Chapter Six
NASH
Watching Aris track across the snow puts a hitch in my breathing that the cold can't explain.
Three days into our expedition, she's learned to read the landscape the way survivors do. Her movements have gained purpose, efficiency. The desperate hunger that marked her first days has given way to steady strength, and the fish she finally agreed to eat has put color back in her cheeks.
She drops to a crouch beside the prints, one gloved finger tracing the outline without disturbing the snow.
"These are deeper than the others we've been following," she says, low.
"Heavier animal," I confirm, studying the track pattern. "Probably male, mature."
"Could it be him?" Her voice carries hope wrapped in scientific caution, like she's afraid to want too much.
I examine the stride length, the spacing between prints, the way the hooves dug into the frozen ground. The tracks tell a story of an animal moving with purpose but not panic, eating up ground the way animals do when they've walked this route before.
"Could be. Size is right, and the gait suggests an older bull who's comfortable in this country."
Aris fires off photographs from every angle, her tablet pinging with each capture.
The sound should feel intrusive in the wilderness quiet, but I've grown accustomed to her methodical documentation.
Everything matters to her research; every detail could be the piece that makes sense of three years of tracking.
She stands up, brushing snow from her knees, but as she shifts her weight to turn, her left boot catches on a buried root. She stumbles hard.
"Whoa," I say, lunging forward to catch her arm before she goes down.
"I'm okay," she says quickly, righting herself. But she winces when she puts weight on her left foot. "My snowshoe … it feels loose."
I look down. The binding on her left shoe has worked itself free, the nylon strap trailing in the powder. It's a rookie mistake, not checking the tension after the leather gets wet and expands, but looking at the fatigue lines around her eyes, I don't have the heart to lecture her.
"Hold still," I say.
I drop to my knees in the snow at her feet.
"I can get it," she says, bending down.
"No, stay standing. If you bend over with that pack on, you'll topple over." I bat her hands away gently. "Let me do it."
She freezes, standing tall while I work at her feet. I strip off my heavy outer gloves, needing the dexterity of my liner gloves to work the frozen buckle.
I wrap one hand around her ankle to steady her boot. Even through the layers of wool and leather, the contact feels electric. Her leg is solid, the muscle tense beneath my grip as she balances.
"You have to double-back the strap when it's wet," I explain, my voice sounding rougher than I intended. I pull the nylon tight, yanking hard to secure it. "Otherwise, the ice works it loose."
"Physics," she murmurs.
"Friction," I correct.
I thread the strap through the buckle and lock it down. But instead of letting go, my hand lingers on her calf. I look up.
From this angle, me on my knees, her looming above me, the perspective is all wrong.
She should look imposing. Instead, she looks breathless.
Her cheeks are flushed red from the wind, her lips parted slightly.
She's looking down at me with an expression that is wide open and terrified and hungry all at once.
It's a submissive posture for me to be in, kneeling in the snow, but the power dynamic feels completely different. I'm anchoring her. She's letting me.
For a long beat, the only sound is the wind in the spruce and the harsh rasp of our breathing.
"Nash," she whispers.
I could stand up. I could brush the snow off my knees and tell her we need to keep moving.
Instead, I slowly slide my hand up the side of her leg, just to the knee. A test. A question.
She doesn't pull away. She leans into my touch, her breath hitching, her eyes dilating even in the bright snow-glare.
"Is it fixed?" she asks, her voice trembling.
"Yeah," I say, my eyes locked on hers. "It's tight. You aren't going anywhere."
I stand up slowly, letting my body brush against hers as I rise. We're standing chest to chest now, the heat radiating between us almost enough to melt the permafrost.
"We should …" she starts, then clears her throat. "We should keep moving. The weather is turning."
She's right. The sky to the west is bruising purple, heavy with unfallen snow. But stepping away from her feels like tearing a magnet off a fridge.
"Right," I say, forcing myself to step back. "Weather."
We push on down the trail, but the air has changed. The cold carries a charge now.
"Tell me more about him," I say after a mile of silence, needing to fill the space with something other than the sound of my own pulse.
She glances at me, grateful for the distraction. "What do you want to know?"
"What made him special enough to inspire this kind of dedication."
The question hangs between us while she considers how much to reveal. We've moved past the professional boundaries we started with, but she still guards pieces of herself like they're too precious to risk.
"He saw connections others missed," she says finally. "Could look at migration patterns and predict resource availability, population dynamics, climate impacts. He understood systems instead of just individual components."
"Sounds like a good teacher."
"He was brilliant. But more than that, he believed science could actually change things. Make them better." She brushes the toe of her boot against the binding I fixed earlier. "Most academics publish papers that twelve people read. Thaddeus wanted research that mattered."
"And Waldo was his proof."
"Waldo was his legacy." Her voice catches on the words, and I understand that this expedition is about more than completing research. It's about honoring a man who shaped her into the scientist she's become.
The wind picks up, carrying the sharp bite of snow from higher elevations.
I scan the sky, reading the signs that suggest weather changes ahead.
We have maybe six hours before the front moves through, which means we need to find shelter or risk getting caught in conditions that could strand us for days.
"We should keep moving," I say, but I don't start walking yet. She's holding herself like there's more she wants to say.
"Nash?" She meets my eyes, and I catch vulnerability beneath her usual professional composure. "Do you think I'm crazy for doing this? Chasing one animal across half of Alaska?"
The honesty in the question demands equal honesty in return.
"I think you're dedicated to keeping a promise. That's not crazy, it's rare."
"But impractical?"
"Practical is overrated." I adjust my pack straps. "Most important things people do aren't practical."
The corner of her mouth lifts, small and tired, and we continue following the tracks across a series of ridges that offer stunning views of the valley below.
The landscape opens up in all directions, endless white punctuated by dark patches of forest, mountains rising like cathedral spires in the distance. It's country that humbles you with its scale, reminds you how small human concerns become against the backdrop of geological time.
Aris moves through the terrain, reading the signs I've been teaching her without needing instruction. She spots the depression where animals bedded down for the night, notices the browsing marks on willow branches, points out the subtle trail that leads toward water.
"You're learning," I say, watching her kneel beside a scrap of fur caught on a low branch.
"I have a good teacher." She examines the sample, holding it up to the light. "This looks like caribou hair."
"Recent too. Maybe this morning."
Before I finish speaking, she has already capped the tube and labeled it, sliding it into her chest pocket with practiced efficiency.
The excitement in her face transforms her completely.
Gone is the defensive academic who arrived three days ago, replaced by someone alive with possibility.
Her cheeks are flushed from cold and exertion, her eyes bright with the focus of someone exactly where she belongs.
And I need to stop noticing how beautiful she looks when she's in her element.
"How close do you think we are?" she asks, scanning the trail ahead with binoculars.
"Hard to say. Could be hours, could be days. Tracking isn't an exact science."
"But you think we're on the right trail?"
"I think we're following something worth following."
She lowers the binoculars, studying my face with an intensity that makes my pulse quicken again, echoing the moment back on the trail when I was at her feet.
"What made you become a guide? This doesn't seem like work you fall into by accident."
The question catches me off guard. Most clients don't ask about my background beyond confirming I can keep them alive. They want services, not personal history.
"I grew up here," I say, testing how much truth I want to share. "My grandfather taught me to read the land, understand how everything connects. It seemed natural to make a living from what I already knew."
"That's not the whole story."
No, it's not. The whole story includes a mother we lost last year after a long fight, a father still at the house on Hollister Road and still standing, a sister married off to a good man at Serenity Cove with their first baby on her hip, an oldest brother raising his own girl just up the ridge, and the rest of us brothers half-raising each other on stubbornness and wilderness skills.
"My family's been in these mountains for three generations," I say instead. "Logging, trapping, guiding. We take what the land offers and give back what we can."
"The caribou on your wall, that was your grandfather's?"