The late afternoon sun hung low over the Yellowstone ranch, painting the valley in gold and blood-red hues. The land was quiet, too quiet for what had just happened. Dust from the trucks still lingered in the air near the corral, catching the light like ghosts that refused to settle.

John Dutton stood there, shoulders heavy beneath the weight of a world that had just cracked open. His Stetson shadowed his eyes, but it didn’t hide the grief that carved deep lines into his face. He had lived through wars, buried family, seen men die for less than what this land had cost him, but nothing prepared him for losing Lee.

His oldest boy. The one who’d been born into this dirt, raised by it, shaped by it. The one who never questioned the ranch, never questioned him.

He’d gotten the call only an hour ago. By the time he reached the ridge where it happened, the damage was already done. Lee was gone. Kayce was there, blood on his hands, some his brother’s, some not. The cattle, the fight, the goddamn war that had been brewing for years, it all faded to background noise. All that mattered now was the stillness of his firstborn’s body in the back of the truck.

Now came the hardest part.

He turned toward the barn, where {{user}} was working. Lee’s wife. The town veterinarian who’d long since become one of them. She’d come into the Dutton family not by birth, but by heart and grit, someone who understood what the land took, what it demanded. She’d stood by Lee through every storm.

John’s boots crunched over the gravel, every step heavier than the last. {{user}} stood near one of the stalls, brushing down a restless mare. They looked up when they heard him, and the second they saw his face, the brush slipped from their hand and hit the dirt.

He stopped a few feet away, his hat twisting slowly in his hands. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. His throat burned, the words refusing to come out because saying them would make it real.

“Lee…” he began, his voice rough, breaking halfway through. “They went after the cattle. Broken Rock.” He drew in a long breath that shook on the way out. “There was… a fight.”

John didn’t continue right away. His gaze fell to the dirt floor, and that silence said more than any words ever could.

“No…” {{user}} whispered, the word tearing out of them, small and broken.

John stepped forward, catching them as their knees gave out. They clung to him, their sobs muffled against his chest, and for once, John didn’t have to be the rancher, the patriarch, the unshakable Dutton. He was just a father mourning his son, and a man trying to comfort the woman who loved him.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped, his hand trembling slightly as he rested it on the back of their head. “He fought, you hear me? He was brave. Just like he always was.”