4. Noa
Noa
Iwoke to the smell of coffee and the sound of someone moving around a kitchen.
For a moment, I didn't know where I was.
The ceiling above me was rough-hewn wood, not the water-stained plaster of my rental cabin.
The blankets wrapped around me smelled like pine and woodsmoke and something else, something warmer, something that made my omega instincts stir in ways I'd spent a decade learning to ignore.
Then everything came flooding back. The storm. The creek. The endless, agonizing walk through the snow. Collapsing on a stranger's porch and waking up hours later to find a man with wire-rimmed glasses watching me like I was a particularly interesting specimen.
Shepherd. His name was Shepherd. And there were two others. Calder, who had apparently stripped off my frozen clothes, and Bo, who I still hadn't met.
Three alphas. I was trapped in a cabin with three alphas, and my suppressants were at the bottom of a frozen creek.
I sat up slowly, cataloguing the damage.
My ankle throbbed with a deep, insistent ache that flared into sharp pain when I tried to flex my foot.
My muscles were sore in ways that suggested I'd pushed them well past their limits.
My throat was raw, my sinuses burned, and there was a headache building behind my eyes that promised to get worse before it got better.
But I was alive. And warm. And not, as far as I could tell, in immediate danger.
Small victories.
The book Shepherd had given me was still in my lap, open to a chapter on black bear denning behavior.
I must have fallen asleep reading it. The fire had burned down to glowing embers, but the cabin was still warm, heat radiating from the stones of the hearth.
Gray light filtered through the windows, the kind of flat, shadowless illumination that meant heavy cloud cover. The storm, then. Still going.
I closed the book and set it aside, then began the slow process of extracting myself from the blanket nest. The borrowed shirt I was wearing hung past my thighs, the sleeves rolled up to free my hands.
It smelled like cedar and something earthier, something that made my hindbrain want to bury my face in the fabric and breathe deep.
I did not do that. I was not an animal. I was a grown woman with a decade of suppressant use and a lifetime of practice at ignoring biological impulses that had no place in my carefully controlled life.
The walking stick was where I'd left it, propped against the chair.
I grabbed it and hauled myself upright, gritting my teeth against the protest from my ankle.
Standing was harder than it had been last night.
The joint had stiffened overnight, swelling pressing against the bandage someone had wrapped around it.
Every heartbeat sent a pulse of pain up my leg.
I stood there for a moment, swaying slightly, and considered my options.
Option one: stay in the blanket nest by the fire like an invalid, waiting for the alphas to bring me food and water and whatever else they decided I needed. Let them take care of me. Let them see me weak and dependent and helpless.
Option two: get up, get moving, and prove that I didn't need anyone's help. Even if it hurt. Even if it was stupid. Even if every step felt like walking on broken glass.
I chose option two. I always chose option two.
The kitchen was through an archway at the far end of the main room.
I made my way toward it slowly, using the walking stick and various pieces of furniture for support.
The cabin was larger than I'd realized in the dark, with high ceilings and windows that would have let in plenty of light if there'd been any light to let in.
Books were everywhere, stacked on tables and shelves and the floor, some of them with bookmarks bristling from their pages.
The furniture was mismatched but solid, the kind of handmade stuff that came from someone with more skill than money.
I was halfway across the room when I heard voices from the kitchen. Low, male, and speaking in the kind of half-sentences that suggested a long familiarity.
“...needs to eat something. She's been out for hours.”
“She needs to wake up first. Can't force-feed an unconscious woman.”
“She's not unconscious anymore. Heard her moving.”
I stopped. Three distinct voices. So all of them were up, then. All of them waiting for me.
I thought about retreating back to the blankets. Pretending I was still asleep. Avoiding this conversation for as long as possible.
Instead, I squared my shoulders, tightened my grip on the walking stick, and limped into the kitchen.
They all turned to look at me at once.
Shepherd I recognized, sitting at a wooden table with a mug of something steaming in front of him.
His glasses caught the light from the window, making his eyes hard to read.
He was dressed in layers, a cable-knit sweater over a collared shirt, and there was a book open beside his mug. Of course there was.
The man at the stove had to be Calder. Big, broad-shouldered and solid, with dark hair that fell into his eyes and hands that looked like they could crush stone.
He was holding a spatula and watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
Something wary but not hostile. Something almost like hope, quickly suppressed.
And the third one, leaning against the counter by the window with his arms crossed and his amber eyes fixed on me with an intensity that made my skin prickle...
That had to be Bo.
He was different from the other two. Rougher around the edges, with silver-streaked hair tied back from his face and a jaw that looked like it hadn't seen a razor in weeks.
There was something almost feral about him, something in the way he held himself that reminded me of the predators I spent my days tracking.
He didn't say anything. Just watched me with those unnerving eyes, nostrils flaring slightly like he was scenting the air.
“You shouldn't be up.” Calder was the first to speak, his voice a low rumble that seemed to resonate in my chest. “Your ankle needs rest.”
“My ankle can rest when I'm dead.” I made my way to the table and lowered myself into a chair, trying not to wince at the way my body protested every movement. “Right now, I need coffee and information. In that order.”
A mug appeared in front of me. Calder had moved from the stove to the table without me noticing, which was impressive for someone his size. The coffee was black and strong, steam curling up from the surface.
“Cream or sugar?”
“Black is fine.” I wrapped my hands around the mug and let the heat seep into my fingers. “Thank you.”
He nodded once and returned to the stove, where something that smelled like eggs and bacon was sizzling in a cast-iron pan. My stomach growled, loud enough that everyone in the room definitely heard it. I ignored their reactions and took a long sip of coffee.
“Information,” Shepherd said, picking up where I'd left off. “What do you want to know?”
“Start with the storm. How long is it going to last?”
“At least another day, possibly two. The system is larger than initially forecast. We're looking at significant accumulation before it passes.”
“And the roads?”
“Impassable. Will be for a week or more, even after the snow stops. We're too far up the mountain for the county plows to reach, and the access road drifts badly in weather like this.”
I'd expected that, but hearing it confirmed still felt like a blow. A week. At minimum. Stuck here with no phone, no radio, no way to contact anyone. No suppressants.
“My ankle,” I said, pushing that last thought aside for later. “How bad is it?”
“Significant sprain.” Shepherd's voice was clinical, detached. “Possibly a minor fracture, though we won't know for certain without imaging. You should stay off it as much as possible for at least the next few days. Ice, elevation, compression. The basics.”
“I know the basics.” I'd done wilderness first aid training. I knew exactly how to treat a sprained ankle, and I knew exactly how much it was going to suck. “Is there anything else I should know? Any other injuries I managed to collect on my little adventure?”
“Some bruising on your ribs, probably from when you fell.
Nothing broken, but they'll be sore for a while. Minor abrasions on your hands and knees. Early-stage frostbite on your fingers and toes, though we caught it before any permanent damage.” Shepherd rattled off the list like he was reading from a chart.
“Overall, you're remarkably intact for someone who nearly died of hypothermia.”
“I'm a remarkably intact person.”
Bo made a sound from his position by the window. It might have been a laugh. It might have been a growl. With him, it was hard to tell.
“You should eat.” Calder set a plate in front of me. Eggs, scrambled. Bacon, crispy. Toast with butter melting into the bread. My stomach growled again, and this time I didn't bother pretending I wasn't hungry.
“Thank you.” I picked up the fork and started eating. The food was good, simple and well-cooked, and I had to consciously slow myself down to avoid inhaling it like an animal. When had I last eaten? Yesterday morning, before I'd left for the field. Almost twenty-four hours ago.
The three alphas watched me eat. It should have been uncomfortable, being the focus of that much attention, but I was too hungry to care. I finished everything on the plate and resisted the urge to lick the remnants from the ceramic.
“More?” Calder asked.
“I'm fine.” I pushed the plate away and picked up my coffee again. “So. What happens now?”
They exchanged glances. The kind of wordless communication that came from long familiarity, a language of micro-expressions and subtle shifts that I couldn't read.