Chapter 5 Pine Harbor
Nora POV
Pine Harbor smelled like cold water and diesel.
I came down the last hill with my window cracked and the lake opened up below me, dark blue stretching to the horizon.
The town clung to the slope between pine forest and shoreline, steep streets lined with weathered storefronts and houses worn by decades of Superior’s weather.
Fishing boats rocked at the docks. I picked out a church steeple, a gas station, and a bar with its neon sign turned off in daylight.
My truck’s engine missed on the grade, caught, missed again. The bearing hummed its warning. I’d been driving since first light, and the broken sleep at the overlook sat behind my eyes like sand.
Through the bond, Rafe was an irritation. Distant. Angry about something, or about me. I didn’t care which. The ache in my chest had settled into background noise, the kind of pain you stop noticing until a stray thought finds it.
The thought of Delia brought it back. I pushed her out of my mind.
The road curved along the waterfront and narrowed where the commercial buildings gave way to marine supply shops and a bait store with hand-painted signs.
I could see the boatyard ahead, a cluster of service bays and storage sheds beside the docks, boats up on cradles in the yard, a hydraulic lift standing beside a trawler settled onto blocks.
Karlsson Boatyard. The sign was plain, bolted to a post.
I never reached it.
Traffic stopped. Which, in a town this size, meant three trucks and a sedan lined up behind a flatbed boat hauler that had died in the middle of the access road.
The hauler was a heavy rig with a twenty-odd-foot trailer carrying a center-console fishing boat, and it sat at an angle that blocked both lanes.
The driver stood beside the cab with his phone in his hand, glaring at the dead rig.
I pulled onto the gravel shoulder, killed my engine, and got out.
The driver was a wiry older man in canvas work pants and a fleece vest, and he looked at me the way people look at anyone who approaches a problem they’ve already decided is unsolvable.
“Fuel line,” I said before he could tell me to move along. I’d heard the engine die from fifty yards back. The miss, the sputter, the way it quit all at once instead of winding down. “Something in the fuel line, or the line itself.”
He blinked. “You a mechanic?”
“I fix things.” I was already walking to the front of the hauler. “Pop the hood?”
He hesitated, looked at the line of trucks behind his rig, then reached inside the cab and pulled the release.
The engine was a big six-cylinder diesel, dirty but not neglected.
I found the problem in under a minute. Someone had patched a cracked fuel line with electrical tape and a hose clamp.
The tape had softened in the engine heat and shifted, and fuel was weeping down the side of the engine.
The smell hit me before I saw the wet metal, and I pulled my hand back fast.
“Who did this repair?” I asked.
“Kid at the marina. Last week.”
“This could have caught fire.”
“That bad?”
I looked at the patch. Electrical tape on a fuel line, cinched with a clamp that was too small for the diameter.
“I can get you running,” I said. “Give me ten minutes.”
I went back to my truck and dug through my toolbox.
I didn’t have a replacement fuel line, but I had a length of fuel-rated rubber hose from a repair I’d done on a skid steer back in Iron River, a couple of proper hose clamps, and a utility knife.
Good enough for a temporary fix that wouldn’t kill anyone.
I slid under the hauler’s front end on my back, the gravel cold and sharp through my flannel.
The chassis was higher than a car but lower than I liked, and I worked by feel as much as sight, stripping the failed tape, cutting the damaged section out of the line, and fitting the rubber hose as a splice.
I set both clamps in place, tightened the first, and was reaching for the nut driver I’d left on the crossmember when a new scent cut through the fuel and road dust and engine grease.
Pine. Lake water. Beneath both ran a steady warmth that hit the back of my throat and made my wolf lift her head for the first time since the ceremony.
Her attention locked on the scent with a force she usually reserved for something that mattered.
I went still under the hauler. Heavy, broken-in work boots appeared at the edge of my vision. The legs above them were solid, planted in the stance of someone who carried real weight and was used to it.
“Toivo said a woman crawled under his rig and started cutting fuel lines.” The voice was low, unhurried, with the flat vowels of the Upper Peninsula.
“I’m putting them back together,” I said from under the truck. “The person who damaged it was whoever wrapped a fuel line in electrical tape.”
A pause. Then: “That’d be my seasonal hand. He quit on me in August and the marina picked him up.”
I tightened the second clamp, tested the splice one more time, and slid out from under the hauler. Gravel bit into my shoulder blades. I sat up, pushed hair out of my face, and looked at the man standing over me.
He was big, broad and deep through the chest where Rafe was tall and lean, his frame built by years of physical work.
Sandy hair, a beard that was neatly kept without being fussy, brown eyes that watched me with a patience that felt deliberate.
He wore a heavy canvas jacket over a flannel shirt, work pants, and those battered boots.
His scent reached me again, and my wolf crowded forward with an urgency that made no sense. I already had a mate bond aching in my chest. Whatever she sensed in this stranger had to be something else.
But my wolf didn’t care about logic. She cared about scent, and this man’s scent was doing something to her that I didn’t understand and couldn’t afford to examine right now, not on my knees in gravel with fuel on my hands and no job and nowhere to sleep tonight.
I stood, brushed off my jeans, and met his eyes.
“Wade Karlsson?” I said.
“That’s right.”
The quiet authority in his bearing told me what the woman at the gas station hadn’t: he was Pine Harbor’s Alpha as well as the yard’s owner.
His expression was reserved and assessing. “You know engines.”
“I know engines.” I held up the section of damaged fuel line I’d cut out. “Whoever taught your seasonal hand didn’t know enough to touch a fuel system.”
The corners of his eyes creased, though his mouth stayed still.
“Where’d you train?” he asked.
I could have lied. Could have given him a version of the truth that left out the parts that would make a stranger wary. But I was tired of people arranging the truth around me, and if Wade Karlsson was going to turn me away, I wanted him to do it with his eyes open.
“Nora Keane,” I said. “Gordon Keane’s elder daughter, Iron River. Rafe Sutherland rejected me two nights ago at the mating ceremony, in front of both packs. He chose my younger sister. I haven’t accepted the rejection, and the bond is still open.”
The boat hauler’s driver was staring at me. One of the truck drivers behind us had gotten out and was pretending to check his mirrors while he listened. Wade Karlsson’s expression didn’t change.
“Why haven’t you accepted?” he asked.
“Because nobody asked me what I wanted before they rearranged my life, and I’m done making things easy for people who don’t extend me the same courtesy.”
Wade looked from the splice I’d made to my hands, then back to my face.
I wiped away the spilled fuel with a clean rag. Then Toivo climbed into the cab at my signal and turned the engine over. I crouched beside the open hood while it caught, watching the splice through a minute of rough idle. The connection stayed dry.
“What else can you fix?” Wade said.
Toivo closed the hood and eased the hauler through the boatyard gate. The waiting traffic started moving behind him.
? ? ?
The boatyard was built for work. The service bays had oil-stained concrete floors.
The tool pegboards showed gaps between the wrenches.
A hydraulic lift needed its seals checked, and a marine diesel sat half stripped on a stand in the corner.
The air smelled like the lake, motor oil, anti-seize compound, and the exhaust of a hundred outboard motors.
It felt like home in a way that made my throat tight.
Wade walked me through the bays without saying much.
He pointed at things. I told him what I saw.
Milky residue beneath the diesel’s rocker cover suggested a failed head gasket, and I would pull the injectors before a compression test. The lift’s hydraulic system was leaking at the base cylinder.
A truck winch near the door had its cable winding hard to one side, which meant its fairlead or drum was out of alignment.
The outboard on the workbench showed signs of overheating.
“Stopped pumping water in June,” Wade said, nodding at the outboard.
“I’d start with the impeller. I can have it out by this afternoon.” I ran my hand along the cowling. It was a commercial-grade Yamaha, well used. “Assuming you’ve got a replacement.”
“Parts room’s through the back. Take what you need.”
He said it like he’d already decided. He hadn’t asked for a formal interview, requested references, or called Gordon to verify my training.
I’d fixed a fuel line on the road, identified problems in his shop without being told what to look for, and told him the truth about who I was.
That was enough, or at least enough to start.
“I can offer temporary work,” Wade said. He stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching me with the same careful patience he’d shown when I was under the hauler. “There’s a room for you in the pack house while you figure out what’s next. We’ll take it a week at a time.”
“I don’t want charity.”
“It’s not charity. I need a mechanic. You need a paycheck.” He paused. “Pine Harbor takes in wolves who need a place to stand. That’s what we do. But nobody stays who doesn’t pull their weight, and nobody gets a free ride because of who hurt them.”
He offered a practical exchange without pity or careful tiptoeing around what had happened to me. My labor would earn wages and shelter, one week at a time, so neither of us was trapped.
My wolf surged forward again when his scent reached me. I ignored her.
“One week,” I said. “Wages and the room. We’ll see how it goes.”
Wade nodded once and turned toward the office. The conversation was apparently over.
A voice came from behind me. “So you’re the one who fixed Toivo’s hauler on the road.”
I turned. The man leaning in the service bay doorway was younger than Wade, dark curls falling over his forehead, olive skin, dark eyes, and a crooked grin that made him look like he was about to say something that would get him in trouble.
He wore jeans and a thermal shirt with the sleeves pushed up, and he carried himself like someone who was comfortable in his own skin and wanted everyone else to be comfortable too.
“Jules Duquette,” he said, extending a hand. “Beta. I cook, and I help Wade keep the place running.”
I shook his hand. His grip was firm and easy, no dominance test, no lingering. “Nora Keane.”
“Toivo told me.” He stepped past me and looked at the outboard on the workbench, then at the marine diesel on the stand, then back at me with raised eyebrows. “Please tell me you actually know what to do with these.”
“The outboard probably needs a water pump impeller. The diesel may need a new head gasket, and I’d pull the injectors before testing it.”
“And the fuel line on Toivo’s hauler?”
“Spliced with fuel-rated hose and proper clamps. The original patch was electrical tape and a hose clamp from a hardware store.”
“Electrical tape. On a fuel line.” Jules rubbed a hand over his face. “That was Eino, our summer guy. I told Wade he was going to burn something down before he quit.”
“He nearly did. Another week, and Toivo would’ve been walking home.”
Jules laughed, the sound bouncing off the bay walls, and a half-smile slipped out of me before I could stop it.
“The pack house is up the hill,” he said, pointing. “I’ll show you the room later. There are towels, sheets, and other basics. The kitchen’s open. You’re eating with us tonight, and before you say you don’t want to impose, I’m making a roast and there’s enough for the whole house.”
“I don’t want to impose,” I said, because he’d specifically told me not to and I was tired enough to be contrary.
Jules smiled. “You’re going to fit in fine.”
He left me in the bay with the outboard and the diesel, and for a long minute I just stood there.
The lake wind came through the open bay doors smelling like open water.
My truck sat parked beside the service bay, the toolbox and everything else I’d brought with me still inside.
Those tools represented years of work I’d done for a pack that never saw it as mine.
The bond ached. Low and constant, like a bruise someone kept pressing.
Through it, I felt Rafe’s frustration sharpening into something more focused, something that felt like intent, and I wondered if he was looking for me.
Let him look. He’d rejected me in front of everyone I’d ever known, and the only thing I owed him was the back of my truck disappearing down a road he couldn’t follow.
I picked up a socket wrench from the pegboard. Tested its weight. Set it down and picked up the right size instead.
Then I pulled a stool up to the workbench, sat down, and started taking apart the outboard’s water pump housing.
The bolts were corroded from lake water and neglect, and I worked each one with patience, applying penetrating oil where they were frozen, using steady pressure instead of force.
The housing came apart in my hands, and inside, the impeller was exactly as bad as I’d expected.
It had cracked vanes and a worn hub, the kind of damage that came after seasons without replacement.
I could fix this. I could fix the diesel and the hydraulic lift too. That was what I did. I found broken things and made them run again.
For the first time since the fire pit, the thought came without bitterness. My hands were busy, the work was real, and nobody in this bay was asking me to be anything other than competent.
Wade’s scent lingered in the shop, pine and lake water with a muted warmth underneath.
My wolf stirred every time I caught it, and I kept pushing her down, because whatever she thought she was sensing, I had enough unfinished bond damage to last me a long time, and the last thing I needed was my wolf making decisions my head hadn’t agreed to.
But she was persistent. When the wind shifted and brought his scent in fresh from wherever he was working in the yard, she reached.
I tightened my grip on the wrench and went back to the impeller.