8. Shepherd
Shepherd
The ice storm hit on day eight.
We'd had a few days of relative calm after the initial blizzard.
Cold but clear, the kind of weather that let Bo and Calder make progress on digging out the property while Noa and I worked through the indoor tasks that had been piling up.
It wasn't comfortable, exactly, but we'd found a rhythm.
A way to coexist that didn't require too much from any of us.
Then the temperature rose just enough for the snow to turn to rain, and then dropped again, and everything went to hell.
I woke to the sound of cracking. Not the gentle pop of the fire or the creak of the cabin settling. This was louder, sharper, more violent. The sound of wood splintering under pressure.
I was out of bed and into the main room before I'd fully processed what I was hearing. Calder was already at the window, his face grim in the gray light of dawn.
“Trees,” he said without turning around. “The ice is bringing them down.”
I joined him at the glass and felt my stomach drop.
The world outside had been transformed into something crystalline and treacherous.
Every surface was coated in ice, a thick glaze that made the trees bow under their own weight.
As I watched, a branch the size of my arm snapped off a pine near the woodshed and crashed to the ground, shattering into a thousand glittering pieces.
“How bad?”
“Bad enough.” Calder's jaw was tight. “We need to check the outbuildings. Make sure nothing critical got damaged.”
“In this?”
“Don't have a choice.” He was already reaching for his coat. “Bo's probably already out there. Stay inside, keep the fire going, keep an eye on her.”
He was gone before I could respond, the door slamming shut behind him against a gust of wind that carried needles of frozen rain.
I stood at the window and watched him disappear into the ice-covered landscape, his figure growing smaller and more indistinct until the freezing rain swallowed him entirely.
Keep an eye on her. Like she was a child who needed minding. Like she wasn't a grown woman who'd survived a blizzard on a possibly broken ankle through sheer force of will.
But I understood what Calder meant. Not that Noa needed watching in the protective sense, but that someone should be here. Present. Available. In case she needed something she wouldn't ask for.
I built up the fire and put water on for tea and tried not to think about how natural it had become, these small domestic rituals.
Eight days of sharing space with an omega who didn't want to share space with anyone, and somehow I'd learned her rhythms. Learned that she woke slowly, that she needed caffeine before she could form complete sentences, that she got restless in the afternoons and irritable in the evenings when her ankle ached.
I'd learned too much, probably. Noticed too much. Old habits.
She emerged from her nest of blankets around the time the tea was ready, moving more easily now than she had a week ago. The swelling in her ankle had gone down significantly, and she could walk short distances without the stick if she was careful. Progress.
“What's that sound?” she asked, tilting her head toward the window. Another crack echoed through the morning, followed by the crash of something heavy hitting the ground.
“Ice storm. Trees are coming down.”
She crossed to the window and looked out, her expression shifting from confusion to understanding to something that looked a lot like despair.
“So much for the roads clearing.”
“They'll clear eventually. Just... not today.”
She made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. “Story of my life lately.” She turned away from the window and accepted the mug of tea I offered, wrapping her hands around it like she was trying to absorb the warmth through her skin. “Where are the others?”
“Outside. Checking for damage.”
“And you're inside babysitting me.”
“I'm inside because someone needs to tend the fire and I'm the least useful in a crisis involving physical labor.” I settled into my usual chair and picked up the book I'd been reading. “You're welcome to interpret that as babysitting if it makes you feel better.”
She gave me a look that I couldn't quite decipher. Then she lowered herself onto the couch, propping her ankle on the cushion beside her, and stared into the fire.
The morning passed slowly. The ice kept falling, the trees kept cracking, and the world outside grew more treacherous by the hour. Calder and Bo came back around midmorning, soaked and exhausted, with reports of minor damage to the chicken coop and a tree down across the path to the woodshed.
“Nothing we can't fix,” Calder said, stripping off his wet outer layers. “But we're not going anywhere for a while. The ice is inches thick in places. Even Bo couldn't get more than a hundred yards from the cabin.”
Bo grunted in confirmation. He was standing by the fire, steam rising from his damp clothes, looking more like a disgruntled wolf than ever.
“So we're trapped,” Noa said. “Again. Still.”
“We're sheltering,” I corrected. “There's a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Trapped implies we want to leave but can't. Sheltering implies we're staying because it's the smart thing to do.”
“I want to leave.”
“Then you're trapped.” I turned a page in my book. “Semantics matter.”
She stared at me for a long moment, something building behind her eyes. I could see her fighting with herself, trying to decide whether to snap at me or let it go.
She let it go. Barely.
The afternoon was worse. The ice kept falling, the cabin kept shrinking, and four people who weren't used to sharing space started to fray at the edges.
Bo paced. He always paced when he couldn't get outside, that restless energy building until it practically vibrated off him. He'd go to the window, stare out at the frozen world, make a frustrated sound, and start the circuit again. Around the room, past the fire, to the window, back again.
Calder tried to busy himself with repairs, fixing a loose hinge on one of the cabinet doors, sharpening knives that didn't need sharpening, reorganizing the pantry for the third time this week.
But there was only so much busywork to be done, and eventually he ran out, settling into his chair with a book he clearly wasn't reading.
Noa was the worst. She'd been restless for days, pushing against the boundaries of her injury, but today she was practically crawling out of her skin.
She couldn't sit still, couldn't focus on the book she'd been reading, couldn't do anything except stare at the walls like they were personally offending her.
And I... I watched. The way I always watched. Cataloguing behaviors, noting patterns, analyzing dynamics. It was easier than participating. Safer than engaging.
The fight, when it came, was almost a relief.
“Would you stop?” Noa's voice cut through the tense silence, sharp and sudden.
Bo froze mid-pace. “Stop what?”
“The pacing. The constant movement. It's driving me insane.”
“What do you want me to do? Sit still and stare at the walls like the rest of you?”
“I want you to stop making me feel like a caged animal just by watching you.”
“Maybe you feel that way because you are one.”
It was the wrong thing to say. I saw it land, saw the way Noa's expression shuttered, saw the flash of hurt before she buried it under anger.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Bo had stopped pacing, but his whole body was tense, coiled.
“You've been climbing the walls since you got here.
Can't sit still, can't accept help, can't admit that you're stuck just like the rest of us.
You're not frustrated because I'm pacing. You're frustrated because you can't.”
“That's not…”
“Yeah, it is.” He took a step toward her, not threatening, but intense. “I know what it looks like when someone's trapped in a situation they can't control. I know what it feels like. You're not special for suffering through it.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.
Noa stood up. It was a deliberate movement, slow and controlled despite what it must have cost her ankle. She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn't much compared to Bo, but somehow she managed to look him in the eye without backing down.
“You're right,” she said quietly. “I am frustrated. I'm frustrated and scared and completely out of control, and I don't know how to handle it. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Bo blinked. Whatever he'd expected her to say, it wasn't that.
“But you don't get to throw my feelings in my face like they're a weakness,” she continued. “And you don't get to act like your coping mechanisms are any better than mine. At least I'm not wearing a hole in the floor.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Two stubborn, wounded people, neither willing to back down, both too proud to apologize.
Then Bo made a sound that might have been a laugh, or might have been a growl, or might have been something in between.
“Fair enough,” he said. And he walked away, disappearing into the back of the cabin where his room was.
Noa stood there for another second, breathing hard. Then she sat back down, slowly, carefully, and stared into the fire like nothing had happened.
I should have stayed out of it. Should have kept my head down, kept reading my book, kept playing the role of detached observer that I'd perfected over years of avoiding real connection.
But something about the way she was sitting there, all that bravado collapsed into something smaller and sadder, made it impossible to stay silent.
“That took courage,” I said.
She looked at me, surprised. “What?”
“Admitting that you're scared. Most people wouldn't have done that, especially not in the middle of a confrontation.”
“Most people aren't trapped in a cabin with three strangers and no way out.” She said it flatly, without self-pity. Just stating facts.