10. Calder
Calder
None of us slept well that night.
I could hear Bo pacing in his room, that restless energy that meant his mind wouldn't quiet.
Shepherd's light stayed on until well past midnight, the thin line of it visible under his door.
And Noa... I didn't hear anything from the main room where she slept, but when I got up before dawn to tend the fire, I found her already awake, staring at the ceiling with hollow eyes.
“Couldn't sleep?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“Not really.” She didn't look at me. “Too much thinking.”
I understood that. I'd spent most of the night thinking too. About what she'd told us. About what was coming. About what it meant for all of us, this situation none of us had asked for and none of us could control.
I added wood to the fire and put water on for coffee, letting the familiar routine settle my nerves.
By the time the others emerged, I had breakfast ready.
Eggs again, because they were easy and filling and didn't require much thought.
Toast with the last of the butter. Coffee strong enough to strip paint.
We ate in silence. The kind of silence that wasn't comfortable, that was weighted with everything we weren't saying.
Noa picked at her food, eating maybe half of what I'd given her before pushing the plate away.
Bo inhaled his like he always did, but his eyes kept drifting to her, watching, assessing.
Shepherd ate methodically, his gaze moving between all of us like he was cataloguing our reactions for later analysis.
When the plates were cleared and the coffee cups refilled, I decided someone needed to break the tension.
“We should talk about this,” I said. “Properly. Figure out a plan.”
Noa's shoulders tightened, but she nodded. “Yeah. We should.”
We moved to the main room, settling into the positions that had become familiar over the past ten days. Noa on the couch, her bad ankle propped on a cushion. Shepherd in his reading chair, though he had no book this time. Bo leaning against the wall by the window, arms crossed, watching.
I stayed standing. It was easier to think on my feet.
“First things first,” I said. “The roads. Bo and I checked yesterday. The main road is still buried, and the access trail is impassable. Even if we could get a vehicle through, the bridges are probably iced over. We're not getting to town anytime soon.”
“How soon is not soon?” Noa asked.
“Two weeks, minimum. Probably longer. The temperatures look like they’ll drop again tomorrow, which means everything that's melting today is going to freeze solid tonight.” I paused. “I'm sorry. I know that's not what you want to hear.”
“It's what I expected.” Her voice was flat, resigned. “What about the radio? Any luck?”
“Still nothing but static. The atmospheric conditions from the storm are still interfering.” I'd tried three times yesterday, each attempt more frustrating than the last. “I'll keep trying, but I wouldn't count on it.”
She nodded slowly, processing. I could see her running the numbers in her head, calculating timelines, weighing options.
“So I'm stuck here,” she said. “And my heat is coming. And there's nothing I can do about either of those things.”
“That's about the size of it.”
Silence fell again. The fire crackled and popped. Outside, a bird called, the sound muffled by the walls.
“We need to talk about options,” Shepherd said quietly. “What happens when your heat arrives.”
Noa's jaw tightened, but she didn't look away. “I know.”
“There are really only two choices,” I said, forcing myself to be practical even though every instinct I had was screaming something else entirely.
“You can go through it alone. We'll give you the best room in the house, stock it with supplies, and stay as far away as possible.
It'll be...” I hesitated, searching for the right word.
“Difficult. Painful, probably. But survivable. Omegas have gotten through heats alone before.”
“Or?” She said it like a challenge, like she already knew what I was going to say and was daring me to say it.
“Or we help you through it.”
The words hung in the air between us. I watched her face, looking for any sign of what she was thinking.
Fear? Disgust? Interest? But her expression was carefully blank, giving nothing away.
Meanwhile, my own thoughts were anything but blank.
Images flooded through me before I could stop them.
Noa in my arms, gasping my name. Noa beneath me, around me, her nails raking down my back.
Noa finally letting go of all that control and letting me take care of her the way I'd been wanting to since the moment she fell through my door.
I shut those thoughts down hard. This wasn't about what I wanted. It had to be about what she needed.
“Help me through it,” she repeated slowly. “You mean sex.”
“I mean whatever you need.” I kept my voice steady, matter-of-fact, even though my blood was running hot and my hands wanted to shake.
Even though every alpha instinct I possessed was screaming at me to close the distance between us and show her exactly what I meant.
“Heat is... intense. The biological drive is strong.
Having a partner, or partners, can make it easier.
More bearable. But that's only if you want it. Only if you choose it.”
I held her gaze as I said it, and I let her see. Just for a moment, just a crack in my carefully neutral expression. Let her see that this wasn't just obligation or duty. Let her see that I wanted her. Had wanted her from the beginning. Would go on wanting her whether she chose us or not.
She saw it. I watched her pupils dilate, watched her breath catch, watched awareness bloom in her expression. She knew now. There was no hiding it anymore.
“And if I choose to go through it alone? You'll what, just stay in your rooms for three days and pretend you can't hear me?”
“If that's what you want, yes.”
She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You're serious. You'd actually do that. Lock yourselves away while an omega in heat is suffering twenty feet away.”
“We would.” Bo's voice was rough, unexpected. We all looked at him. “Wouldn't be easy. Wouldn't be pleasant. But we'd do it. Your choice matters more than our comfort.”
Something flickered in her expression. Surprise, maybe. Or the beginning of something like trust.
“You don't even know me,” she said. “Any of you. I've been here for ten days. That's nothing. And you're offering to... what? Be my heat partners? Form a pack?”
“Nobody said anything about forming a pack.” Shepherd's voice was gentle. “This is about getting you through a difficult biological event safely. That's all. No strings, no obligations, no expectations beyond the immediate situation.”
“That's not how it works.” She shook her head. “Heat is... it's intimate. It's intense. You can't just help someone through a heat and then pretend it never happened.”
“No,” I agreed. “We probably can't. But that's a problem for after. Right now, the only thing that matters is making sure you're safe and taken care of when your heat hits. Everything else can wait.”
She was quiet for a long moment, staring at the fire. I watched the flames reflected in her eyes, watched the thoughts moving behind them.
“I don't understand,” she said finally. “Why would you do this? What do you get out of it?”
It was a fair question. The kind of question someone asked when they'd learned that everything in life came with strings attached, that kindness was just manipulation wearing a pleasant mask.
“Nothing,” I said. “We don't get anything out of it except knowing you're okay.”
“That's not how people work.”
“Maybe not the people you've known.” I moved closer, settling onto the arm of the couch so I was at her eye level.
“But that's how we work. All three of us came here because we were running from something.
We found each other, built something that works, learned how to take care of each other without keeping score.
That's what we're offering you. Not because we expect something in return.
Just because it's the right thing to do.”
She stared at me, searching my face for the lie. I let her look. I had nothing to hide.
“And if I say yes,” she said slowly. “If I decide I want... help. How would that even work? There are three of you.”
“That would be up to you.” Shepherd leaned forward in his chair.
“You'd be in control of everything. Who's there, what happens, how far it goes.
If you want all three of us, that's an option.
If you want one of us, that's an option too. If you change your mind halfway through and want us to leave, we leave. No questions, no arguments, no hurt feelings.”
Noa blushed, finally breaking eye contact as she stared down at the ground. This was a difficult situation when it happened with people you knew and already trusted, for her to go into heat with three strangers isolated from the world… she had to be terrified.
“You make it sound so simple,” she whispered.
“It's not simple. Nothing about this is simple.” Shepherd's voice was honest, unvarnished.
“But it doesn't have to be complicated either.
The key is communication. Telling us what you want, what you need, what's working and what isn't. As long as we're all honest with each other, we can figure out the rest.”
Noa pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. That protective posture again. The one that said she was feeling vulnerable and didn't want anyone to know.
“I've never done this before,” she said quietly. “Any of it. I've been on suppressants since I was eighteen. I've never had a real heat. Never been with an alpha during one. I don't know what I'm going to want or need or feel. I don't know if I'll be able to communicate anything once it starts.”