2. Calder
Calder
The storm had been building all morning.
I'd felt it in my bones before the first flake fell, that particular pressure in the air that meant trouble coming.
Seven years in these mountains had taught me to read weather the way I used to read fire behavior, and everything about this system said it was going to be bad.
The kind of bad that buried roads and brought down power lines and trapped people who weren't prepared.
We were prepared. We were always prepared. That was the whole point of living up here, away from everyone and everything. When the world went sideways, we had food and fuel and shelter. We had each other. We didn't need anything else.
I was adding another log to the fire when I heard it.
A sound that didn't belong to the storm.
Something hitting the porch steps. Something that sounded almost like footsteps, except that was impossible.
Nobody came up here in good weather, let alone in a blizzard that had already dumped two feet of snow and showed no signs of stopping.
Bo's head came up from where he'd been dozing near the window, his nostrils flaring. Shepherd looked up from his book, glasses catching the firelight.
“Someone's out there,” Bo said. His voice was rough from disuse. He'd been quiet all day, restless in that way he got when the weather kept him inside too long.
I was already moving toward the door. My body reacted before my brain caught up, the same way it always did in a crisis. Eight years as a smokejumper had wired me that way. Assess the situation. Take action. Think about it later.
I pulled the door open and felt the storm try to shove its way inside, snow and wind and bitter cold all fighting for entry. But that wasn't what made me freeze.
There was a woman on my porch.
She was standing, barely, swaying like a tree about to fall.
Her clothes were soaked and crusted with ice.
Her skin had gone a grayish-blue that I recognized immediately, that I'd seen before on bodies pulled from frozen lakes and snowbound vehicles.
She was trying to speak, her mouth forming words I couldn't hear over the howling wind.
Then she collapsed.
I caught her before she hit the boards. My arms closed around her and I lifted her without thinking, pulling her against my chest and backing into the cabin so Shepherd could slam the door against the storm.
She weighed nothing. Less than nothing. A bundle of wet clothes and cold skin and shallow breathing.
“Get the blankets,” I said. My voice came out steady, the way it always did when things went wrong. Calm in a crisis. That was what I was good at. That was all I was good at anymore. “More wood on the fire. She's hypothermic and injured, and we need to move fast.”
Shepherd was already moving, pulling blankets from the chest by the wall while Bo fed logs into the fireplace until flames roared high enough to throw heat across the room.
We'd done this dance before, the three of us.
Not with a stranger, not with a half-frozen woman who'd appeared out of nowhere, but we knew how to work together. We knew how to keep someone alive.
I carried her to the rug in front of the fire and knelt, laying her down as gently as I could manage.
Up close, I could see her better. Her skin turned that deadly shade of gray with cold.
Short curls plastered to her head with melting snow.
Beautiful despite the ice crusting her face.
She was small but athletic, built like someone who spent time outdoors.
And her scent, what I could catch of it under the overwhelming smell of cold and fear and approaching death, was something wild and sweet. Rain on stone. Honeysuckle.
Omega. She was an omega.
Something twisted in my chest, something I'd spent seven years trying to bury. I shoved it down and focused on what mattered. She was dying. Everything else could wait.
“Her clothes need to come off.” Shepherd crouched beside me, his voice clinical in that way he got when he was processing information instead of feeling it. “Wet fabric will keep leeching heat from her core. We need to get her dry and warm as fast as possible.”
I knew that. I'd done cold water rescues, had pulled people from frozen rivers and icy lakes. I knew the protocols. But knowing and doing were different things when the person in front of you was a woman you'd never met, unconscious and vulnerable and completely at your mercy.
“I'll do it.” The words came out rougher than I intended. “Bo, get water bottles warming. Not hot. Just warm. Shepherd, keep the blankets ready.”
They moved without arguing. That was one of the things that worked about us, the three of us living in this cabin on the edge of nowhere. When it mattered, we didn't waste time with debate. We just acted.
I started with her boots, working the frozen laces loose with fingers that wanted to shake but didn't. The leather was stiff with ice, and when I finally got them off, water poured out onto the rug. Her socks were soaked through. I peeled them away and felt my jaw tighten at the sight of
Her pants came next. I tried not to think about what I was doing, tried to keep it clinical the way Shepherd would.
She was a patient. A victim of the storm.
Nothing more than a body that needed warming.
But even as I told myself that, I couldn't help noticing.
The curve of her hip. The lean muscle of her thighs.
The way her skin looked in the firelight, even pale and cold as it was.
I shut those thoughts down hard. She was dying.
This wasn't the time. But my hands were gentle anyway, more careful than they needed to be, and when I eased the wet fabric down her legs, I made sure the blanket was ready to cover her immediately, to give her the dignity of not having strangers staring at her while she was vulnerable.
Her jacket and shirts were worse. The fabric had frozen to her skin in places, and I had to work it free inch by inch to avoid tearing flesh.
She moaned when I moved her arm, a small sound of protest that went straight through me.
Not just concern. Something else. Something I had no business feeling for a woman I'd never met, a woman who was unconscious and vulnerable and trusting me to save her life. I kept my eyes on my work and tried to ignore the way my hands wanted to linger. She didn’t need some creepy alpha with raging hormones, she needed someone she could trust and there were no lengths I wouldn’t go to to make sure I was that man for her.
“Easy,” I murmured, not sure if she could hear me. “I've got you. You're safe now.”
Bo appeared at my elbow with the first of the warm water bottles, wrapped in cloth so they wouldn't burn her fragile skin.
I took them and tucked them against her core, her armpits, the places where warm blood flowed close to the surface.
Her body was so cold that the bottles felt hot by comparison, and I watched her face for any sign of distress.
“Her ankle's swelling,” Shepherd observed. He'd taken up position at her feet, examining the damage with careful hands. “Sprain, probably. Maybe a minor fracture. We won't know until she wakes up.”
If she woke up. The words hung unspoken in the air between us.
I got the last of her wet clothes off and wrapped her in dry blankets, layering them the way you were supposed to, trapping pockets of air that her body heat would eventually warm.
Except she didn't have much body heat left.
Her skin was cold to the touch everywhere, and her breathing was too slow, too shallow.
“She's not shivering,” Bo said quietly. He'd moved closer, crouching on her other side with an intensity in his amber eyes that I recognized. He was reading her the way he read the forest, processing information through senses the rest of us didn't fully understand. “That's bad.”
“I know.” Shivering was the body's way of generating heat. When it stopped, it meant the body had given up trying. It meant you were running out of time.
“Her scent is wrong too,” Bo continued, his brow furrowed. “Under the cold, under the fear. Something missing. Something that should be there and isn't.”
I didn't know what he meant by that, and I didn't have time to ask. The omega, whoever she was, needed more heat than blankets and water bottles could provide. I made a decision without letting myself think about it too hard.
“I'm getting in with her.”
Shepherd's eyebrows rose above his glasses. “Calder...”
“Body heat. It's the fastest way to warm someone with severe hypothermia. You know that.” I was already stripping off my flannel, my thermal shirt beneath. “Bo, you too. We need to get her core temperature up before her heart gives out.”
For a moment, nobody moved. I understood the hesitation. We'd spent four years sharing this cabin, sharing space. But this was different. This was a stranger, an omega, unconscious and unable to consent to three alphas pressing their bodies against hers.
But the alternative was letting her die.
Bo moved first. He stripped off his shirt and slid under the blankets on her other side, his body curving around hers with a gentleness that contradicted every rough edge of his appearance.
I followed, positioning myself against her back, trying to share as much warmth as possible without putting pressure on her injured ankle.
She was so cold. Even through the blankets, even with our bodies pressed against hers, I could feel the chill radiating from her skin.
It was like holding a block of ice shaped like a woman.
My arms went around her automatically, pulling her closer, and I felt Bo's hand brush mine as he did the same from the other side.
“I'll keep the fire going,” Shepherd said. His voice was strange, tight in a way I couldn't quite read. “And monitor her breathing. If it gets any slower...”