Page 11 of Wild Then Wed
I clear my throat. “That’s been confirmed?”
She nods. “I was at the town hall meeting last night. Everyone’s losing their shit. Honestly, it’s a mess. They’re talking about exemptions for widows and generational ranches, but nothing’s clear.”
“Right.” I nod once, trying to keep my face neutral. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Of course.” She smiles. “This guy would probably live without water if it meant he could keep getting treats from you.”
The dog looks up like he agrees.
I rub behind his ears and force a smile. “He’s got his priorities straight.”
She heads toward the exam room with Jenna, still chatting casually, and I just stand there for a second, staring at the spot where the dog had been sitting like I forgot what I was doing.
Technically, we’re fine. The Hart ranch checks the boxes. Whatever legal gymnastics the county needs, we can do it. But that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear. Not even close. This isn’t just about us. This is about everyone else.
If any big operations like the Wilding Ranch lose their water access—and from what I just heard, that’s not hypothetical—it sets off a chain reaction no one’s ready for.
The Wildings have one of the largest spreads in Summit Springs. Their cattle program alone sustains half the auction buyers we rely on. If they go under, the auctions shrink. Prices drop. Feed distributors cut routes. Hay suppliers raise costs because the volume’s no longer there to make it worth the haul.
There’s the farrier who depends on their horses. The mechanic who fixes their trailers. The guy who delivers diesel for their rigs.
And then there’s me—my clinic. Half my clients come from the outskirts of Summit Springs. You gut the ranches, you gut their livestock, you gut their budgets—and then I’m watching my schedule thin out, too.
You cut water off at one source, and eventually, we all feel the drought.
That’s the part nobody wants to admit. Everyone in this town thinks they’re running their own operation—but it’s a damn web. Pull one thread, the whole thing starts to unravel. And lately, it feels like all we’ve been doing is watching threads snap, one by one.
We just lost our best horse trainer last month, out of the blue. Took a better job down in Colorado training performance stock for some high-dollar breeder. Left us with half-finished colts and a gap in the auction lineup that’s going to be hard as hell to fill.
My younger brother, Crew, has been running himself into the ground trying to stay ahead of it all while being a single father. My dad’s pretending he can still keep up like he’s twenty-five. And my mom—she smiles through everything, but I can tell she’s barely holding it all together.
This water bullshit is one more thing we didn’t ask for and sure as hell can’t afford.
I feel my jaw lock. My shoulders tighten. I don’t have the mental bandwidth for this today. I’ve got a clinic to run. Dogs to treat. Surgeries to prep. Stitches to pull. Appointments stacked until closing. This is the part of my life that makes sense—the part that listens when I do everything right. So I hold onto it.
I shove the rest down—where all the other things I don’t want to deal with live—and push the exam room door open.
Back to work.
Chapter 3
WREN
Some people find peace in yoga or long walks or overpriced therapy. I find mine in the corner of an indoor round pen with a half-wild horse who’s still deciding if she trusts me or not.
Juniper’s come a long way in eight weeks.
When she first arrived, she wouldn’t let anyone touch her. Wouldn’t come close. She kicked at walls and reared in the trailer and tried to chew through the lead rope more than once. She’s the type of horse most people write off as too damaged to be worth the trouble.
But the trouble’s always where the good stuff lives, if you’re willing to sit in it long enough.
She’s a red roan, small but built solid, with a deep chest and legs that could outrun anything if she ever decided to trust them again. The scars around her flanks tell me more than her paperwork ever could. Somebody pushed her too hard, too fast.
This morning, I’ve got her in the smaller pen out back. No saddle. No halter. Just body language and breath and the rhythm we’ve been working on since day one. I keep my stance relaxed, my eyes soft, my movements predictable. She watches every shift I make. Her ear flicks toward me every time I take a step.
We’ve been at this for fifteen minutes, and she hasn’t spooked once.
What we’re doing is called round pen work. Some people call it join-up. It’s the foundation for everything else I’ll eventually ask her to do. The whole point is to teach her that I’m not a threat—that I’m listening as much as I’m asking. That I won’t push too hard. That if she follows, it’ll be by choice, not force.
