7. Noa #2
It was tedious work. The kind of mindless task that I would normally hate, counting cans and bags and boxes, recording numbers in a notebook.
But Shepherd made it bearable. He kept up a steady stream of conversation, nothing too personal, nothing too probing.
Just observations about the supplies, questions about my work with the wildlife service, the occasional dry comment that surprised a laugh out of me.
“Seventeen cans of beans,” I said, adding the number to the list. “Please tell me there's some variety in the protein situation.”
“Bo brings in fresh meat when the weather allows. Venison, mostly. Some rabbit.” Shepherd was examining a shelf of home-canned goods, jars of vegetables and fruit put up the previous summer. “And there's a decent amount of dried fish. We won't starve.”
“Just get very tired of beans.”
“There are worse fates.”
I moved to the next shelf, cataloguing flour and sugar and salt.
The pantry was well-stocked, organized with the kind of precision that suggested someone had put real thought into preparing for situations exactly like this one.
Calder, probably. He seemed like the type to plan for every contingency.
“Can I ask you something?” The question came out before I'd fully decided to ask it.
Shepherd looked up. “You can ask. I might not answer.”
“Fair enough.” I focused on the bag of rice in my hands, not meeting his eyes. “You said you came here because you needed to get away. What were you getting away from?”
Silence. Long enough that I thought he wasn't going to respond at all. Then:
“Myself, mostly.”
I looked at him. His expression was distant, focused on something I couldn't see.
“I was a professor,” he said slowly. “Environmental philosophy. I spent years teaching students how to think critically, how to question assumptions, how to see beyond the surface of things.” He paused.
“But I wasn't very good at applying those skills to myself. I missed things. Important things. And by the time I noticed, it was too late.”
He didn't elaborate. Didn't explain what he'd missed or what had been too late. But I could see the weight of it in his eyes, the shadow of some old grief that still hadn't fully healed.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “Whatever it was.”
“Thank you.” He turned back to the shelves, his voice brisk again. “Now. How many jars of pickled beets are we looking at?”
The subject was closed. I let it stay closed and went back to counting.
Calder and Bo returned in the early afternoon, stomping snow off their boots in the mudroom, bringing a rush of cold air into the cabin. Calder's expression told me everything I needed to know before he said a word.
“The road's buried,” he said. “Four feet of snow, drifts up to six in places. Even if we had a plow, it would take days to clear.”
“And the main road?”
“No way to tell from here. But given the amount of accumulation...” He shook his head. “I doubt anyone's getting through for at least a week. Probably longer.”
A week. At minimum. The words settled into my chest like stones.
“What about the radio?” I asked. “Were you able to reach anyone?”
“I tried. Got nothing but static.” Calder pulled off his gloves and crossed to the woodstove, holding his hands out to warm them. “The atmospheric conditions might still be interfering. I'll try again tonight, and tomorrow morning. Eventually we'll get through.”
Eventually. Such a vague, unhelpful word.
I spent the rest of the afternoon by the fire, trying to read but mostly staring at the flames. The brief hope of the morning had curdled into something heavier. Depression, maybe. Or just the weight of accepting what I couldn't change.
Shepherd left me alone, retreating to his reading nook with a stack of papers.
Bo disappeared again, doing whatever Bo did when he wasn't inside.
And Calder... Calder stayed close. Not hovering, exactly.
Just present. Tending the fire. Working on some repair project at the table.
Close enough that I could feel his presence without having to look at him.
It should have been annoying. Yet, it wasn't.
The sun set early, sinking below the ridge and plunging the world back into shades of gray and blue. The temperature dropped with it, and the fire became the center of the universe, the only source of warmth and light in a world gone cold and dark.
Dinner was leftover stew. I ate without tasting it, my mind elsewhere.
Thinking about my job, my cabin in town, the research data sitting on my laptop waiting to be analyzed.
Thinking about F-23 and her cubs, denned up somewhere on the ridge, sleeping through the winter while I sat trapped in a stranger's house.
Thinking about things I didn't want to think about. Things I'd been pushing aside since I lost my pack in the creek.
After dinner, while Calder was washing dishes and Shepherd was reading and Bo was doing whatever Bo did in the evenings, I sat by the fire and stared into the flames and tried to count days.
I'd taken my last suppressant the morning of the storm. That was three days ago now. Which meant I had maybe ten days, give or take, before my body started cycling again. Before the heat that I'd been suppressing for a decade came roaring back with a vengeance.
Ten days. In a cabin with three unbonded alphas. With no way out, no way to contact anyone, no way to get more suppressants.
I'd been trying not to think about it. Trying to focus on my ankle, on the storm, on the immediate problems that could actually be solved. But now, with the brief hope of escape crushed and the reality of my situation settling in, I couldn't avoid it anymore.
I was going to go into heat. Here. With them.
And I had no idea what to do about it.
Calder appeared beside me with a mug of something steaming. Tea, from the smell. He held it out without comment.
“Thank you.” I took it, wrapping my hands around the warmth. “You don't have to keep bringing me things, you know.”
“I know.” He settled into the chair across from me. “But you looked like you could use it.”
I didn't ask how he knew. Didn't want to examine too closely how easily he was learning to read me.
“The storm might come back tonight,” he said, nodding toward the window. “Clouds building on the western ridge. We might have another day or two before it clears again.”
“Of course we will.” I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Why would anything be easy?”
“Easy doesn't build character.”
“I have plenty of character. I'd like some easy.”
He almost smiled at that. Almost. “Fair enough.”
We sat in silence for a while, drinking our tea, watching the fire. The wind was picking up outside, the brief calm of the day giving way to another round of winter's assault. But inside, with the fire crackling and the warmth seeping into my bones, it was almost peaceful.
“I don't know how to do this,” I said quietly. “Being stuck. Being dependent on people. Having no control over anything.”
“Nobody knows how to do it,” Calder said. “You just... do it anyway. One day at a time.”
“Is that what you did? When you came here?”
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “When I came here, I wasn't trying to do anything. I was trying to disappear. It took me a long time to figure out how to actually live again instead of just existing.”
“And did you? Figure it out?”
“Some days.” He met my eyes, and there was something raw in his expression. Something honest. “Other days I'm still working on it.”
It wasn't a solution. It wasn't even really advice. But somehow, it helped. Knowing that I wasn't the only one struggling to figure out how to exist in a world that didn't match my expectations.
“One day at a time,” I said.
“One day at a time.”
The fire crackled between us. Outside, the wind began to howl again, another storm rolling in from the west. Inside, I sat with an alpha I barely knew and felt something in my chest crack open just a little.
It wasn't trust, exactly. Not yet. But it was something close to it. Something that felt, for the first time since I'd stumbled onto this porch half-dead and frozen, almost like hope.