Sheltered By My Alpha Strangers (Hollow Haven #5)

1. Noa

Noa

The bear had denned up early.

The last capture was from six days ago. The timestamp showed her moving with purpose toward the ridge where I'd identified a potential den site last month, both cubs close at her heels.

After that, nothing. No movement on the trail.

No late-night visits to the seasonal creek where she liked to fish.

She'd gone to ground early, tucking herself and her babies away from whatever her instincts told her was coming.

Smart girl. She knew something was coming.

I should have paid more attention to what the bear was telling me.

The morning had started clear enough. Cold, but clear, the kind of crisp autumn day that made me remember why I'd moved to these mountains in the first place.

I'd left my rental cabin before dawn, driven my battered pickup to the usual trailhead, and started hiking while the stars were still fading from the sky.

Three camera stations to check in this sector before I could head back.

Routine work. The kind of solitary, methodical labor that suited me perfectly.

Out here, there was no one to answer to.

No family calling to ask when I was coming home for the holidays.

No concerned friends wondering why I never accepted dinner invitations.

No alphas looking at me like I was a puzzle to be solved or a problem to be fixed.

Just me and the forest and the animals who didn't care that I was an omega who didn't act like one.

I pulled the SD card from the camera and tucked it into the waterproof case with the others.

Three weeks of data, hundreds of images to sort through.

Most would be nothing useful. Deer triggering the motion sensor at odd hours.

Raccoons investigating the camera housing.

The occasional turkey or coyote passing through.

But somewhere in those files might be the evidence I needed to confirm F-23's denning location, and that data would help the researchers understand how black bear populations were using this particular corridor of habitat.

Small work, maybe. But it mattered. At least to me.

I checked my GPS, marked the coordinates in my field notebook, and shouldered my pack.

Two more stations to hit before I could head back to the truck.

If I kept a steady pace, I'd be at the trailhead by early afternoon with plenty of time to get back to town before dark.

The forecast had mentioned snow moving in overnight, but the mountains always got snow this time of year.

Nothing I hadn't worked through a dozen times before.

The first flakes started falling as I reached the second camera.

I noticed them without really registering the significance.

Fat, lazy flakes that melted on my jacket and caught in my eyelashes.

Pretty, if you didn't know what they meant.

I wiped moisture from my face and focused on the work, swapping batteries and SD cards with practiced efficiency.

This camera had captured something interesting.

A glimpse of tawny fur that might be a mountain lion, rare in this part of the range.

I'd need to review the footage more carefully when I got home.

Home. The word felt strange even in my own head.

The rental cabin in town wasn't really home.

It was just a place to sleep between trips into the field, a temporary perch I'd occupied for six months without ever bothering to hang pictures or unpack the boxes stacked in the corner of my bedroom.

Home was supposed to be something more than that.

A pack, a family, a place where people knew your name and your scent and the particular way you took your coffee.

I'd had that once. Or at least I'd had the possibility of it, dangled in front of me like a prize I was expected to spend my whole life earning.

My mother and her connections in the city had made sure of that, with their precise hierarchies and social obligations and constant suffocating attention to how an omega should behave.

Smile more, Noa. Be softer, Noa. Why must you always argue with everything?

I'd stopped smiling to spite them. Started arguing just to watch their faces pinch with disapproval. And when they'd started hinting about suitable alphas, about bonding arrangements that would benefit the family, I'd applied for the first field position I could find and left without looking back.

Six months in Hollow Haven now, and I'd managed to keep everyone at arm's length. Polite but distant. Professional but never personal. The wildlife officers knew my name and my work, and that was all I needed them to know.

The wind shifted as I sealed my pack, and I paused to look up at the sky.

The lazy flakes had thickened while I wasn't paying attention.

The clouds that had been a soft gray this morning had darkened to a bruised purple-black that sat heavy over the peaks.

The temperature had dropped too, enough that I could see my breath hanging in the air, and the wind had teeth now, biting through my layers.

My radio crackled before I could decide what to do about it.

“Noa, this is Wes. You copy?”

I thumbed the receiver, turning my back to the wind. “Copy. I'm at station seven, about to head to eight.”

“Negative on station eight.” His voice was tight in a way I'd never heard from the usually laid-back wildlife officer.

Wes Thatcher had been doing this job for nearly a decade, and I'd never known him to sound rattled.

“We've got a problem. That storm system accelerated overnight.

It's not hitting tomorrow, Noa. It's hitting now.”

I looked at the sky again. At the snow falling faster now, starting to accumulate on the rocks and branches around me. At the way the light was failing even though it was barely past noon.

“How bad?”

“Bad enough that I need you to stop arguing with me and listen.” Static burst through his words, but I caught enough to make my stomach clench. “...already getting whiteout conditions in the pass. You can't make it back to your truck. Not through this.”

“Wes, I know these trails. I can…”

“There's a homestead about two miles northeast of your position.” He talked over me like he hadn't heard, though I knew damn well he had.

“Three alphas, keep to themselves, but they're good people. Solid. You can shelter there until this blows through. You can’t miss it, it’s on the ridge.

You can pick up the four wheeler trail at the bottom of the ridge and it will take you straight to their door.

Head that direction now, and I'll try to radio ahead to let them know you're coming.”

Two miles northeast. Away from my truck, away from the trailhead, away from any route I'd scouted before. Toward strangers. Alphas I'd never met, in a place I'd never been.

Everything in me rebelled against the idea. This was madness. There was no possible way I was going to agree to this.

“I don't need…”

“Noa.” His voice cut through my protest like a blade. “I've been running search and rescue in these mountains for eight years. I've pulled bodies out of snowdrifts because people thought they could outrun weather like this. Don't be one of them. Get to that homestead. That's not a suggestion.”

The line dissolved into static before I could respond, and no amount of adjusting the frequency brought it back. I was alone with the falling snow and a decision I didn't want to make.

I stood there for a long moment, weighing options I knew weren't really options at all.

My truck was about three hours south in good conditions.

In this visibility, it might as well be on the moon.

The homestead was two miles northeast, uphill, through terrain I didn't know. But it was shelter. It was survival.

If I could even find it in the first place.

The wind gusted hard enough to stagger me, driving snow sideways against my face. When I blinked the ice from my lashes, I couldn't see the trees I'd been standing beside thirty seconds ago.

Northeast it was.

I pulled my compass from inside my jacket, where I kept it on a lanyard against my chest to prevent the cold from affecting the mechanism. The needle swung and steadied. I took a bearing, fixed my eye on a dark shape I hoped was a rock formation, and started walking.

The first mile went slow but steady. I kept my head down against the wind and focused on the rhythm of my boots crunching through accumulating snow.

One step, then another. Follow the compass.

Trust the terrain. The land sloped upward here, which matched what Wes had said about the homestead being on the ridge, and I let that small confirmation settle some of the anxiety knotting my chest.

I'd been in bad weather before. Not like this, maybe, but I wasn't soft.

I knew how to move through difficult conditions, how to conserve energy, how to keep my core temperature stable.

The key was to keep moving. Keep generating heat.

Don't stop, don't rest, don't let the cold settle into your bones.

The snow was knee-deep in places now, and the wind had sculpted it into drifts that I had to climb over or plow through. My thighs burned with the effort. My lungs ached from the cold air. But I kept moving, kept checking my compass, kept putting one foot in front of the other.

I smelled the creek before I saw it. That particular mineral scent of cold water over stones, barely detectable under the sharp bite of snow and wind. Then the land dipped, and I was looking down a short slope at a frozen waterway maybe fifteen feet across.

Wes hadn’t mentioned that this would be in my path, but I could see what I hoped to be the ridge like a shadowy presence looming up just ahead of it.