d come to recognize as military-trained.
The first man—Carter, according to Burke’s quick introduction—had the kind of careful grooming that spoke of money and habit rather than vanity. His hair was pulled back in a neat bun, his clothes expensive but understated. Somethingabout him felt out of place in the ranch kitchen—like he belonged to a different social ecosystem that had somehow spilled over into this one.
The second man—Macon, Carter introduced him—stood near the door and said almost nothing, his eyes doing a quick, tactical scan of the room before settling somewhere in the middle distance.
I braced for the assessment—the kind of look that catalogs omegas as things rather than people, the careful inventory of attributes and potential uses. What I got instead was Carter asking me, directly and without preamble, about a newborn of one of the neighboring ranch families with a feeding issue.
“The baby’s not gaining weight,” he said, his voice carrying the focus of genuine concern. “I think it might be a latch problem, or possibly a tongue-tie. The family’s pretty isolated—nearest real pediatrician is forty miles away—and they’ve tried everything they can think of.”
I answered before I’d consciously decided to, my voice shifting into the focused, precise register I’d used in the NICU. “How old is the baby? Male or female? Any other symptoms—vomiting, diarrhea, fever?”
