34 #2
She gives an incline of her head. ‘My brothers and their wives. Aunt Hilde. They’ll be here around four when we return.’ Then she turns to me with a broader smile. ‘You get your present later, okay?’
‘You didn’t really need to get me anything. This is more than enough.’
‘Nonsense,’ Anders chuckles behind me as he approaches, fixing his hat in place as he begins to tug on his gloves again. ‘We love celebrations, and the birthday of my nephew’s future wife is no exception.’
Nephew.
The words hook into my ribcage.
But that means that Inga is—
My gaze finds her as she closes the door to the fridge.
All that history between them. All that familiarity I’d been stupid enough to resent.
Then the worst of it arrives: do they know the truth? About Elias? About me?
As I struggle to fit that into any form that does not frighten me, Inga comes up to me with a bright smile.
But now that I know she’s family, her warmth no longer feels like something I have to compete with.
How silly am I?
Anders opens the front door. ‘It’s rare we see wolves this far north,’ he grinds out. I don’t like the crease between his eyes. ‘They usually keep to the south, around the Swedish border. The mountains have little food for them. If they’ve come this far north, this close to houses…’
‘They’re hungry enough to risk people,’ Elias supplies.
Anders gives a ponderous nod. ‘There’s livestock around.
Who knows what else. But if they’ve learnt houses mean food, hunger is not the only problem.
’ His face crumples further at that. ‘Keep the meat sealed. Lock the hens well. And set those traps,’ he enunciates before disappearing through the doorway.
‘I’ll see you later.’ Inga walks out after her father.
The cold punches the breath out of me as we follow them onto the porch, but it is nothing compared to the way Elias’ hand settles at the small of my back. Perfectly placed for audience.
I go rigid beneath it.
Inga beams over her shoulder while Anders mounts his snowmobile.
I keep my smile in place until my teeth threaten to crack from the pressure of keeping all my rage behind.
‘Were you going to tell me we’re playing house again today?’ I bite out, low enough for only him. ‘Or were you just going to let me figure it out when they bring the cake?’
Anders calls something over the engine’s first growl, and Elias nods at him once.
Through that same polite, poisonous smile still aimed at our guests, he says, ‘It’s only fair you get a birthday after you gave me one.’
When next I blink, I’m back in Stonebrook with a vanilla cake balanced in my hands. And suddenly this feels more like a debt he’s decided to settle.
That runs through me in hot and cold waves.
The snowmobiles pull away from the house in a spray of white and we wait until the forest swallows them.
I turn to him.
‘You owe me nothing,’ I say, a little sharper than intended. ‘And I don’t owe you anything either.’
His smile fades as he takes his eyes off the treeline and looks down at me. Before his mouth opens, I’m already shoving past him into the house and snatching the snowsuit from the hanger by the door.
‘I know,’ he rumbles from outside. ‘You’re the one keeping score.’
I force myself into the suit in ugly motions. Boots next. Gloves. Beanie.
When I’m back outside, he is still standing in the same place – this time with his arms crossed and his face held tight.
Snatching the snow shovel from beside the entrance, I drive it into the packed path against the porch hard enough to jolt my shoulders.
‘I am sick of this game,’ I throw at him without looking back. ‘The devoted fiancé, the cosy home, the fucking birthday party in the middle of the North Pole!’
He shoves his hands into his pockets. ‘Norway is not in the—’
‘—Sick!’ I snap, turning on him so fast the shovel blade screeches across a rock. ‘Of marinating in your lies so everyone else can clap at how pretty they look.’
He looks away from me, biting back something barely withheld. Then turns so quickly the wood squeals under his boot and storms back into the house. The door slams hard enough to rattle the boards – and my bones.
I jam the shovel into the snow.
A second later, glass crashes inside. Something heavy strikes the wall hard enough to make the windowpane shake.
I startle despite my fury, half-turning towards the door. My fingers cinch around the handle until they ache. It nearly makes me take that step towards him, nearly makes me rush to check the damage. Nearly makes me useful again to the man who caused all this.
Because amidst all the lies and orders, the bastard is trying to give me a birthday. He didn’t have to. He could have just left things as they were – with us doing work around the damn homestead until fucking forever.
No.
I won’t go in.
Dragging my gaze in the exact opposite direction, I anchor it to the smokehouse in the near distance. My teeth clamp around the tremor rising in my throat, and I drive the shovel deeper into the snow.
About half an hour passes before I realise the white cover packed around the smokehouse is heavier than it looks. Like a solid crust that fights every beat of the damn shovel.
I work my way along the wall, boots sinking into the snow that reaches over my ankles, breath puffing out in short white bursts that vanish as quickly as they form.
Each scrape of metal on snow feels as if I’m digging myself deeper into this place instead of out of it.
Elias is probably brooding behind the door again. Firmly locked with my passport still in limbo. I almost fell for a madman, and here I am – clearing the way, tidying his life like house staff.
The silence presses down harder than the grey sky; just the distant hiss of the forest and the soft tick of snowflakes landing on my puffy hood.
As always, when I’m away from him, the thought hits with cold, clean certainty: if I ran now…
The world is frozen; the sun is high and bright above the ridgeline, but within an hour or two it will be sliding down like a traitor.
He was right. There’s nowhere I could go. Not with him being the only one who knows every path through this white, endless nowhere better than I know my own mind.
I drag the shovel along the wall and nearly miss the shallow breaks in the snow near the corner.
My motions slow.
I hadn’t reached that part.
Elias wasn’t here either.
These prints are narrower than our boots, punched deep and angling towards the wall. Some cross each other, some veer away – all converging where fish and smoked meat seep strongest through the boards.
I stare at them for too long.
Then I lift my head.
And notice the fur.
The world narrows around the smokehouse, sounds thinning until all I can hear is my own heartbeat.
The breath I take burns straight down my throat.
A wolf stands at the treeline, grey and white and so still I almost think my brain’s making it up. But when it lifts its nose towards the smokehouse, towards the meat inside, my knees nearly give out.
Another shape steps out behind it. Then another. And another, fur thick against the white winter cover, bodies half-hidden between the trunks.
I’ve never seen a wolf outside of a zoo, but I doubt they’re supposed to be this lean.
Worse yet – none of them retreats when they see me.
My fingers go numb around the handle as the thudding of my pulse drowns out whatever sense I have left.
In a slow, tightening arc, the animals spread with soundless paws over the snow. One keeps glancing at me. The others keep glancing past me, noses working.
I know I’m not the meal.
I’m worse – the thing standing between them and it.
My heart stopped a breath ago. The shovel gives a tremble in my hands. My boots might as well be frozen into the damn ground.
The boldest of the four lowers its head, shoulders bunching. Its yellow eyes cut from the smokehouse to my shovel and back again, measuring the distance between hunger and risk.
A vicious crack snaps—
A whistle cuts the air—
And a bolt slams into the pine beside the wolf’s head, splintering bark into the snow.
I jerk my head to the left and see Elias standing by the house, the crossbow from above the fireplace braced against his shoulder. His face is stripped of everything but calculation.
The wolf jerks back with a snarl, and for a frantic second, I almost believe it’s enough.