5. Bo
Bo
She smelled wrong.
Not bad wrong. Not sick wrong or dying wrong or any of the other wrong smells I'd learned to read in my years in these mountains. This was different. This was missing wrong. Like a song with a note cut out of it. Like a forest with no birdsong. Something that should have been there and wasn't.
It had been nagging at me since Calder carried her through the door.
Under the cold and the fear and the sharp bite of approaching death, there was something off about her scent.
Rain on warm stone, that was the base of it.
Wild honeysuckle underneath, sweet and heady.
And something sharper, like frozen pine needles, that made my hindbrain sit up and take notice.
But there was a gap. A hollow space where something else should have been. I couldn't name it, couldn't put words to what was missing, but my instincts knew. My instincts were screaming that this omega was incomplete somehow, and I couldn't figure out why.
It bothered me more than it should have.
I spent the morning doing what I always did when I couldn't settle.
Checking the perimeter. Monitoring the storm.
Making sure the chickens were secure in their coop and the goats had enough hay to last through the worst of it.
Physical work, mindless work, the kind that let my body move while my brain chewed on problems it couldn't solve.
The storm was bad. Worse than anything we'd seen in years.
The snow was piling up faster than I could clear it, and the wind had a mean edge that cut through even my heaviest coat.
I stayed out longer than I needed to, pushing through drifts that came up to my thighs, letting the cold burn away some of the restless energy that had been building since the omega collapsed on our porch.
It didn't work. By the time I came back inside, stamping snow off my boots and shaking ice from my hair, I was still thinking about her. Still wondering about that gap in her scent. Still feeling the pull of something I didn't want to name.
She was awake now. I could smell her from the mudroom, could track her location in the cabin without even trying.
She was in the main room, by the fire, that incomplete scent filling the space like smoke.
Calder was in the kitchen. Shepherd was in his reading nook.
And she was alone, probably glaring at anyone who came too close.
I'd watched her at breakfast. Watched the way she held herself, all sharp edges and defensive posture, like she was expecting an attack from any direction.
Watched the way she'd met my eyes without flinching, even when I'd pushed harder than I should have.
Watched the way she'd thanked Calder for the food like the words were being pulled out of her with pliers.
She was a wild thing. I knew wild things.
I'd been one my whole life, and I'd learned to recognize the signs in others.
The wariness, the constant vigilance, the refusal to show weakness even when weakness was all you had left.
She was prey that had learned to act like a predator, and something about that called to me in ways I didn't want to examine.
I hung up my coat and made my way into the main room.
She was exactly where I'd expected, curled in the nest of blankets by the fire with her bad ankle propped on a pillow.
She had a book in her lap, one of Shepherd's, but she wasn't reading it.
She was staring into the flames with an expression I couldn't read, lost in thoughts she probably didn't want to share.
I didn't announce myself. Didn't need to. She'd heard me come in, even if she was pretending she hadn't. I could tell by the slight tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers tightened on the book's cover.
I crossed to the window and stood there, looking out at the storm. Giving her space. Letting her decide whether she wanted to acknowledge me or not.
She lasted about two minutes.
“You're staring.”
I turned my head slightly. She was looking at me now, those amber eyes sharp and challenging. Most people looked away when I caught them watching. She didn't. Point in her favor.
“Wasn't staring. Was thinking.”
“About what?”
“You.”
She blinked. Hadn't expected that, apparently. Most people didn't expect honesty. They expected games, deflection, the usual social dance that I'd never learned and never wanted to.
“That's creepy,” she said flatly.
“Probably.” I turned to face her fully, leaning against the window frame. “You smell wrong.”
The reaction was immediate. Her whole body went still, that prey-animal freeze that said danger louder than any words. Her scent spiked with something sharp and acrid. Fear.
“Excuse me?”
“Not bad wrong,” I clarified. “Missing wrong. Like something's supposed to be there and it's not.”
She stared at me for a long moment. I could see her thinking, calculating, trying to figure out how much I knew and how much I was guessing. Her fear-scent faded, replaced by something more controlled. Wariness.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
Lie. I could smell it, sour underneath the careful blankness she was projecting. She knew exactly what I was talking about. She just didn't want to admit it.
This was what I could do. It was part of what had driven me away from that hub of people at the bottom of the mountain.
They lived their lives in neat packages bound by rules, but for some reason I could scent their lies, their fear, their unhappiness as they yearned for something more.
It was the wildness pushing into me, calling me away from Hollow Haven, calling me home.
Out here I could be myself, I didn’t have to conform to their standards or spend my life drowning in the scent of everyone’s unhappiness.
Calder and Shepherd seemed to understand that.
They heard the call too even if it had been for other reasons.
Maybe she did too. But right now, that didn’t matter to me.
Because all I could concentrate on was the scent of this mysterious omega, more scared than she wanted to admit.
More wild than most people would probably accept.
I didn't push. Pushing wouldn't get me anywhere, not with this one. She'd dig in harder, build her walls higher, and I'd never get the truth. Better to let it sit. Let her wonder how much I'd figured out. Let her come to me when she was ready.
If she ever was.
“Okay,” I said, and watched confusion flicker across her face.
“Okay? That's it?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“I don't know. Most people would argue. Demand answers. Try to force the issue.”
“I'm not most people.”
She let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “No. You're definitely not.”
I moved away from the window, crossing to the fireplace to add another log. The flames had burned down while I was outside, and the room was cooler than it should have been. She watched me work, and I could feel her gaze on my back like a physical touch.
“Calder said you're a trapper,” she said eventually. “And a guide.”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you trap?”
“Whatever needs trapping. Depends on the season, the population levels, what the land can sustain.” I settled the log into place and watched the flames lick up around it. “Mostly beaver and muskrat this time of year. Some fox if there's too many.”
“You sell the pelts?”
“Some. Trade others. Use the rest.”
“That's...” She paused, like she was searching for the right word. “Practical.”
“It's survival.” I straightened and turned to face her. “You work for the wildlife service. You know how it is. Sometimes you have to take from the land to keep the balance. Doesn't mean you don't respect what you're taking.”
Something shifted in her expression. Not quite approval, but close to it. Recognition, maybe. The acknowledgment of a shared understanding.
“Most people think trapping is cruel,” she said.
“Most people don't know what they're talking about.”
“True.” She shifted in her blankets, wincing slightly as the movement jostled her ankle.
“I spent the first three months of this job getting lectured by city people about how I should feel bad for the animals I was studying. Like I was hurting them by putting GPS collars on them, tracking their movements, making sure their populations stayed healthy.”
“City people don't understand.”
“No. They don't.”
We looked at each other for a long moment, and something passed between us. Not trust, not yet. But the beginning of something. A recognition that we spoke the same language, even if we'd learned it in different places.
“The bear you're tracking,” I said. “F-23. She dens about half a mile from here. Has for three years now.”
Her eyes widened. “You know her?”
“Know all the bears in this territory. The deer, the elk, the cats. This is their land. I just live in it.”
“That's...” She stopped, shook her head. “Shepherd said the same thing, about knowing where she dens. I've been trying to confirm that location for months.”
“Could show you. When your ankle heals, when the snow clears. Could take you right to her.”
The offer surprised me as much as it seemed to surprise her. I didn't offer things to strangers. Didn't offer things to anyone, really, except Calder and Shepherd. But the words had come out before I could stop them, and I found I didn't want to take them back.
“Why would you do that?”
It was a fair question. I wasn't sure I had a good answer.
“Because you came all this way to find her,” I said finally. “Seems wrong for you to leave without knowing where she is.”
She studied me with those sharp amber eyes, looking for the catch. The hidden agenda. The thing that would make my offer make sense in a world where people didn't do things without expecting something in return.
She wasn't going to find it. There wasn't one. I just... wanted to help her. For reasons I couldn't explain and didn't want to examine.