4. Noa #2
“Now you rest,” Shepherd said eventually. “You let your body heal. You wait for the storm to pass and the roads to clear. And when you're well enough to travel, we help you get back to town.”
It sounded reasonable. It sounded simple. It sounded like exactly the kind of plan that was going to drive me absolutely insane.
“I can't just sit here for a week doing nothing.”
“You can barely walk.” That was Bo, speaking for the first time. His voice was rougher than I'd expected, like gravel over stone. “Saw you coming in. Using furniture to stay upright. Ankle's not gonna let you do anything else.”
“I've worked through worse.”
“Have you?” He pushed off from the counter and took a step toward me, and I felt my whole body tense in response. He stopped, noting my reaction, and something flickered in those amber eyes. “Wasn't a challenge. Just a question.”
“Then no, I haven't worked through worse.” I forced myself to relax, to unclench my jaw and lower my shoulders. He wasn't threatening me. None of them were. I needed to stop acting like a cornered animal. “This is pretty much the worst situation I've ever been in. Happy?”
“Not particularly.”
We stared at each other for a long moment. I couldn't read him at all. Couldn't tell if he was hostile or curious or something else entirely. He moved like a predator, all controlled power and coiled energy, but he hadn't done anything threatening. Hadn't even raised his voice.
“Bo.” Calder's voice was low, a warning wrapped in a name.
Bo held my gaze for another second, then stepped back and returned to his position by the window. “Just making sure she knows where things stand.”
“And where do things stand?” I asked, because apparently I had no survival instinct whatsoever.
“You're stuck here.” He said it flatly, without inflection. “We're stuck with you. Nobody's happy about it, but that's how it is. So we deal with it.”
“Bo.” Shepherd this time, his tone sharper.
“What? You want me to lie? Tell her we're thrilled to have an unexpected houseguest who's going to need feeding and tending and watching for the next however many days?” Bo shook his head. “She doesn't want pretty words. Can smell it on her. She wants truth.”
He wasn't wrong. I did want truth. I just hadn't expected to get it quite so bluntly.
“He's right,” I said, and all three of them looked at me with various degrees of surprise.
“I don't want pretty words. I want to know exactly what I'm dealing with.
Three alphas I've never met, a cabin I can't leave, and a body that won't cooperate.
That's the situation. Sugar-coating it doesn't help anyone.”
Calder set down the spatula he'd been holding and turned to face me fully. “What do you need from us?”
The question caught me off guard. Not what do you want, which would have been easy to deflect. Not how can we help, which would have implied that I needed helping. But what do you need, direct and practical and surprisingly considerate.
“Space,” I said after a moment. “I need space. I'm not good with people hovering over me, and I'm even worse at being helpless. If I need help, I'll ask for it. Otherwise, I'd appreciate being left alone.”
“That can be arranged.” Calder nodded once, like we'd just concluded a business negotiation. “Anything else?”
“My clothes. The ones I was wearing when I got here. Are they salvageable?”
“Shepherd hung them by the fire. They should be dry by now, though they took some damage from the cold and the water. Your boots might be wearable. Your jacket's in rough shape.”
“Better than nothing.” I looked down at the borrowed shirt I was wearing, at the sleeves that hung past my fingertips and the hem that reached mid-thigh. “No offense, but I'd rather not spend the next week dressed like I'm wearing a tent.”
Something that might have been amusement flickered across Calder's face. “We might have something that fits better. Shepherd's closest to your size.”
“I have some things that might work,” Shepherd agreed. “I'll see what I can find.”
“Thank you.” I finished my coffee and set the mug down. “And thank you for... everything else. The rescue. The warming up. The not letting me die on your porch. I know I haven't exactly been gracious about it, but I am grateful.”
The words felt strange in my mouth. I wasn't used to thanking people. Wasn't used to being in a position where gratitude was required. But it was true, and they deserved to hear it.
“You don't have to be gracious.” Calder's voice was quiet, almost gentle. “You just have to heal.”
I didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know how to respond to simple kindness when I'd spent so long expecting complications and conditions. So I just nodded and looked away, focusing on the window and the endless white beyond.
The storm showed no signs of stopping. The world outside was a blur of snow and wind, visibility reduced to maybe twenty feet. Even if my ankle had been fine, even if I'd had all my gear, there was no going anywhere in that.
I was stuck. Truly, completely stuck.
“I should check the generator.” Calder grabbed a heavy coat from a hook by the door. “We're burning through fuel faster than I'd like. Bo, you want to help me with the wood?”
Bo grunted, which I took as an affirmative, and the two of them disappeared into the storm, leaving me alone with Shepherd.
The cabin felt different without them. Quieter, somehow, despite the fact that neither of them had been particularly loud. I became aware of the crackle of the fire in the other room, the tick of a clock somewhere in the house, the sound of my own breathing.
“More coffee?” Shepherd asked.
“Please.”
He refilled my mug and then his own, settling back into his chair with the kind of deliberate grace that suggested he spent a lot of time being still. There was something almost meditative about the way he moved, each gesture precise and economical.
“You have questions,” he said. Not a question itself, just an observation.
“Lots of them.”
“Ask.”
I considered where to start. There was so much I didn't know, so much context I was missing. But one question felt more pressing than the others.
“How long have the three of you been living here?”
“Together? About four years. Calder built this place seven years ago, after he left the fire service. Bo was here from the beginning, or close to it. I came later.”
“And you just... live here? The three of you? No jobs, no ties to town, nothing?”
“Calder runs the homestead. It's more or less self-sufficient, though we do go into town occasionally for supplies we can't produce ourselves. Bo works as a guide and trapper when he feels like it. I write sometimes. Academic papers, mostly. Nothing that requires regular presence anywhere.”
“That sounds...”
“Lonely?” He smiled slightly. “It's not. Or at least, not in the way you might think. We each came here for our own reasons, and those reasons had a lot to do with needing to be away from people. But we've found something here that works. A kind of pack, even if none of us uses that word.”
Pack. The word hung in the air between us, weighted with implications neither of us was addressing directly.
“Wes told me three alphas,” I said carefully. “He didn't mention anything about a pack.”
“Because we're not. Not formally. Just three alphas who share space and look out for each other.” Shepherd took a sip of his coffee. “The distinction matters to some people.”
“Does it matter to you?”
He was quiet for a moment, considering the question.
“It used to. I came here specifically because I didn't want to be part of anything. No bonds, no obligations, no connections that could hurt when they inevitably ended. But now...” He shrugged.
“Now I'm less certain. Four years of living with Calder and Bo has made me question whether connection is really the threat I thought it was.”
It was more honesty than I'd expected. More vulnerability than most alphas would show to a stranger. I didn't know what to do with it, so I filed it away for later consideration.
“Can I ask why you came here? Originally?”
His expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes shifted. Closed off, just slightly.
“You can ask. I might even answer, someday. But not today.” He stood and collected the empty plates from the table. “You should rest. I know you don't want to, but your body needs time to recover. There's a bedroom down the hall you can use, or you can stay by the fire. Your choice.”
The dismissal was gentle but clear. I'd pushed as far as he was willing to go, at least for now.
“The fire,” I said. “I'm not ready to be that far from the heat yet.”
He nodded and disappeared with the dishes, leaving me alone with my thoughts and my coffee and the steady howl of the wind outside.
I sat there for a long time, watching the snow fall and trying not to think about everything that could go wrong. My ankle would heal, or it wouldn't. The storm would pass, or it wouldn't. My suppressants would...
I cut off that line of thinking before it could spiral.
There was nothing I could do about the suppressants.
Nothing except wait and see how my body responded to being off them for the first time in a decade.
Maybe I'd get lucky. Maybe my cycle would stay suppressed through sheer force of will.
Maybe the stress and trauma of the last twenty-four hours would delay things long enough for me to get back to town.
And maybe pigs would fly and the storm would magically clear and a helicopter would appear to whisk me away to safety.
I wasn't counting on any of it.
Eventually, I made my slow way back to the blanket nest by the fire.
Shepherd had left a pile of clothes on the chair, things that looked like they might actually fit me.
A pair of worn jeans, a thermal shirt, a sweater that was only slightly too big.
I changed carefully, trying not to jostle my ankle too much, and felt marginally more human once I was dressed in something that made me feel marginally less vulnerable.
The book on Appalachian ecology was still where I'd left it. I picked it up and settled into the blankets, propping my ankle on a pillow the way I was supposed to.
The chapter on black bear behavior was actually interesting.
Whoever had written it knew their subject, and the section on denning patterns matched what I'd observed in my own research.
F-23 and her cubs had probably been holed up for days already, tucked away in whatever den site she'd chosen, sleeping through the storm without a care in the world.
Smart girl.
I read until my eyes got heavy, until the words started to blur on the page. Then I set the book aside and stared at the fire and let myself drift.
Tomorrow, I'd figure out what came next. Tomorrow, I'd make a plan. Tomorrow, I'd deal with the reality of being stuck here with three alphas and a body that was going to betray me sooner or later.
But today, I was warm and fed and alive.
That would have to be enough.