Her gaze whipped wildly between the five children huddled under the canvas wagon flap. Fourteen-year-old Thomas stood rigid, clutching an iron wrench. Ten-year-old Lucas held eight-year-old Clara close, while four-year-old Noah buried his face in his sister’s coat. And in Amelia’s own trembling arms, two-year-old Lily stared with enormous, tear-filled eyes.

“Seven years ago…” Amelia’s voice broke into a jagged sob. She touched her abdomen, remembered the high fever, the dark hospital room, and the cold metal instruments. “They told me the sickness ruined my womb. They told me I woke up empty!”

“They gave you laudanum until your mind fractured, girl!” Dr. Edward Hawthorne sneered from his saddle, leveling his Winchester rifle straight at Benjamin’s chest. “Your wealthy adoptive parents couldn’t bear the scandal of an unwed daughter carrying a bastard. They paid me four hundred dollars in gold to drug you, declare you barren, and take the newborn boy away before you even heard him cry!”

Benjamin took a thunderous step into the road, the snow crunching beneath his heavy boots. Standing nearly seven feet tall, he cast a shadow that eclipsed Hawthorne’s horse.

“You’re a ᴅᴇᴀᴅ man, Hawthorne,” Benjamin growled, his deep baritone vibrating with lethal fury. “You bring your pack of wolves onto Blackwood land and spread poison about my family?!”

“It’s not poison, Giant—it’s simple arithmetic!” Hawthorne laughed, a dry, mocking rattle. “Your late wife, Sarah, lost her own newborn boy to a lung chill that exact same winter! She was hysterical, half-mad with grief in that Helena clinic. When I brought her Amelia’s newborn, Sarah begged me on her knees to let her keep him! She swore she would raise her twin sister’s flesh and blood as her own so the child would never end up in an orphanage!”

Amelia felt the ground tilt beneath her boots.

Seven years ago.

Not Thomas. Thomas was fourteen.

Not Lily. Lily was two.

Her tear-soaked eyes locked onto the boy sitting between the flour sacks in the wagon bed.

Seven years old. With untamed chestnut curls, striking hazel eyes, and a small crescent-shaped birthmark just below his left collarbone.

The exact same mark Amelia had carried her entire life.

“Oliver…” Amelia whispered, the name tearing from her throat in a ragged gasp.

Seven-year-old Oliver looked up from beneath his wool blanket, his lips trembling as he touched the collar of his worn shirt. “Mama Sarah always told me my eyes came from an angel in the east…”

“Get behind the timber, Oliver!” Benjamin roared, his mᴀssive hand sweeping back to push the wagon gate shut. He turned his glacial glare back to Hawthorne. “If Sarah took the boy to protect him, why hunt him now, you butcher?!”

“Because Amelia’s adoptive father died three weeks ago in Chicago!” Hawthorne spat, his eyes gleaming with filthy avarice. “He left a two-million-dollar timber syndicate behind! In his deathbed confession, he admitted the fraud, named Amelia’s firstborn son as the sole legal beneficiary, and disinherited the rest of the board! The syndicate hired me to retrieve the boy’s death certificate… or bring back his corpse!”

Hawthorne cocked the hammer of his Winchester with a sharp, heavy CLACK.

“Hand the boy down, Blackwood! We put a bullet through him, we claim the syndicate’s finder fee, and you can keep your barren bride!”

“Over my rotting bones,” Benjamin roared.

With terrifying mountain speed, Benjamin didn’t reach for a pistol—he seized the heavy iron hitch-bar from the wagon side and hurled it like a spear.

The iron bar struck Hawthorne’s lead gunman square in the chest, knocking him clean out of his stirrups into the freezing slush.

Hawthorne fired wildly, the rifle bullet grazing Benjamin’s mᴀssive shoulder, tearing through his sheepskin coat and painting the snow crimson.

Benjamin didn’t even flinch. Like a raging grizzly, the giant lunged across the road, ripped Hawthorne straight out of the saddle with one hand, and slammed the corrupt doctor into the frozen trunk of a pine tree, splintering the bark.

The third rider panicked, wheeling his horse around and galloping into the blizzard toward town.

“Who else knows the boy is here?!” Benjamin snarled, his fingers closing like an iron vice around Hawthorne’s windpipe, lifting the doctor two feet off the ground. “SPEAK!”

Hawthorne choked, blood dribbling from the corner of his lips, but a hideous, victorious grin spread across his face.

“The… syndicate… didn’t just send me…” Hawthorne wheezed through crushed teeth.

Suddenly, a blinding wall of orange flame erupted on the high ridge directly above the wagon trail.

The thunderous crack of dynamite shook the mountain.

Snow and shale came cascading down the slope, burying the trail behind them and cutting off their only retreat back to the valley.

Emerging from the smoke atop the ridge stood a woman in an extravagant black riding coat, holding a burning torch in one leather-gloved hand and a repeating rifle in the other.

The wind blew her veil back.

Amelia screamed.

Benjamin dropped Hawthorne into the snow, his knees nearly buckling as his world collapsed into absolute horror.

The woman on the ridge had Amelia’s exact face.

The same jawline.

The same dark curls.

Sarah.

The wife Benjamin had buried two years ago in an icy grave beneath the mountain pines.

Sarah looked down at Benjamin and Amelia with a cruel, mocking smile, her voice carrying through the freezing wind like shattered glᴀss: