Chapter 11
The eastern side of the Cascades had strong feelings about summer and, as they had reached July, was starting to shout them out.
The air was already warm by seven, the sky was drenched in that summer blue that had no patience for clouds, and the pines outside held that bark smell she’d loved since she was small enough to press her nose against them.
And back she was in the forest, getting ready for the second plant-run with the pack. One car only this time. No more reason to play it like this was a maybe. This was it in all its glory.
She prepared the back of his truck the way she prepared her own shop: a place for everything, everything in its place.
And a lot of stuff lately seemed to have found a new place.
Her field kit was in his truck. So was her spare jacket, her second-best thermos, a book she’d been meaning to finish, and she was fairly certain he had her good pen.
His things were at her place in the same casually inevitable way.
Boots by the door, a flannel that was definitely not hers on the hook, his coffee cup next to hers in the sink.
They were making a decision by not making a decision, which she recognized as a decision. They never talked about it—they didn’t need to, really. Which was either very healthy or a complete failure of communication, and she hadn’t decided which.
She was thinking about asking him to move in with her.
He didn’t have any special attachment to his house, while being in hers allowed her to feel closer to her grandfather.
So she was thinking about it—a lot, actually, and keeping it very carefully away from the bond, which was difficult because he absolutely could feel there was something she kind of hid.
She sighed as the object of her thoughts came to her. “They are coming,” he said.
She threw out an absentminded, “Yeah, I know,” then stopped and turned to him. “Weird. So so weird.”
The way he smiled—beamed, really—was distracting enough that she closed her eyes for a moment because this was a thing and she needed to be not dumb for a second. “It’s like... I don’t know. A sixth sense? I can’t say it’s clear, only, like, a built-in awareness? Is it like that for you?”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her hair. “A little more intense and clear, but yeah. The built-in awareness is a pretty good way of putting it.”
“What am I supposed to do, Rex? I pushed the thought aside because all this was so big and new, but now.... What am I supposed to be? To do? I mean, practically. Besides today.”
“You’re my half,” he said simply.
“No, I get that—also, I still get a little dizzy when you say it, but regardless. What does it mean? I get the Alpha—you protect them, and I don’t see anything good coming from expecting me to physically do the same.
The smallest member of the pack could throw me on the other side of the mountain at any moment. ”
He huffed out a laugh that had some growling in it. Very confusing. “They know better than to try to throw you. And no, that’s not what they expect from you.”
“So you protect all of us, and I do....”
Oh. He liked that idea; she felt it through the bond loud and clear.
But he shrugged. “Whatever they need.” A shrug, as if that wasn’t monumentally big.
“There are things the pack doesn’t bring to me, not because I wouldn’t listen, but because I’m the Alpha.
There’s a distance in that, even when I don’t mean there to be.
You don’t have that distance. You’re not above them, and you’re not one of them.
You’re something else.” He was quiet for a moment.
“They might come to the shop—more than they already do, and not always for herbs. You already saw that, didn’t you? ”
She had. A young wolf had come in on a Wednesday for a salve he could have gotten anywhere, stayed to ask about the forest situation with the fake ease of someone who was worried but didn’t know how to approach it.
She’d told her they had a pretty good plan and were optimistic.
He’d left with a smile. A woman had come in twice in a week for chamomile tea, which she definitely didn’t need that much of.
Each time she’d stayed longer than the purchase required, sitting on the stool by the counter and talking for forty minutes about nothing in particular.
Her job, her kids, the stress of a life you love but somehow feels too much anyway.
Zoe had listened, made them each a second cup they had drunk together, and sent her home with something to help relax.
And then there’d been the older man, she didn’t know his name yet, who’d sat outside on her steps for ten minutes before coming in, buying nothing, but leaving satisfied for whatever he saw. “Yes,” she said. “Maybe a little.”
“That's it, Moonbeam. That’s the whole thing.” He kissed her lips gently. “You just have to be there when they show up. Sometimes to fix them, sometimes to lead them, sometimes just to listen, the way you are already doing.”
Huh, she thought as she lay her cheek against his chest. She’d been so busy bracing for it to be hard that she’d missed the part where it wasn’t.
The title, the role, the weight of what it meant being inside a pack that had gone without an Omega for years and was now stuck with someone fundamentally different—a human.
She’d thought it would be heavy. But it wasn’t heavy at all.
Listening, being there, making the second cup, saving the forest. She’d been doing that her whole life without anyone asking her to.
The fact that it turned out to mean something, to be something.
... Her grandfather would have found that very funny, but also, knowing her, completely unsurprising.
She was still musing on it within the safety of Rex’s arms when the pack started arriving.
Just a few, here and there, enough to make her go and start preparing her kits–and then they were all there.
The trailhead filled up, people leaning on trucks and sitting on tailgates; wolves sitting, very properly, all around.
No nerves, Zoe realized. She knew names this time. Faces. And she felt the distinctive peace of being within a group in harmony. That was new. Good new.
Her heart was stable and her mind clear when she started dividing them and passing kits. Less than last time, as only the most depleted species in the ring they had traced were going to be tested, meaning smaller teams, targeted areas, and less ground to cover.
“Realistically,” she was telling Rex, “we should have preliminary results within a few days. The lab turnaround on soil samples is the longest part, but with fewer sites this round—” She gestured vaguely at the treeline. “It shouldn’t drag the way it did last time.”
Rex was leaning against the truck, arms crossed—always a very, very good sight—following along, nodding. “If our theory is correct, then Lachlan and his little tribe of witches can find a way to fix it.”
“It’s on him at that point. I have no idea how to help him.”
Rex smiled. “He’ll find something, he–”
He was mid-sentence when he stopped talking, and his head snapped west, like a magnet. Zoe felt it a half-second later: something moving through the bond, but not from Rex. It was vaguer than that, and wider. A little more than a feeling of unease.
She opened her mouth to ask, but Rex’s phone rang before she could.
“Rex.” His shoulders drew up as he listened, the line of his jaw going tight. “I’ll be there.”
She read the reaction in his body, but she didn’t know the reason for it— other than it was not good. “What is it?”
“A fire at Hargrove’s cabin. Northwest, maybe five miles into the trees, up past the western ridge. I’ll get there faster through the forest. Owen’s on his way.”
Damn. Fires were a real and ugly danger out here, especially this time of year. She took a step after him, ready to follow, to help, an instinct she didn’t completely understand moving her feet before reason caught up, because... Help with what, exactly?
The fire department would already be called. Rex was going, Owen was going, probably more from the pack behind them. She turned the question over honestly: would she be help, or would she be a warm body taking up space that someone more useful needed?
As if he could hear her thoughts, Rex turned and took her face in both hands. “Stay here,” he said. “The pack will feel the strain before we can reach them. They’ll know something is wrong, and they’ll need someone calm who can explain.”
This. This is where she was supposed to be. She covered his hands with hers. “I’ll be here for them.”
He kissed her, quick and soft. “Thank you.”
“No need. Go. But please, please keep in touch.”
He was already moving toward his truck. She watched him strip with efficient movements, shift, and dissolve into the tree line.
She stood there a moment longer, frowning faintly at the space where he’d disappeared.
He was going to need hands at some point—to help with the fire, to manage whatever came after.
Which meant he’d shift back. Which meant he was going to be naked.
She’d always privately held the opinion that clothing was fairly important when dealing with open flames, but she understood by now that shifters, wolves especially, had a relationship with nudity that was entirely different from hers.
Very practical and unsentimental, nothing to see here but a body doing what it needed to do.
So, alright.
She turned back, pressed a hand flat against the tight feeling in her chest. It was tight, almost painful, but through the bond, Rex was steady—strained, but steady—and she held onto that. His quiet strength, even at a distance, had to be enough for today.
With no real way to relax, she went back to work—just slightly different.