Chapter 32 First Heavy Snow
Nora POV
The generator’s hum vibrated through the floor.
I crouched beside the transfer panel with my multimeter probes on the output terminals, watching the voltage remain constant while the wind off Superior battered Karlsson Boatyard’s roof.
The main power was still live, but every gust made the overhead lights stutter, and I’d already prepped the automatic transfer switch so the generator would catch the load the instant the grid dropped.
Jules’s temporary bypass from the sleet outage was disconnected and stored, but I’d run a fresh jumper cable from the battery to the solenoid housing and left it coiled on the shelf in case I needed it fast.
My hands were steady.
Outside the service bay’s metal walls, the storm intensified.
Snow drove sideways past the narrow windows, thick and wet, blotting out the harbor and the tree line and everything beyond the reach of the bay’s interior work lights.
The temperature had been dropping since Wade sealed the doors.
My breath left little clouds when I moved between the panel and the lift controls.
Uphill, the pack house stood dark and empty. Most of Pine Harbor’s pack was already in the reinforced room beneath the office. Once the final preparations were done, Wade, Jules, Rafe, and I would remain near the equipment that kept the harbor safe.
I secured my socket set in its foam cutout and latched the rolling toolbox against the wall.
The torque wrench went into its drawer. I hung the trouble light on its hook and wound the cord tight so nobody would trip on it.
Then I checked each circuit breaker on the main panel, touching each toggle with my fingertip and counting off the loads: bay lights, emergency floods, lift motor, dock alarm, ventilation fan, office circuits, shelter lighting.
I knew the yard by touch now: where every wire ran, which breakers fed which circuits, and what would fail first if someone cut the wrong cable. I had spent the past month putting its damaged equipment back to work, and the knowledge lived in my fingers.
Conrad Sutherland was coming to take me from this place, and I was not going.
Rafe appeared at my shoulder. He’d been at the north wall for the past hour, listening under the wind. His hair was damp with snow that had blown through a gap in the bay door seal, and he wore the same hard focus I remembered from the boatyard fight.
“I can have the truck running in two minutes,” he said. “Drive you east down the shore before he gets close.”
“No.”
“Nora.”
“No, Rafe.”
He didn’t touch me. Through the thin, bitter thread of our open bond, I felt what that restraint cost him. He wanted to carry me to his Silverado and drive until Conrad was a problem for someone else.
“He taught me to track in weather like this,” Rafe said. His voice was low enough that only I could hear it over the wind. “He’ll stage in the trees and wait for the wind to cover his approach. He’ll hit the boatyard because you love it. He knows that. He reads what people love and he uses it.”
“Then he’ll find me where I belong,” I said.
Rafe’s expression tightened with fear rather than the anger and entitlement he’d shown when I refused him before.
“Go back to the north wall,” I told him. “If you can smell him before the rest of us, that’s where you’re worth the most.”
He went.
Wade crossed from the east window to the generator panel and stood beside me. Warmth from our bond spread beneath my ribs. His heavy canvas jacket couldn’t hide the tension locked through his shoulders.
“I want you in the shelter,” he said.
“I know.”
“There’s a locked door, concrete walls, no windows facing the water. Jules holds the entrance. Bette’s already down there. You’d be safe.”
“And if the power drops and the transfer switch jams and the bay doors freeze open and the emergency floods go dark, who fixes it? Bette?”
“I’d rather lose the bay doors than lose you. Go downstairs, Nora.”
I looked at him. The bond carried everything he was trying not to say. He loved me. I had no doubt anymore.
“Wade.” I put my hand on his chest, over the flannel, over the heartbeat I’d fallen asleep against. “I’m staying. You already agreed to this.”
“I agreed before I had time to think about what happens if Conrad gets past me.”
“Then don’t let him past you.”
Through the bond I felt his wolf fighting his promise, the animal side of him that wanted to pick me up and lock me in the shelter and stand in front of the door with his teeth bared. The man would honor my decision. The wolf cared only about keeping its mate alive.
“If I tell you to run,” he said.
“I run. We already covered this.”
“I need to know you heard me.”
“I did.” I pressed my palm harder against his chest. “Go do your job, Alpha.”
He covered my hand with his. His fingers were rough and warm and huge over mine, and for a breath the storm and the dark and everything Conrad might bring seemed very far away.
Then he let go and moved back to the east window, and the distance between us filled with cold air and the sound of snow hitting metal.
Jules came up from the shelter stairwell with a canvas bag of supplies he’d staged near the interior door. He set it down, pulled out two flashlights, tested both, and handed one to me. Then he checked the first-aid kit he’d strapped to the wall and began sorting the emergency hand tools by size.
Hank stood watch at the south window, favoring one leg as he peered into the storm.
“Hank’s hip is stiffening,” Jules said. “I told him to sit. He told me to go to hell.”
“Sounds like Hank.”
“Arvid’s solid. He and Hank will hold the lower door if Wade gives the word.” Jules set a pry bar on the bench and handed the heavy crescent wrench to Hank. “Take that below. Help Arvid check the interior latch, then stay with him. Bette has the cash box and manifest secured.”
Hank took the wrench and limped toward the stairs without wasting breath on an argument.
Jules stopped sorting and looked at me. His mouth was tight, and fear showed in his dark eyes. I had no bond with him, but I didn’t need one to see it.
“If it gets loud,” he said, “you stay behind the lift housing and you don’t come out until one of us comes for you.”
“Jules.”
“I’m not negotiating. That lift housing is reinforced steel and it’s bolted to the concrete slab.
Nothing short of a truck is moving it.” He touched my arm, briefly, the way he always touched me, with intention rather than possession.
“I need to know where you are so I’m not looking for you when I should be watching the door. ”
“Behind the lift housing,” I said.
“Good.” He picked up the canvas bag and moved to the center workbench, positioning himself where he could cover the interior stairwell and still see the main bay. I watched him plant his feet.
Wade’s fear was a wall he wanted to build around me. Rafe’s was a debt he couldn’t pay. Jules’s was a prayer he wouldn’t say out loud.
I stayed because the decision belonged to me. This boatyard had given me work when I needed it, a home when I had none, and a pack that let me choose. Conrad could come with six wolves or sixty. This was my ground.
I returned to the transfer panel and waited.
? ? ?
The lights died at full dark.
One second, the bay’s interior work lights cast a yellow glow. The next, the bay went black. My hand was already on the transfer switch housing when the generator caught the load and the emergency circuits came up, dimmer than the mains but bright enough to see.
“Transfer’s clean,” I called. “Generator’s holding.”
Wade’s voice came from the east window. “Confirmed.”
I checked the voltage. It held. The generator was burning fuel at the rate I’d calculated, and the tank held enough for the night unless someone damaged the feed line.
Outside, the wind changed pitch.
I’d been listening to Superior gales since I arrived in Pine Harbor, and I knew the sounds of wind through the pine canopy, off open water, and between buildings. This was different. A sharp metallic crack cut beneath the storm’s roar.
It came from something under tension releasing all at once.
“What was that?” Wade asked from the east window.
Rafe answered first. “Cable.”
I knew he was right before I could say why. A steel cable under load makes a sound of its own when it parts. I’d heard it during the workboat emergency, when the bow line snapped and nearly took out the dock. It was braided steel letting go.
But I had personally secured every cable in this yard.
A deep groan came from outside as something massive shifted against its restraints.
One of the hauled boats in the outer cradles was moving, rocking in its supports as though the cradle had tilted.
That shouldn’t have been possible. I’d checked every lashing point, tested every cable tension, and confirmed every chock before the doors closed.
The dock alarm shrieked.
The sound was a flat electronic wail, powered by its own battery. Something on the waterside had shifted past its safety margin.
“Movement,” Rafe said. He was at the north wall, head tilted, nostrils flared. In the dim emergency light his eyes caught a cold reflection. “Trees. Southeast, past the service lane. More than one.”
Wade pressed his hand against the wall and closed his eyes. Through our bond I felt the push of the mind link spread outward as he called the pack in.
“Jules,” Wade said. “The shelter.”
Jules was already moving, snatching the pry bar from the bench and running for the interior stairwell that connected the bay level to the reinforced room below. At the stairwell door, he looked back at me once before he disappeared.
Rafe sucked air through his teeth. “That’s him.”
“You’re sure?” Wade asked.
“I grew up with his scent.” Rafe’s voice was flat and final. “Pine sap and gun oil. That’s Conrad.”
A second crack sounded in the dark.
This one was closer, louder, and I felt the vibration run through the concrete floor into the soles of my boots. Another cable. Another boat shifting in its cradle, the groan of fiberglass against steel amplified by the storm. Outside, something heavy began to slide.
The first cable could have failed because of metal fatigue, ice loading, or a frozen strand giving way under the gale’s pressure. I might have blamed the weather.
But two cables had parted in the same yard, moments apart, on boats I had secured myself.
No.
Someone had cut them. Someone out in the dark with the snow driving sideways and the wind covering their footsteps had moved through my yard and severed the cables that held the hauled boats in place.
The nearest boat had become a weapon, its fiberglass hull and lead keel resting in a cradle on iced rails that led toward the shelter and dock lane.
I reached the service bay controls. If the bay doors lost power or someone forced them, I could lock the lift in its lowest position and use the housing as a barrier.
I checked the overhead crane’s disconnect, killed the ventilation fan to save generator fuel, and cleared access to the manual controls on both bay doors.
Wade’s eyes unfocused as he sent another command to the wolves below.
The dock alarm kept screaming. Through the narrow east window, past the curtain of driving snow, I saw a shape move between the outer cradles. Then another. Wolves, or men about to become wolves, crossing the yard in the dark while the storm erased their tracks behind them.
Wade looked at me one last time. Through our bond, I felt his love, his terror, and his absolute refusal to let this be the night he lost me.
I held his gaze and didn’t flinch.
Outside, the boat and its cradle began sliding down the iced rails toward the dock lane, and the scream of steel filled the dark.