A Rebel’s Storm (Alaskan Rebels #5)

Chapter 1

One

Magnus Rebel always assumed he’d find his end in the belly of a fire, a greasy smear in the forest duff.

Not drowning in an agonizing, frigid death.

The floor lurched beneath Magnus’s feet, throwing him into one wall before ramming him into the other. He half stumbled, half fell into the bathroom and yanked the lid open a second before his lunch ripped out from his stomach.

“Yeehaw!” His insane sister Astryde whooped from the wheelhouse as the Stormchaser slammed over another wave.

“That was totally wicked!” Magnus’s son Oliver’s high-pitched voice shrieked.

Magnus should get up from his knees and get Oliver somewhere safe. He scoffed, then moaned as another heave rushed out of him.

Nowhere was safe on this floating death trap.

“Hey, little brother, stop being such a pansy and take the meds on the counter.” Astryde yelled over the storm.

“I’m not a pansy or little.” Magnus sat back on his heels. “Nothing could possibly help in this madness.”

“I promise they work, but if you want to be a baby about it, continue suffering,” Astryde countered before saying something to Oliver that had both of them laughing.

The loons.

“I’m not a baby,” he mumbled as he snatched the blister packet and popped one open.

“Be sure to take a drink before you let them dissolve.” Garett, Astryde’s other deckhand, extended a bottle of water to Magnus as he leaned against the doorjamb. “Makes the pill dissolve easier.”

Magnus accepted the water with a grunt that might have been thanks. The medication tasted like chalk mixed with artificial mint, but he let it dissolve on his tongue as the boat pitched again.

Five minutes later, the world stopped spinning so violently. The storm still bucked the ship, and the howling wind outside had grown more vicious. At least his internal organs seemed willing to stay where nature intended.

He made his way to the wheelhouse, gripping every available surface as the Stormchaser rode the swells. The cramped space hummed with controlled energy.

Astryde stood at the helm, hands steady on the wheel. She looked born there, which wasn’t far from the truth with how many summers she’d spent with their grandfather fishing. Oliver perched on a high stool beside her, secured with a safety harness, awed gaze glued to the salt-streaked window.

“Look, Magnus!” Oliver pointed at a wave that had to be twenty feet high. “It’s like a mountain!”

“A mountain that wants to kill us,” Magnus muttered, but Oliver’s excitement was infectious.

The kid had no fear of the water, unlike Magnus, who’d spent his entire adult life battling a different element.

Astryde glanced over her shoulder. “Better?”

“I’m vertical.”

“Good enough.” She nodded toward the deck. “Need you to check the deck and secure any gear that came loose during the storm. Can’t have lines whipping around.”

It wasn’t a question. In Astryde’s world, everyone pulled their weight or got off her boat. The fact that Magnus was her brother bought him exactly zero slack. If anything, she expected more from family.

“On it.” Magnus zipped his rain jacket to his chin and pulled up the hood.

“Take the safety line,” she called after him. “And Magnus? Don’t die. I’d hate to explain that to Mom.”

The deck was a different kind of hell. Ice-cold spray slashed across his face like tiny daggers. The non-slip surface might as well have been a skating rink for all the traction it provided. Magnus clipped his safety tether to the jackline and started forward, movements clumsy and uncertain.

Though he could tie a clove hitch in his sleep and rig complex rope systems for wildfire operations, his hands fumbled with the wet lines. Everything was different here. The weight of water-logged rope, the constant motion, the way the wind tried to tear everything from his grip.

He’d been one of the best sawyers in his hotshot crew, could fell a burning tree with pinpoint precision.

Now he couldn’t even coil a stupid rope properly.

A wave larger than the rest crashed over the port side.

The wall of water slammed into Magnus, driving him to his knees.

Saltwater filled his mouth and nose, choking him.

For a terrifying moment, he couldn’t tell which way was up.

The safety line went taut, the only thing keeping him from sliding across the deck.

“Magnus!”

He blinked the stinging salt from his eyes to find Oliver standing in the wheelhouse doorway, his small frame braced against the jamb. The boy wore a bright orange life vest that made him look like a traffic cone with legs.

“Get back inside!” Magnus shouted, but Oliver was already picking his way across the deck with fearless balance.

Magnus stood and braced himself to dive overboard if another wave hit and took Oliver with it, praying that God would hold the storm back until Oliver was safe.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Oliver announced, with that tone of seriousness only seven-year-olds could muster.

His small hands took the rope from Magnus’s numb fingers. “Astryde says you gotta work with the boat, not against it. See? Like this.”

Oliver’s fingers flew, sure and quick, coiling the rope into figure-eights that wouldn’t tangle when deployed. Magnus watched, humbled and oddly proud, as his son demonstrated skills Magnus was still struggling to master after a month.

“Who taught you that?” Magnus asked, though he knew the answer.

“Aunt Astryde. And Garett. And Mrs. Bergman at the marina. And...” Oliver paused his litany to secure the rope with a perfect half hitch. “Everybody knows how to do boat stuff here.”

Everybody except Magnus, apparently.

But watching Oliver work, seeing the confidence in those small shoulders, that fierce love that still caught him off guard surged up. This kid, this incredible, resilient kid, was his. Not by blood, maybe, but by something stronger.

By choice. By love. By a promise Magnus had made to himself the moment Annie had disappeared, leaving only a note and legal documents signing over guardianship.

Annie.

Even now, ten months later, thinking her name was like probing a sore tooth. Two months in Montana. That’s all they’d had. Two months of laughter and adventure and a connection Magnus had never experienced before or since.

She’d wrecked him. Simple as that.

Necessary, transformative, leaving everything changed in her wake.

And then she’d vanished. No explanation beyond legal papers and a hastily scrawled note that still haunted him.

Oliver is yours now. Keep him safe. Don’t look for me. If you take him to the authorities, you’ll put him in danger.

Magnus had quietly tried anyway. Rafe Malone, Stryker Security computer guru extraordinaire, had studied the documents and legalities for hours, running every check he knew.

“They’re solid, Mags. Too solid. These aren’t just good forgeries, if that’s what they are. They’re perfect. Birth certificate, guardianship transfer, everything. Whoever created these had serious resources.” Rafe’s impressed conclusion just raised more questions.

That conversation had kept Magnus awake for weeks. Because if the documents were fake, it meant Oliver wasn’t legally his. If they were real, it meant Annie had access to resources—and reasons—that required falsifying a child’s entire identity.

Either way, Magnus was harboring secrets he didn’t understand. And every time a stranger looked at Oliver too long, every time someone asked about his mother, Magnus felt the weight of that cryptic warning: Taking him to the authorities will put him in danger.

The anger still simmered, a low burn in his chest. Not just at her abandonment, but at the crater she’d left in his life. At the questions that Oliver asked that Magnus couldn’t answer.

At the fear that loving Oliver this much made Magnus vulnerable in ways he’d never been, not even when running into infernos.

“Magnus?” Oliver tugged on his sleeve. “You okay?”

“Yeah, buddy. Just thinking.”

“You think a lot.” Oliver went back to coiling rope. “Mrs. Bergman says that means you got a big brain.”

Magnus snorted. “Or a thick skull.”

“Hey!” Astryde poked her head from the cabin. “Come pack your stuff. This storm isn’t letting up for a few days. We’re docking until the sea decides to stop trying to kill us.”

“Okay!” The boy handed Magnus the secured rope and scrambled back toward the wheelhouse with his sea legs carrying him effortlessly across the pitching deck.

The port materialized through the rain like something from a dream.

The fishing town clung to the Alaskan coastline with stubborn determination.

Mountains rose behind it, peaks lost in low-hanging clouds.

The harbor bristled with masts and radio antennas, a forest of aluminum and fiberglass growing from the dark water.

Beautiful and isolating in equal measure.

“Hey, little brother, make sure you don’t leave your junk spread around my baby,” Astryde said, strolling across the deck.

Magnus shook his head. “You and your baby.”

She leaned against the rail beside him. “You’re doing good, you know. With Oliver. You’re a great dad.”

Magnus had been called a lot of things. Reckless, dedicated, crazy enough to run toward fires instead of away from them. But ‘dad’? That title still fit like borrowed gear. Functional but never quite right.

“Sure,” he said. “Father of the year. Can’t even tie a proper bowline.”

“You’ve been here four weeks,” Astryde said. “You’re both learning.”

“He’s better at it than I am.” Magnus gestured toward the wheelhouse, where Oliver was probably still glued to the window. “Kid adapts to everything. New town, new life, new guardian who has no idea what he’s doing.”

“He’s a good kid.”

“He deserves better than—” Magnus cut himself off.

Than what? Than a guy who might not even legally be his guardian? Than someone who was either breaking the law or caught in someone else’s criminal web?

Astryde studied him for a long moment. “You know, you could let people help. Me, Garett, Mrs. Bergman—half this town would show up for that kid if you’d stop acting like you have to do it all alone.”

“I’m not—”

“You are.” She said it without heat. “Same thing you did on the hotshot crew. Volunteer for the worst assignments, refuse to rotate out, act like needing backup is some kind of personal failure.”

Magnus stared at the harbor. She wasn’t wrong, which was exactly why he didn’t want to have this conversation. Letting people in meant questions. Questions meant answers he didn’t have, about documents that were either perfect forgeries or something worse.

“I’ve got it handled,” he said.

Astryde snorted.

“Anyways, gotta get us docked before Garett tries. That man can’t dock a boat for nothing.” Astryde pushed off the rail. “Be ready to get busy in twenty.”

They tied up at the dock, the Stormchaser settling against the rubber bumpers with a gentle thump that belied the violence of the storm they’d just survived.

The harbor was a sensory assault. Diesel fumes mixing with the sharp tang of fish, the screech of gulls competing with the rumble of generators, the organized chaos of boats being unloaded and prepped for the next run.

“Magnus!” Oliver’s voice cut through his brooding. “Look what I drew!”

The boy stood before him, water dripping from his rain gear, holding a piece of paper he’d somehow kept dry despite the storm. His face glowed with pride as he presented his treasure.

Magnus took the drawing, expecting the usual subjects of Oliver’s art. Boats, fish, maybe one of the eagles that nested near Astryde’s cabin they were bunking in until he could find a place of their own. His breath caught.

The drawing was a forest consumed by flames that Oliver had colored with every shade of orange and red in his crayon box.

The trees were black silhouettes against the inferno, and in the center stood a lone figure holding what was clearly meant to be a Pulaski — the half-axe, half-hoe tool that was a wildland firefighter’s best friend.

The figure was small but stood tall against the flames, unafraid.

“That’s...” Magnus’s throat constricted. “That’s really good, buddy.”

“It’s you,” Oliver said simply. “Aunt Astryde showed me pictures on her phone. You were fighting a big fire, and you looked...”

The boy searched for words. “You looked brave, like you knew exactly what to do.”

Magnus stared at the drawing. The version of himself Oliver had put on paper felt like a ghost of someone he used to know.

“You know what? I love it. This might be my favorite drawing you’ve ever done.”

Oliver beamed. Then his face did that thing it sometimes did, the brightness dimming into something quieter, and he looked up at Magnus with those eyes. Not Annie’s brown or Magnus’s green, but a clear, sharp blue that belonged entirely to Oliver.

“Magnus?” The boy rarely called him anything but Magnus, despite Magnus’s awkward attempts to navigate the ‘dad’ conversation. “Do you think my mom is ever gonna come find us?”

The question gutted him.

If you take him to the authorities, you’ll put him in danger.

Annie’s words echoed in his mind, along with Rafe’s troubled assessment of those too-perfect documents. What kind of danger? From whom? And was Magnus protecting Oliver by keeping silent, or damning them both?

“I don’t know, buddy,” Magnus said finally, because Oliver deserved honesty, even when it hurt. “I really don’t know.”

Oliver was quiet for a moment. Then he stepped forward and pressed himself into Magnus’s chest, rain gear crinkling. Magnus wrapped his arms around him and held on.

Over Oliver’s head, Magnus caught Astryde’s eye. She nodded once, mouth pressed tight, and turned back to the helm.