I can’t afford to start over again. Not when I’ve finally found a place where I might be able to stay.
So I keep my distance. Do my work. Go home. Don’t give him any reason to think I’m interested, because I’m not. In him or anyone else.
My tea has gone cold. I drink it anyway, watching the last light fade from the window, thinking about green velvet chairs and Help Wanted signs and the long road between where I am and where I want to be.
It’s a quiet life. A lonely one, maybe.
But it’s mine. And I’m going to make something of it.
I put the shoebox back in the closet and get ready for bed.
Tomorrow is another day. Another shift at Shadow Suds. Another chance to prove I can do this on my own.
Another step toward the life I’m building, one paycheck at a time.
3
TOLIN
ONE WEEK LATER
The cabin looks like a storm tore through it. Again. Dishes in the sink. Laundry piling up in the corner. Dust settling on every surface Mother scrubbed clean seven days ago.
I don’t have time for this.
The ax bites into the log, splitting it clean down the middle. I toss the pieces onto the growing pile and reach for another. My breath fogs in the cold air, my muscles burning with the kind of work that usually quiets my mind.
Usually.
Today, nothing is quiet.
The singing started an hour ago. Drifting up from town, carried on the wind, faint but unmistakable. Children’s voices raised in some kind of Christmas carol, pitchy and enthusiastic and completely off-key.
Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way...
I grit my teeth and swing the ax harder.
My bear grumbles beneath my skin, irritated by thenoise. We have two days to finish stocking the clan’s shed and our own cabin before the storm hits. Then hibernation—at least a full month when my bear slumbers and I’m left vulnerable, unable to shift, living like a human while he rests.
It’s the way of the bear shifter. We don’t fight it. We prepare for it.
And I cannot prepare with that infernal noise rattling around in my skull.
Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh...
The ax slips. The blade glances off the log at a bad angle, sending the whole thing tumbling off the stump. I curse and grab it, setting it back up, trying to focus.
The snow is coming. I can smell it on the wind, feel it in the drop of pressure. A big storm, probably the worst of the season so far. It won’t stop me. I know these mountains better than I know my own face. But the humans in Shadow Wolf Creek will be trapped in their homes for days, maybe longer.
Part of me thinks I should volunteer to help when it hits. Check on the elderly. Clear roads. Do something useful with the strength I have.
Then I remember that I’m the grumpy bear shifter who lives alone on the mountain, and no one wants my help with anything.
Dashing through the snow, in a one-horse open sleigh...
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter.
The singing swells, a dozen little voices hitting a note that makes my bear want to burst out of me just to make it stop. My next swing goes wide, nearly taking a chunk out of my own boot.
