Canaan Roarke: Rosie’s guessing ten inches or more by now. Was just flurries for the first few hours but when it decided to come down, it didn’t fuck around.
The message comes with a photo attached. Taken from my back deck. The lake that usually stretches out beyond it is completely gone, swallowed by white and falling snow. The trees are bowed under the weight of it. It’s a damn near whiteout.
I glance up instinctively, checking where Noa is. She’s moved farther up the aisle and is debating between two nearly identical sets of sheets. She’s safe. She’s warm. She’s blissfully unaware.
I pull up my weather app and start checking conditions. For here. For the road that leads us back to Silverthorne. For the mountain passes that will take us back up to Fallamhain territory. As of right now, the roads are still open, but theforecast doesn’t offer much reassurance beyond that. The radar doesn’t show the snow letting up, and I’ve experienced firsthand how fast the passes will close when the plows can’t get in or keep up. Over the years, pack members have gotten stranded in town because they waited too long.
I don’t want to risk getting trapped on the wrong side of the pass.
Not when Noa is with me.
The possibility of being snowed in here overnight puts me on edge in a way I don’t like. Not because I question my ability to protect her, but because I know that it would unsettle her. She won’t rest knowing she’s cut off from the people who need her, from the ability to reach them if something goes wrong. Keeping her away from home for most of the day was already pushing the edge of my comfort, especially with her heat looming. A‘super heat’, as I’ve since learned. Not all heats announce themselves. Some arrive without warning. And this one…this one isn’t something I’m willing to gamble with. Not when I know what’s at stake. I want her in the safety of our home before it finds her.
I text my second-in-command back.
Rennick Fallamhain: We’re wrapping up now. On our way soon.
Then I tuck the phone away and start walking, already hating that I have to ruin this for her.
Noa stands before a display, clutching a knit pillow to her chest. Soft-looking and hunter green. The exact shade as the first hoodie of mine I gave her, the one she wore until it was ruined by blood and mud during the attack on Ashvale. The first thing she’d ever used as nesting material—whether she was aware she was doing it or not. There’d been too much damage to it to salvage it.
I don’t need to ask who this pillow is for. The way she’s holding it answers that question for me—that thing was coming home with us the second her pretty eyes landed on it.
“Hey, baby?”
“Yeah?” She looks up, still slightly disconnected, her eyes hazy from whatever omega trance she’s been hovering in. Then her gaze sharpens as it takes in my face, and the change in her is immediate. She reads me too easily. Concern eats away at her as she sets the pillow back on the shelf and shifts toward me. “What’s wrong? Did something happen at home?”
Home. How easily she throws that word around makes something gentle flare behind my ribs.
Stepping around my cart, I reach for her, my hands settling on her upper arms and rubbing gently as if I can erase the worry from her skin. “No, it’s nothing like that. Everyone’s okay,” I assure her, keeping my voice low to avoid accidentally setting her anxiety off again. “But Canaan just checked in. The weather’s turning fast and the snow is really coming down up there. If we don’t leave soon, we risk getting stuck on the wrong side of the pass if they close the roads.”
“Shit, okay,” she breathes. Her face falls, disappointment flashing across her features before she can smother it. She glances between the two carts, taking in all the supplies she’s gathered. Noa’s eyes dart back to me. “Do we have time to check out at least?”
She appears nearly horrified at the thought of abandoning a single piece of her bounty and it sparks a fierce, almost protective tenderness in me. Snowstorm be damned, I’m not about to deny my omega the things she’s gathered with such care.
“We’ll make time,” I tell her, already leaning down to steal a quick kiss.
Her lips are warm against mine—almost hot—and she yields to the kiss so completely it nearly knocks the breath from me. Her body fits close to mine, and then closer still, as if distance has suddenly become intolerable. When I finally pull back, she doesn’t retreat. She stays right there, breath shallow, eyes bright and unfocused. It’s the pretty pout and the way she looks like she’s contemplating protesting the contact ending too soon that has me smiling down at her—despite the tension and sense of urgency curling in my gut.
“Come on, sweet girl,” I murmur, guiding her back toward her cart.
As we move, I reach for the hunter green pillow she abandoned and drop it into the pile without hesitation. She gives me a shy smile, the kind that tells me she doesn’t think I noticed how she’d been clinging to it. I keep my eyes locked on hers as I reach for the top shelf and grab the matching green blanket she missed because of her height. The second I add it to the cart, her face lights up, a genuine flash of delight that makes me want to send a note of gratitude to the Goddess for gifting me this female to spoil.
“I don’t need another blanket,” she argues, trying and failing to sound practical. An adjective that hasneverbeen used when describing nesting.
I snort softly. “Lie to me like that again and I’ll put you over my knee then buy you ten more.”
Her eyes widen slightly, and the edges of her cheekbones pinken.
Leaning in just enough that only she can hear me, I tell her, “Your nest is important, Noa. You deserve to fill it with whatever you want.”
The words hang between us, heavy with everything we both already know. With promises I’ve made her and refuse to break. With the understanding that she deserves warmth andcare simply because she’smine—simply because she exists. That she spent years putting the comfort and needs of others before herself, and I’m honored to be the one to spoil her now. That I denied her once and it’s nearly killed her. Because I would spend every cent I have and every year I have left trying to make up for that.
At first,I assume Noa’s restlessness is nerves.
The drive back has been long and slow, nearly two hours of white-knuckled focus as the weather worsens mile by mile. I chalk her shifting in the passenger seat up to the growing anxiety of whether we’ll make it back through the mountain pass before the snow closes the roads entirely.
The same heavy urgency has been pressing on my shoulders since I got the warning text from Canaan, and I’ve been painfully aware that I’m racing against a dwindling clock since I peeled out of the store’s parking lot basically on two wheels. My jaw tight as I guide the Escalade along a road that historically encourages speed but today demands restraint. The car’s speedometer says thirty-five miles per hour, but it might as well be a snail’s pace. My knuckles are tight on the wheel as the wipers work overtime. Ice flashes beneath the tires more than once, the kind that makes your gut drop even when the vehicle rights itself. The mere thought of what it would mean to lose control of the SUV while Noa sits in the passenger seat…I can’t go there. I won’t let myself even imagine it.
