23. Bo
Bo
The second storm came in slow this time.
I felt it two days out, the pressure changing the way the pressure always changed before a real one landed, my old hip injury aching the way it did when the barometer dropped.
I didn’t say anything to the others right away.
I just started moving. Topped off the wood, double-checked the generator, dragged the snow shovel in from the lean-to before the wind picked up.
Calder noticed by the second afternoon. He’d been watching me work for seven years. He recognized the pattern.
“Another one?”
“Yeah.”
“How bad?”
“Worse than the first. Maybe a couple days.”
He didn’t curse. He didn’t flinch. He just nodded once and went to check the pantry.
Noa was on the couch with Shepherd, her bad ankle propped on a pillow, a book open in her lap that she wasn’t really reading.
She’d been like that for a while now. Recovering.
Reading half a page and dozing off and waking up and reading the same half a page again.
Calder had told her she was going to take it easy or he was going to make her, and she’d told him to shove his alpha protectiveness somewhere unpleasant, and they’d compromised on her staying horizontal for at least half the day.
I caught her watching me from the couch when I came back inside.
“What?”
“You’re pacing.”
“I’m working.”
“You’re pacing while you work. The bond just lit up about it.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, not used to feeling like this.
“Don’t be sorry. What’s wrong?”
I hesitated. I’d been used to being able to do this quiet, the way I did everything. Move around the cabin. Get my work done. Not have to explain. The bond had taken that away from me without asking. Now any spike of restlessness rolled out across the four of us like a stone dropped in still water.
“Storm’s coming,” I said.
“I felt that too. You’re bracing for it.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
I didn’t answer immediately. Shepherd looked up from his book.
“The last one trapped you,” he said quietly to Noa. “Bo doesn’t love being snowed in. Used to leave for the loft when it got too long.”
“Oh.” Her eyes came back to me. “Is that going to happen again?”
“No.”
“Bo?”
“No,” I said again. “I’m not going to the loft. I don’t want to. Just need to keep moving. That’s all.”
She studied me for a long second. Then she nodded once and went back to her book. Didn’t push. Didn’t fuss. The bond settled the worst of my restlessness back into something I could carry.
That was new too. Her presence doing that. The way the bond made the cabin feel smaller in the good way instead of the bad.
The storm landed that night.
We watched the snow start through the windows over dinner.
By the time we were clearing the plates the wind had picked up and the temperature outside had dropped twenty degrees.
Calder fed the fire. Shepherd lit the lamps.
I went out one more time to bring in the last of the wood and to check the latch on the generator shed, and when I came back inside Noa was watching me from the couch with the particular look she got when she was holding a thought she wasn’t ready to say yet.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Noa.”
“It’s nothing. Just looking.”
“At me?”
“At you.”
I sat down at her feet on the rug. She slid her hand into my hair like it was second nature and I leaned into it.
“OK,” she said. “Maybe it’s not nothing. I’m glad you came in.”
“Where else would I be?”
“The old version of you would have stayed out longer.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Me too.”
We sat like that for a while. The storm built up outside the windows the way storms do on this ridge, slow and patient until it suddenly isn’t. By the time we went to bed the wind was howling and the snow was coming sideways and the cabin had become its own small world again.
I was already used to sleeping with three other people.
The novelty of it had worn off faster than I’d expected.
The four of us in the big bed in the main room had become the new shape of normal in the space of a few days, and the night the second storm landed I fell asleep with my hand on her hip and listening to Shepherd’s soft snore.
Not once did I even think about the loft.
But it couldn’t last.
The fight came two days into the storm.
That part felt important to me afterward, the timing of it.
Not at the start. Not when we were all on our best behavior.
It came when we’d been trapped in the cabin long enough to start chafing on each other’s edges.
Four stubborn wounded people, four full days of weather, four different versions of the same restlessness.
It started over the generator.
That was the surface of it anyway. The generator was acting up again, the same way it had every February for the last three years, the same way it would keep doing until we replaced the damn part that needed replacing.
I’d gone out to check on it that morning and again at midday.
By evening the wind was bad enough that going out felt stupid, and I’d told Calder I’d give it another hour before I went again, and Calder had said something about doing it himself instead, and I’d told him not to, and Calder had said in the steady voice he used when he was being a leader, “I’ll go this round. ”
“I’ve got it.”
“Bo.”
“I’ve got it.”
“You’ve been three times today.”
“It’s my job.”
“It’s not anybody’s job. We share the work up here.”
“I’ve been doing it for seven years.”
“Which is why someone else can do it tonight.”
“You always do this.”
It came out sharper than I’d meant. Calder’s jaw went tight. Shepherd looked up from the table where he’d been writing something. Noa, who’d been half-asleep on the couch, opened her eyes.
“Always do what?” Calder said.
“Decide. The way you’re doing now. You decide it’s your turn to go out. You decide we share the work. You decide.”
“I’m not deciding for you. I’m offering.”
“You’re not. You’re telling.”
“Bo.”
“No, listen. Because this is the thing. This is the thing we never talk about. You go ahead and decide what we’re doing and then you call it sharing.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s entirely fair.”
“You’ve never said anything about it before.”
“Because I didn’t mind. Now I mind.”
“Why now?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have the words yet.
Noa sat up. Slowly. Her ankle was still tender enough that she winced when she shifted, and Shepherd was at her elbow in a second to help her, and she waved him off with a look that meant she was about to enter the conversation and didn’t want any assistance with it.
“I’m going to say something,” she said. “And I want all three of you to listen.”
Calder and I both turned.
“This isn’t about the generator.”
“I know it’s not.”
“And it’s not just about the way Calder decides.”
“Noa.”
“It’s not. Bo, you can stop me if I’m wrong.
But I’ve been here three weeks and I’ve watched this cabin run, and what I’ve seen is that Calder decides and you go along and Shepherd analyzes the decision after the fact.
And it works. It works fine. Except now there’s a fourth person in this house, and nobody’s figured out yet where I fit in that. ”
The cabin went very quiet.
Calder looked at her. Then at me. Then at Shepherd, who had set down his pen.
“I’m not a guest here,” Noa said. “If I’m pack, then I’m pack. That means I get a say. About the generator. About when somebody goes out in a storm. About all of it.”
“You’ve only been here three weeks,” Calder said.
It was the wrong thing.
I saw his face change the second it was out of his mouth. He hadn’t meant it the way it came out. He’d been trying to say give us time to learn this. What had landed was you’re still too new to have a say.
Noa’s eyes flashed.
“I’ve been pack since you put your teeth in me,” she said, and her voice had gone quiet in the dangerous way. “Bonded to you. Feeling everything you feel and you feeling me. Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Calder opened his mouth. Then closed it. The bond was carrying his regret already, sharp and clean, but he didn’t reach for the easy apology. He let her words land.
“You’re right,” he said finally. “That came out wrong.”
“It came out exactly the way you meant it.”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Then say it the way you meant it.”
He took a breath.
“I meant give us time to learn this. The four of us. I’ve been the one calling shots up here for seven years because that was the shape of what we needed. I’m not used to having to ask. I should be. I’m going to be. But I’m not going to be good at it right away.”
“OK,” Noa said, but we could all hear the hurt in her voice, and now that we were bonded it slammed down the bond to all of us as well.
“And I should not have brought up the three weeks.”
“No. You shouldn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded once. Sharp. The bond carried her settling, though not all the way. She was still holding something. She was working out whether she trusted what he’d just said.
Then she looked at me.
“Bo?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve been letting him decide because you didn’t want to fight about it. Not because you agreed.”
“Yeah.”
“For seven years?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not OK either.”
I didn’t flinch. It was the truth. The bond would have told her if I’d tried to lie.
“I know.”
“We’re not going to do that anymore. None of us. We say the thing.”
“OK.”
“Even when it’s hard.”
“OK.”
“Shepherd?”
He was watching her with something close to admiration. He set down his pen. “Yes.”
“You can stop analyzing the conversation and join it.”
“I wasn’t analyzing. I was listening.”
“You were analyzing. I could feel you.”
He gave a small wry laugh. “Yes ma’am.”
“What do you want to say?”
He took a breath. He chose his words carefully, the way he chose all his words.
“I want to say that I have done what Bo has done. I let Calder decide because I didn’t want to do the work of disagreeing. And I want to say that I have done what you said about analyzing. I’ve been doing that all night. I don’t love admitting it. But I have.”
“Thank you.”
“And I want to say that we are very lucky you walked into this cabin.”
Noa’s eyes shone. She blinked once.
“OK,” she said. “OK. So new rules.”
“Tell us,” Calder said, the corner of his lips ticked up in a half smile as our omega got ready to set her alphas straight. It was something we’d never realised we needed.
“Anything that affects all of us, we decide together. Anything that affects one of us mostly, that person decides for themselves. Anything that affects two of us, those two decide. Nobody’s the captain anymore. We’re not a fire crew.”
Calder nodded slowly. The bond carried his agreement and also, underneath it, a small relieved exhale of something he’d been carrying for too long. Being in charge had cost him things. He was tired, and I couldn’t help but feel bad that I hadn’t seen it before.
“And the generator,” Noa said.
“Yes.”
“I think Shepherd should go this time.”
I blinked. So did Calder.
“What?” Shepherd said.
“You’re the one who hasn’t been out in two days. Bo’s been going every couple hours. Calder always goes when something needs doing. Your turn.”
Shepherd opened his mouth. Closed it.
“She’s right,” I said.
“She’s right,” Calder said.
“All right,” Shepherd said. He got up. He pulled his coat off the hook by the door. He paused with his hand on the latch and looked back at her. “For the record. I do not love the cold.”
“I know. That’s also why you should go. Builds character.”
“It does not.” He laughed softly, shaking his head and it was like a signal that everything was going to be alright.
“Now get out there.”
He smiled. Actually smiled. Then pulled the door open and stepped into the storm as Calder followed him to the porch to make sure he made it across the yard. I sat down on the couch beside Noa and pulled her sideways into me.
“Thank you,” she said. Quiet, into my chest.
“For what?”
“Just being you. And being you here and not somewhere else.”
The storm howled. The fire crackled. The bond hummed warm and solid in my chest, more settled than it had been when the fight started, more real somehow.
I could feel Calder on the porch even before he came back inside, his attention turned to Shepherd in the yard, the way the leader part of him was still doing its work but with a new kind of room around it.
“Bo?”
“Yeah.”
“The fight didn’t break us.” He didn’t turn back to look at us, almost like he didn’t really need to see what we thought, he just needed the words to exist out there so he could hear them himself.
I didn’t dare point out that it had been more of a disagreement than a fight, and we’d probably have far worse in the future at some point.
“No.”
“I was scared it would.”
“Was scared of that too.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No. It just makes us stronger.”
He slipped outside to the porch then on the pretence of waiting for Shepherd but probably just needing a moment to let it all soak in.
Noa was quiet for a while.
“I can’t believe you three survived up here for seven years without ever actually having a disagreement?” she said finally, shaking her head.
We’d been tiptoeing around each other for years without even realising it. So caught up in our past mistakes and terrified of losing the one good thing we’d found in the aftermath. But then Noa had fallen through our door and changed us in ways we didn’t even realise. She’d saved us from ourselves.
I held her tight while the storm worked itself into a frenzy outside the windows and Shepherd thumped around in the generator shed making decidedly Shepherd noises at the carburetor. And all I could think about was how lucky we were.
Calder came back inside, stamping snow off his boots and crossed to the couch to sit down on Noa’s other side and pulled her gently against him without asking. We were already seeking out the reassurance of her presence, and sharing her felt as natural as breathing.
The cabin was small. The storm was big. The bond was bigger.
I had spent seven years building a life I could survive. I had decided, before any of this, that the loft was the place I went when surviving was no longer enough. I told myself for a long time that surviving was all anyone was going to get.
Then she walked up the porch steps and told me she was going to give me a say.
I hadn’t known how badly I needed somebody to do that. Until now.