Chapter 6
LOGAN
Ihave managed this pack through territorial disputes, a harsh winter that nearly wiped out our supply stores, and the time Declan decided to pick a fight with a visiting Alpha twice his size for reasons that were never fully explained. I have handled all of it with reasonable composure.
Watching Harper Collins laugh at something Nora says over a plate of eggs is, inexplicably, harder.
My seat is the same as it always is—close enough to read the room, far enough to give people space to be themselves without the weight of my presence sitting on top of everything.
It's a habit I developed early, and it serves me well.
This morning, it serves me in a different way entirely, because from here I can watch Harper without making it obvious, and I find that I cannot stop watching Harper.
She's different from the way she was last night.
The composure is still there—it's structural with her, built in—but it's sitting looser now, less like armor and more like a default.
She's in Nora's clothes, a few inches too long, and she looks more herself in them than she probably realizes.
Her hair is down and still slightly damp from the shower, and she's got both hands around her coffee mug the way she did last night, like warmth is something she's still catching up on.
Declan is to her left, which is either an accident or isn't, and knowing Declan, it isn't. He's been angled toward her since they sat down, that crooked grin already running at full capacity, and I watch him say something that makes Harper's eyes narrow in the way they do when she's deciding whether to laugh or push back.
She pushes back. Declan looks delighted, which was probably his intention from the start.
"For the record," Declan is saying, loud enough that the whole table can hear, "when Nora described what you looked like this morning when she found you—the hair, the remnants of last night still all over you—I was expecting something very different at this table."
Harper raises an eyebrow. "Meaning?"
"Meaning you clean up nice." He says it with complete sincerity. "Genuinely. Nora made it sound like she'd found someone who'd wrestled the mountain and lost."
Nora shrugs from across the table, completely unrepentant. "I described it accurately."
"You said her hair was doing three different things."
"It was doing three different things."
Harper turns to look at Nora with an expression caught somewhere between laughter and horror. "You told people about my hair."
"I told one person," Nora says, with the serenity of not feeling like she has done anything wrong.
"I told everyone else," Declan says cheerfully. "But the point stands—considering where you started this morning, you look great. No evidence of the mountain whatsoever." He nods approvingly. "Strong recovery."
"I'm so glad," Harper says drily, "that my recovery is up to standard."
"She's been here one morning," Declan tells the table as he puts a hand over his heart.
"And already figured you out," Nora says.
The table reacts. Mateo, who has been the picture of composure at the other end, looks down at his coffee with the air of a man suppressing something. Lila laughs, bright and genuine.
I drink my coffee and say nothing and watch Harper exist comfortably inside a group of people she met less than twelve hours ago. My wolf goes to that low, attentive stillness. I file it away for later and keep my expression even.
Breakfast winds down, and the lodge begins to empty out in the natural way it does when the morning moves toward work. I catch Mateo near the door first, stepping close enough to keep it between us.
"North ridge patrol," he says before I can speak. "I'm taking Declan."
"Good. Before you go—" I lower my voice. "Nobody says anything to her about what we are. The pack holds the line on that. She has enough to carry right now without adding ours to it."
Mateo holds my gaze steadily. "Already understood. I'll make sure Declan's clear on it before we leave."
"Make sure he's very clear."
The corner of Mateo's mouth moves. "I'll use small words.
" He glances back toward the table where Harper is still finishing her coffee with Nora and Lila.
"She's doing well, Logan. Better than well.
" He looks back at me. "Talk to her today.
The car, the town. Give her the information she needs.
" A pause. "She deserves to know where she stands. "
"I know," I say. "I will."
He nods and steps outside. A moment later, I cross to where Declan is pulling on his jacket near the far wall, and I wait until he looks up.
"You heard me with Mateo," I say. It's not a question.
Declan straightens, and the grin is gone, replaced by something more direct. "Yeah. I heard you."
"I mean it, Deck. Nothing about shifting, the territory, any of it. As far as she's concerned, we're only people who live in the mountains."
"Understood." He says it simply, no performance. "You have my word." Then the grin edges back, quieter than usual. "For what it's worth, she landed on her feet. Whatever she ran from, she ran in the right direction." He zips up his jacket. "It’s worth noting."
He heads for the door, and I let him go.
I find Nora in the kitchen, rinsing mugs, and she reads my facial features before I open my mouth.
"I know," she says preemptively.
"Nora."
"Logan." She turns and faces me with her arms crossed, amber eyes direct. "I'm not going to say anything I shouldn't. I like her too much to blow it." She pauses. "Whatever she is to you—and I'm not asking—she's good people, and she's been through something, and I'm not going to make it worse."
I look at her for a moment. "Nothing about what we are. Nothing about the territory, the patrols, any of it. Keep it as—people. Friends. That's all she gets right now."
"Friends," Nora repeats, like she's filing it away. "Got it." She turns back to the mugs. "Now go talk to her before she starts thinking you're avoiding her."
The lodge has gone quiet by the time I come back through its main seating section.
Lila has settled at the far end with her notebook, and Nora has moved outside.
Harper is still at the table, both hands around her mug, looking out the window at the treeline with the quiet, focused appearance of someone doing math they haven't solved yet.
I pull out the chair across from her and sit down.
She looks over, and there's that beat again—the small shift before her features settle. I've started cataloguing those without meaning to.
"Garrett thinks the part will be here tomorrow," I say. "Day after at the latest."
"Okay." She turns the mug in her hands. "And then how long will it take to fix it?"
"Few hours. Depends on whether anything else took heat damage." I keep my voice easy. "Once it's done, I'll drive you to town myself. You don't have to sort out the logistics on your own."
She looks at me. "You don't have to do that."
"I know."
"Logan." The particular weight she puts on my name when she's about to push back. "You've already done more than—the car, the room, all of it. You don't owe me anything."
"I know that too," I say. "I'm still driving you."
She holds her position, stubborn and considering, and then something in her jaw releases by a fraction. "Okay," she says quietly. "Thank you."
I nod. Around us, the lodge has gone to the soft, quiet of a morning settling into itself—the distant sounds of Garrett's garage, wind moving through the pines outside the window.
Harper looks back out at the treeline. "I'm not planning on staying," she says.
Matter-of-fact, no apology, no performance—a clear statement so there's no room for confusion.
"I want to be upfront about that. I have to rebuild.
My job, my apartment, all of it. There's a whole life I have to put back together. "
"I understand," I say.
She looks at me like she expected more resistance. "Okay."
"You don't owe me a plan. You don't owe me anything." I mean every word, even the ones that cost me something to say out loud. "Town, and then wherever you need to go. That's all."
She's quiet for a moment. Something moves across her face—unguarded, unexamined, and gone before I can give it a title. She looks back at her coffee.
After a beat, almost to herself: "I didn't expect it to feel like this here."
I wait.
She shakes her head slightly, like she's decided against saying more, and wraps both hands tighter around the mug. "Never mind. I'm tired." Almost a smile. "Or maybe it's the good moisturizer. Hard to say."
I let that sit, and the quiet between us is easy in a way I don't take for granted.
Harper pushes back from the table a few minutes later, carries her mug to the kitchen, says something to Lila that makes her look up from her journal with a warm smile, and drifts toward the window on the far side of the lodge.
I stay where I am and watch her go, and when I glance toward the kitchen, I find Nora watching me with a look that is doing too many things at once.
They heard enough. Maybe not all of it, but enough.
I push back from the table and cross to Nora. She turns to the counter as if she were doing something there all along, which fools neither of us.
"Keep an eye on her," I say, low. "Not hovering. Just—"
"I know what just means." She doesn't turn around. Then, quieter: "I've got her, Logan."
Something about hearing it said that plainly settles something in my chest that's been running loud all morning.
"I'm stepping out for a bit," I say.
"Go," Nora says simply.
I head for the door, and behind me the lodge carries on—Nora's voice picking back up, easy and warm; Lila's pen moving; and the sounds of a morning that has quietly, without anyone announcing it, started to include someone new.
I step outside into the cold mountain air and stand on the porch and look out at the treeline and the mountain that has been mine my whole life, and I think about what it would mean to watch someone drive away from it and carry a piece of it with them without knowing.
I think about the way she said, I didn't expect it to feel like this here, and then pulled it back before it could mean anything.
Maybe it already means something.
I'll want it quietly. The way the mountain wants things—no urgency, no demand. Just the steady certainty that some things are worth the wait, and this is one of them.
I stand there a while longer than I need to.
And I let myself hope she decides to come back.