Chapter Three
ARIS
The smell of oatmeal drifts up to the loft, cutting through the cold.
I lie still, buried under a geological layer of quilts—three, to be exact—plus a wool blanket that smells faintly of woodsmoke and history. I stare up at the rough-hewn beams of the ceiling, watching my breath plume in the frigid air, and try to take stock of my situation.
I am in a cabin on an island ninety miles from the nearest paved road. I am about to embark on a weeks-long expedition into wolf country with a man whose primary modes of communication seem to be grunts and intense eye contact. And I am starving.
My stomach gives a traitorous, audible lurch.
I've been awake since before dawn, listening to the wind claw at the roof and wondering if I've made a terrible mistake.
The few vegetables I managed to choke down last night, refusing Nash's venison stew out of a stubborn mix of principle and nausea, feel like a distant memory.
My body is running on fumes, adrenaline, and moral superiority.
Unfortunately, as I am rapidly discovering, moral superiority has a very low caloric density.
Below me, the cabin is waking up. The woodstove groans as the metal expands with fresh heat. Heavy boots thump-scrape across timber, a spoon clinks against ceramic, and under it all runs the low, steady hum of a man who is comfortable in his own space.
"Breakfast is ready," Nash's voice calls up.
There's no impatience in his tone, only a calm notification of fact. It's the voice of a man who knows the sun will rise, the snow will fall, and city girls will eventually have to come down from the loft if they want caffeine.
I throw off the quilts, shivering violently as the cabin air hits my skin.
I dress quickly, layering like someone who has realized that "fashion" is a concept that died south of the Arctic Circle.
Thermal base layer. Wool shirt. Fleece pullover.
The heavy cargo pants that still feel stiff and new, making a swish-swish sound when I move that screams "tourist."
I braid my hair with fingers that feel clumsy in the cold, catching my reflection in the small, warped mirror bolted to the wall.
I look … fierce. Or maybe haggard. There are dark circles under my eyes, and my skin is pale, wind-chapped from the snowmobile ride yesterday. I look like a tenure-track professor who has been dropped into a Jack London novel and is currently waiting for the credits to roll.
Fake it until you make it, Thaddeus used to say. Or at least until you get the data.
I climb down the ladder. The loft overlooks the main room, and as I descend, the heat of the woodstove rises to meet me.
Nash is standing by the kitchen counter.
He's wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, because apparently he's immune to hypothermia, revealing forearms that look like they were carved out of oak and hard work.
He's drinking coffee, leaning against the counter with a relaxed grace that irritates me.
He looks like a part of the ecosystem, while I feel like an invasive species.
"Morning," he says, watching me reach the floor. "Sleep well?"
"Fine," I lie. I slept in twenty-minute intervals, listening for wolves and wondering if the woodstove was going to fail and leave me frozen in a pose of academic regret.
"Good. We have a long day." He nods toward the rough-hewn pine table. "Eat."
I look at the table. He has set a place for me. Not just a bowl, but a place. A ceramic bowl steams gently, filled with oatmeal. Beside it is a small jar of brown sugar and the powdered milk I assume he keeps for clients who need it. There's a spoon on a napkin.
The gesture catches me completely off guard.
After last night's awkwardness, me lecturing him on the ethics of factory farming while he quietly ate the deer he killed with his own hands, I expected professional distance, or a protein bar thrown in my direction.
I expected him to tell me that if I wanted to eat leaves, I could go forage in the snow.
I did not expect a hot breakfast.
"You didn't have to do this," I say, walking over to the table. I feel a sudden, sharp pang of guilt for every judgment I made about him yesterday.
"Part of the service," he says, moving to pour himself more coffee. His back is to me, but I can hear the shrug in his voice. "Can't have my clients collapsing from hypoglycemia on day one. It's bad for the insurance premiums."
I sit down. The oatmeal is thick, studded with dried cranberries and walnuts. It smells of cinnamon and comfort.
I take a bite. The sweetness explodes across my tongue. It's warm, substantial, and uncomplicated. It tastes like something I'm not ready to be grateful for.
I finish the entire bowl in under five minutes. I scrape the bottom with my spoon, fighting the urge to pick up the ceramic and lick it.
When I look up, Nash is watching me over the rim of his mug. He's leaning back against the counter, ankles crossed. There's no judgment in his eyes, but something quick and not quite hidden there makes my spine stiffen.
"Better?" he asks.
"Yes," I admit, pushing the bowl away. "Thank you. Really."
"Don't thank me yet. You haven't seen the itinerary." He sets his mug down with a solid thud. "We need to load the gear. Weather is holding, but the pressure is dropping. I want to be at the tree line by noon."
The next hour is a blur of organized chaos. We ferry equipment from the cabin to the sleds waiting outside. The air is biting, sharp enough to freeze the moisture in my nose instantly, but the sky is a brilliant, hard blue that makes the snow blinding, every surface throwing light.
I run my fingers over each piece of my monitoring equipment as I pack it into the Pelican cases.
The collar release transmitter. The satellite receiver.
The solar chargers. The empty case I'll bring his old collar home in.
Each component represents months of grant writing, begging, and negotiating with university boards who think "fieldwork" means a conference in San Diego.
Nash watches me pack. He doesn't offer to help with the tech.
He seems to understand that this is my domain, my magic.
But he watches me the way he watches the trail—like nothing gets past him.
He checks the straps on the fuel cans. He checks the oil levels in the snowmobiles.
He moves with an economy of motion that suggests he has done this a thousand times.
Into the side pocket of the near sled, without comment, he tucks a flat zippered pouch—compressed washcloths and a sleeve of field wipes.
Practical. The kind of thing you only know to pack if you have actually spent months in the backcountry.
"You trust that casing?" he asks, pointing to the transmitter box I'm securing.
"It's rated for forty below," I say defensively. "Military grade."
"It's plastic," he counters. "Plastic gets brittle in the wind chill. Keep it wrapped in the wool blanket inside the case. Vibration will crack it otherwise."
I hesitate. I want to argue. I want to tell him that I have a PhD, and I know how to pack a box. But I look at the cracked handle of his own shovel, wrapped in duct tape, and realize he knows exactly what the cold does to materials.
"Fine," I say, grabbing a spare wool blanket and wrapping the transmitter. "Good tip."
"Just physics," he says, turning to the sled. "Cold makes things fragile. People included."
We're tightening the final ratchet straps when a sound cuts through the silence of the valley.
It starts as a low whine, like a mosquito buzzing in your ear, then grows into a high-pitched roar that rolls down the valley.
I look up, shielding my eyes against the glare. A snowmobile is tearing across the white expanse of the lake. It's moving fast, too fast, throwing up a massive rooster tail of powder in its wake.
Nash doesn't look surprised. He doesn't even look up from the knot he's tying.
"May," he says simply.
"May?"
"May Sweeney. She runs the diner in town. And the post office. And the rumor mill. Usually from the same counter."
The snowmobile roars up the bank, catching air as it hits the rise, and skids to a halt ten feet from us in a spray of ice crystals. The engine dies, and the silence rushes back in, ringing in my ears.
The driver climbs off. She's a woman of indeterminate age, somewhere between fifty and timeless.
She's wearing a massive fur hat that adds six inches to her height, and a parka that looks like it has survived several wars and possibly a bear attack.
She moves with the bowlegged swagger of a woman who learned to walk on frozen ground and never quite trusted dry land after.
She marches straight up to Nash, ignores his outstretched hand, and smacks him hard on the arm.
"You didn't answer your radio," she accuses. Her voice is like gravel in a blender—rough, loud, and impossible to ignore.
"I was busy," Nash says, rubbing his bicep. "I had the radio off."
"You were brooding," she corrects. "I know your brooding face, Nash Hollister. You turn the radio off so you can stare at the mountains and feel tragic about your life choices."
She turns those laser-focused blue eyes on me. I feel suddenly like I'm being scanned by an MRI machine that detects fear and insecurity.
"And this must be the doctor," she says. "The one causing all the fuss."
"Dr. Aris Thorne," I say, stepping forward and extending a gloved hand. "I hope I'm not causing a fuss."
"Honey, in Port Promise, a new face is a fuss. A new face with a PhD and a government grant is a headline. If you sneeze, three people in town will offer you a Kleenex before you're done inhaling."
She shakes my hand firmly. Her grip is like iron.
"I'm May," she says. "If you need food, mail, or to know who is sleeping with whom, you come to me. If you need anything else, you're in the wrong town."