The January air was bitter, biting at my exposed skin, but Caleb's body radiated heat like a furnace. He tucked me closer against his chest, shielding me from the wind, and I let him. It felt too good to protest.
He shouldered open the heavy wooden door and carried me inside. I forgot to complain about being held like a child because I was too busy staring.
The workshop was larger than I'd expected, maybe thirty feet by forty, with high ceilings supported by exposed wooden beams. A cast-iron wood stove crackled in the far corner, filling the space with gentle, dry heat and the smell of burning cedar and peat. The wooden floors were worn smooth from years of use, scattered with wood shavings and sawdust that caught the light from the two large windows along the eastern wall.
It was the walls that stole my breath. Shelves lined every available surface, and the shelves were crowded with carvings. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. A lifetime of work displayed in organized chaos.
They weren't all birds.
There were birds, yes, I recognized the style immediately, the same delicate craftsmanship as the sparrow he'd given me three years ago at that party. The one I'd slipped into my pocket as I ran. The one I still had, buried in a box of things I couldn't make myself throw away.
Sparrows and hawks and owls with knowing eyes. A heron with impossibly thin legs. A pair of cardinals, one slightly smaller than the other, positioned like they were mid-conversation. There were other animals too. A wolf mid-howl, head thrown back, fur so detailed I could almost feel the texture. A black bear standing on its hind legs, massive and imposing. A family of deer — buck, doe, and two fawns — arranged in a protective cluster. A mountain lion frozen mid-prowl, muscles coiled with tension. A fox curled into a sleeping ball, tail wrapped around its nose.
And other things. A tiny cabin that looked exactly like this one, small enough to fit in my palm, with individual shingles on the roof and miniature curtains in the windows. Trees withindividual leaves, impossibly delicate. Flowers that seemed like they might sway in a nonexistent breeze. A pair of hands clasped together, fingers intertwined with such anatomical precision it made my chest ache.
And faces. Half a dozen faces in various stages of completion, some barely emerging from the wood, others nearly finished. One of them — I looked away quickly, heat flooding my cheeks. One of them was clearly me.
"You made all of these?" I breathed, still cradled in his arms, my head swiveling to take it all in.
"Yes." His voice was a low rumble against my ear.
"Caleb, these are... they're incredible. They're—" I didn't have words. The artistry was breathtaking. Museum quality. The kind of work that belonged in galleries, not hidden away in a mountain workshop. He didn't respond verbally, but I felt his chest expand with a deep breath. Pleased, maybe, though his scarred face gave nothing away.
He carried me past the shelves to the back of the workshop, where the space opened up into something more like a living area. A battered leather couch sat against one wall, worn soft with age, covered in a thick knitted blanket. A heavy wooden desk dominated the adjacent corner, its surface cluttered with papers, a laptop, and various tools I didn't recognize. A mini fridge hummed quietly nearby, and a small coffee maker sat on a shelf above it.
This wasn't just a workspace for carving. This was his sanctuary. His retreat when the cabin felt too crowded, when I was pushing them all away and he needed somewhere to be alone with his thoughts and his work. They all had spaces like this, I realized. Mason had his study with the piano. Ethan had his research room. Leo had the porch where he smoked and brooded, and probably a dozen other hiding spots I hadn'tdiscovered yet. And Caleb had this — his workshop, his art, his silence.
"You built this out here," I said, looking around at the careful organization, the years of accumulated work. "This workshop. It wasn't here when they bought the cabin, was it?"
Caleb was quiet for a moment. "No. I built it the first year. After you ran." Something in his voice made me turn to look at him more carefully.
"This cabin," I said slowly, pieces clicking together in my mind. "It wasn't just a random safe house, was it?"
He shook his head, his scarred face unreadable. "We bought it for you. All four of us. It was supposed to be... a courting gift. A place we could bring you, away from the family, away from the pressure. Somewhere you could get to know us. Just us."
My chest tightened. "When?"
"We finalized the purchase two weeks before your eighteenth birthday." His voice was rough. "Had the whole thing planned. We were going to ask you properly. Do it right. Show you this place and tell you what we wanted. Give you time to decide."
"But I ran," I said, the words heavy with old guilt.
"But you ran." He exhaled slowly, the breath stirring my hair. "After that... we couldn't sell it. Couldn't let it go. So we came here instead. When things got hard. When missing you got too heavy. Mason would disappear for weeks at a time. Ethan set up his research room. Leo—" A ghost of a smile crossed his scarred face. "Leo punched holes in three different walls before we convinced him to take up target practice instead."
I thought about that. Four Alpha men, retreating to a cabin in the mountains to nurse their wounds after I'd rejected them. Building spaces for themselves. Waiting.
"And you built this," I said softly, gesturing at the workshop, the shelves of carvings, the years of patience transformed into art.
"I built this." His ice-blue eyes held mine. "One carving at a time. One week at a time. Waiting for you to come back." He set me down on the couch, and I expected him to move away, give me space. Instead, he settled down beside me, reached over, and lifted me into his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Caleb—" I started to protest, but he was already settling me into position.
"I need you close," he said quietly, arranging me so my back was against his chest, his massive arms wrapped around my waist, his chin resting on the top of my head. "Please, Ava. Just... let me have this." There it was again. That,please. That soft, almost desperate request that cracked something open in my chest every time he used it.
"Okay," I whispered. "Okay." He made a sound low in his throat, contentment, satisfaction, relief all tangled together. His arms tightened around me, and I let myself sink into his warmth. For a while, we just sat there. His heartbeat was a steady drum against my back. His scent surrounded me — cedar and woodsmoke and something earthier underneath, like dark soil after rain. His breath stirred my hair with each exhale.
It should have felt suffocating. Instead, it felt safe. My eyes drifted back to the shelves, cataloging the carvings I could see from this angle. A pair of wolves, running side by side. An intricate Celtic knot. A small child's face, cherubic and sweet.
"How long have you been carving?" I asked eventually, my voice soft in the quiet space.
