Chapter Ten
NASH
Friends.
The word tastes like weak coffee, lukewarm, unsatisfying, leaving a bitter residue on the back of my tongue.
I watch Aris move through the spruce thicket ahead of me. She's navigating the deep snow with a grace she didn't possess a week ago, placing her snowshoes carefully to minimize noise, her body angled to protect the expensive camera gear strapped to her chest.
She looks like she belongs here.
She's reading wind direction without licking a finger. She's eating dried venison jerky (though she still calls it "survival protein" to make herself feel better). She's making jokes about a caribou named after a cartoon character.
And she's walking away from me.
Technically, we're walking together toward the basin where Waldo has bedded down, but metaphorically? Every step she takes feels like practice for the day she walks toward the floatplane that will take her back to Seattle.
Friends.
"Nash," she whispers, raising a fist in the silent signal for stop.
I freeze instantly, sinking onto one knee in the snow. "What do you see?"
She lowers her hand and points toward a stand of willow saplings about fifty yards out. "Browse marks. Fresh. The bark is stripped clean, but the wood hasn't oxidized yet. It's still white."
I move up beside her, checking the sign. She's right. The willow branches have been shredded, the inner cambium layer exposed and bright against the gray winter landscape.
"Good eye," I murmur. "Less than an hour old."
She beams at the praise, small and quick, and it lands square in my chest. "I have a good teacher."
"You're a quick study. Most people need a season to spot browse that subtle."
"Thaddeus taught me to look for color changes," she says, shifting her weight. "He said nature paints in muted tones, so anything bright is usually a sign of disruption. Broken branches, fresh earth, blood."
"He was right about that." I scan the perimeter, my eyes automatically searching for the third item on her list. "We're close. If they're feeding this heavily, they're refueling after the storm."
"Waldo will be in the center," she says, pulling up the GPS data on her wrist unit. "He keeps the cows on the perimeter when they feed. It's the opposite of his bedding strategy."
"Smart. He uses them as sentries while he eats, then protects them while they sleep."
"It's a symbiotic trade-off," she says, tapping the screen. "He provides the navigation and the trail-breaking; they provide the early warning system."
"Sounds like a marriage." It's out before I can stop it.
The air between us goes still.
Aris looks up from her wrist, her eyes wide. "I … I suppose it does."
"Sorry," I say, turning back to the willow. "Bad analogy."
"No," she says quickly. "It's apt. Partnership. Reliance. Shared resources."
She's rationalizing it, breaking it down into biological terms to make it safe. I can practically hear her brain categorizing marriage under socio-biological contracts rather than emotional risks.
"Let's move," I say, standing up. "If we flank the ridge, we can get above them without scenting the herd."
We move out, falling back into the rhythm that has become our new normal. We anticipate each other's movements, hand off gear without asking, communicate in shorthand and gestures.
It feels like we've been doing this for years.
And that terrifies me more than any blizzard ever could.
We reach the overlook point an hour later. It's a granite shelf jutting out from the mountainside, offering a perfect amphitheater view of the basin below.
And there he is.
Waldo, hub-deep in a feeding crater he's dug to reach the moss, massive shoulders working like pistons. Beside me, Aris's camera shutter clicks rapidly, a mechanical heartbeat in the silence.
"He keeps checking the ridgeline," I say. "Three bites, scan. Three bites, scan. He's not relaxing." I sweep the wider valley with my glasses and find nothing but pristine snow, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up anyway. "He knows something is out there."
We spend the afternoon documenting. I watch Aris work, and it's like watching an artist. She's focused, locked in, completely absorbed in the data. She records feeding intervals, social interactions, defecation rates. She's building a profile of a ghost, turning a legend into science.
"I need to swap the memory card," she says around two o'clock, sitting back on her heels and stretching her neck. "My fingers are freezing."
"Here." I hand her a chemical heat pack from my pocket. "Stick that in your gloves for a minute."
"Thanks." She takes it, and our fingers brush.
Friends. We're friends.
I pull my hand back, grabbing my thermos. "You realize what happens when you publish this, right?"
"What do you mean?"
"This research. Proving he exists. Proving he has a unique migration pattern." I pour coffee into the cup and hand it to her. "You're going to be famous. In biology circles, anyway."
She blows on the coffee, her breath misting. "That's the goal. Not the fame. The funding. If I can prove Waldo represents a genetic adaptation to climate change, I can get the grant renewed for another three years. I can expand the study to the Porcupine herd."
"Three years," I repeat. "That's a lot of trips to Alaska."
"Or a permanent move," she says, staring into the cup. "I've been running my end of the department from Seattle since I finished my PhD up here. If the grant's big enough … I could come back and base myself on campus instead of phoning it in from two thousand miles south."
My heart does a stupid, hopeful flip. Fairbanks is a hundred and fifty miles away, but it's a hell of a lot closer than Seattle.
"You'd move here?" I ask, trying to keep my voice casual. "Give up the lattes and the paved roads?"
"I'm starting to think paved roads are overrated," she says, looking up at me. "And the lattes … well, your cowboy coffee is growing on me."
"It's not cowboy coffee," I defend automatically. "It's a French press. I'm not a savage."
She laughs, and the sound rings clear and bright in the cold air. "Fairbanks has coffee shops, Nash. It's a city. Just … a colder one."
"With moose in the parking lots."
"Exactly. Best of both worlds."
She hands the cup back to me, her expression softening. "It's just a thought. A possibility. Depends on the data."
"Well," I say, capping the thermos. "Let's get you good data."
We turn back to the basin, the mood lighter. Hope is a dangerous thing, Granddad used to say. It's the only thing that can kill you faster than cold. But sitting here, hearing that she might not be disappearing forever … it feels like the sun coming out.
"Nash," Aris says sharply. "Look at the cows."
I bring my binoculars up instantly.
The three females have stopped feeding. They've formed a tight triangle, their backs to the center, heads outward. Their ears are swiveling like radar dishes.
"They're bunching," I say. "Defensive formation."
"Waldo is moving," Aris reports. "He's pushing the young bull into the center. He's … Nash, he's facing the tree line."
I follow the bull's gaze. He's standing rigid, head high, staring fixedly at a patch of dense timber on the far side of the basin.
"What does he see?" Aris whispers.
I scan the tree line and find nothing, just shadows and snow.
And then a shape peels away from the darkness.
It's gray, massive, and moves with a fluid, predatory lope that chills my blood.
"Wolf," I say.
"One?" Aris asks. "May said there was a pack."
"One visible," I correct. "That's the scout. He shows himself to get their attention, to make them panic and run."
"Run where?"
"Into the trap," I say grimly. "If they run, they'll head for the open ground in the valley floor. Deep snow. Hard running."
"And the rest of the pack is waiting there," Aris finishes.
"Exactly."
The wolf stops at the edge of the clearing and sits down in the snow, watching the caribou with a calm, arrogant patience that makes my skin crawl.
"He's huge," Aris breathes.
"And confident. He's not hiding. He wants them to know he's there."
Waldo isn't running. The big bull stands his ground, snorting vapor, shaking his antlers. He takes a step toward the wolf, a challenge.
The wolf doesn't flinch. He yawns.
"This isn't right," I mutter. "Wolves don't engage a healthy bull unless they have the numbers to back it up. This pack is either desperate or incredibly organized. Probably both. It's been a starvation winter, and they're shadowing the only herd still worth following."
"Should we … do something?" Aris asks. "Fire a warning shot? Scare them off?"
"Interfering with predation isn't the job, Aris," I say, gentle but firm. "We're observers. Remember?"
"But if they kill him …"
"Then the study is over. And nature takes its course."
She grips the camera, her knuckles white. I know what she's feeling: the urge to save him, the urge to protect the thing she loves.
I feel the same urge every time I look at her.
"They're not attacking," I note. "It's a siege."
The standoff lasts twenty agonizing minutes, the caribou frozen in their defensive knot, the wolf still as a statue.
Then, slowly, the wolf stands. He turns his back on the herd, the ultimate insult, and trots back into the trees.
The herd explodes into motion, but not away from the trees. Waldo drives them parallel to the ridge, keeping to the high ground, moving fast toward the rocky scree where the footing is treacherous, but the snow is thin.
"He didn't take the bait," I say, impressed. "He knew the trap was in the valley."
"He's smart," Aris says, breathing again at last. "He outsmarted them."
"For today," I say. "But that wolf … he wasn't disappointed. He was testing them."
I pack up my binoculars, a cold knot forming in my stomach that the temperature can't explain.
"What do you mean?"
"He was checking their reaction time. Seeing who was slow. Seeing which way they'd run." I look at Aris, needing her to understand the gravity of this. "That wasn't a hunt, Aris. That was reconnaissance."
"Reconnaissance? You make them sound like soldiers."
"A pack that coordinated? A pack that isn't afraid to show itself to humans?" I gesture to our exposed position on the ridge. "He saw us, Aris. He looked right at us before he went back into the trees."
"He saw us?" She pales slightly.
"May was right. This isn't a normal pack. They've lost their fear."
I shoulder my pack, checking the rifle scabbard on the sled. It's secure, but suddenly it feels inadequate.
"We need to move camp," I say. "We're too exposed here. If they're working this ridgeline, we're in their territory."
"But we need to stay close to Waldo," Aris argues. "If they attack tonight …"
"If they attack tonight, there's nothing we can do about it from a mile away except listen." I grab her arm, maybe a little too hard. "We are moving. Now."
She looks at me, surprised by the edge in my voice. Then she nods, the professional mask sliding back into place.
"Okay. You're the guide."
"Yeah," I say, looking back at the dark tree line where the gray shape vanished. "I am."
We pack up in silence, the earlier lightness of the afternoon gone. The banter about coffee and Fairbanks feels like a distant memory.
As we ride back to the sleds, I keep one hand near the throttle and one eye on the woods. The wilderness feels different now, less like country to cross and more like a chessboard.
And as much as I want to believe we're just observers … I have a nasty feeling we just became pieces in the game.