A stick tumbles off the side of my hide that’s collected with other debris on the roof, and the adolescents jerk at the intrusion into their game. I didn’t have time to check anything before I climbed in and I sure as hell don’t want to change too much about the landscape that they’ve grown accustomed to seeing. Actually, I’m lucky they haven’t moved to a different location while I’ve been away for the last few months of their lives. A huge chunk of everything has happened, in both my life and theirs, since I last saw them. I’ve been frantically taking my notes, updating my perpetual wolf calendar on their growth, noting the new behaviors.
Where the pack used to pick the young up and carry them from the den to their rendezvous site, the place where they played and trained together, tumbling about and play-hunting, now the slightly older wolf pups-cum-juveniles make their own way. Their independence is both beautiful to see, and sad in its own way. The mother watches her young with a keen eye, and we both know she’s semi-soon to be an empty nester. As soon as the pups are mature and able to hunt on their own, they’ll find or join newpacks.
I jiggle in my hide for space, unused to the cramped quarters. A plop of snow dislodges from the roof as I rock about. It splats to the ground, disturbing the pups at play.
“Fuck,” I mutter softly.
My lips curve at my cursing.Huh. Cord’s language is rubbing off on me. But the reminder of him, still so fresh after a month apart, hurts. Walking away because I don’t fit into his life—either the old or the new—stings.
But I had to make that call, and the wolves…they are my safe place.
Right?
One of the adolescents licks the other’s furry face in a show of submission. The breeding pair’s juvenile watches the younger wolf for a moment and then lifts a paw, places it on the gray’s face, and pushes. Not hard, just enough to let the command stand. The submissive wolf drops to the patchy snow littering the ground and rolls to his back, showing his belly.
Click. Click. Click.
One day I might move to a full digital camera, but that day is not today. Like the wolf pack, I am also a creature of habit.
The wrestling games resume, and the juvenile, who bears a black dot just above his nose, lets the younger wolf roll him for the briefest moment. The surprised expression on the younger teenage wolf’s face is beyond photo-worthy. My finger taps at the shutter button in rapid succession, my notes forgotten as the pair tumble and the natural order is restored.
Click. Click.
Click—
I’m lost to the outside world until myclicksmerge with a different sound. I stare at the wolves, but their claws aren’t contacting anything hard enough to make that noise.Click snap, click snap. The harsh, disjointed rhythm ruins my mood. Theirs, too, apparently, as the juvenile lifts his head, scenting the air that is no longer still.
And my finger, still trigger-happily taking fragmented snaps,are overridden by a sound that comes from outside my insulated wolf-bubble—and I don’t just mean my hide.
The juveniles scatter as I dive out of my cover, but for once it’s not me who has scared them. Trees whip side to side as a monster bigger than anything this area has to offer lands in a clearing behind my place of concealment.
I stare at the helicopter that ruins the ambiance of my research project, my grant, and the wolves’ untouched space I’ve tried so hard not to impose on, and I kick my coffee thermos over onto the melting patches of snow on the ground. I know there’s early snow due tonight and the cold air that whips around me promises more ice, but something tells me I won’t be here to see it.
Especially when Cordell Rand swings down from the inside of the helicopter, his head ducked as he walks beneath the swinging blades while the chopper winds down.
I stare at him, my mouth hanging open, and forget to collect my thermos from the ground.
Cord looks fine. Completely fine and perfect and usual billionaire him in all ways—right up until he clears the spinning blades and moves close enough for me to see the wince every easy lope costs him. Even so, he keeps on walking with that smooth gait like he’s determined to prove to the world that he can.
Or just to me. Perhaps he believes that’s the reason I left. Because he’s less of a man if every step hurts.
I swallow and tuck numbed hands into my pockets, my camera swinging loose at my neck. His face is too hard to look at—not because he’s good-looking, yeah, okay, there’s a part of that because, let’s face it, he’s Cordell Rand—but because I couldn’t say goodbye. Or maybe because Ididn’tsay goodbye.
And now here he is and I have to try to do it all over again.
Or maybe I don’t. Somehow, that’s worse.
“Lanie—” Cord starts what I’m almost positive is going to be a rehearsed speech to encourage me to get into that beast with him and head south.
So I butt in to prevent whatever he’ll say next. “I’m almostdisappointed that West can’t fly a helicopter.” A smile I can’t fight tugs at the corners of my lips. “Almost,” I say softly.
Cord tips his head to one side, but it’s not his voice that answers me.
“Who says I can’t?” West grumps, jumping down from the helicopter’s cabin. He covers half the distance between us and folds his arms. It isn’t until he comes closer that I realize he’s shouldering a rifle that looks twice as big as it has any right to be. He fixes me with an unyielding stare as though daring me to comment on the threat to my wolves’ lives. “I didn’t bring him halfway up the continent to have him eaten by your pet project. He’s worth too much to risk that. Ma’am,” he tacks on with the barest grain of respect.
Cord’s nostrils flare, and I suspect that respect wouldn’t be there at all otherwise. I recall West watching me drive away, that he did nothing. But then, neither did I. Any meager hope that might have etched its way through my heart at his arrival dies a pitiful death in an instant.
“Did you come out here to say goodbye?” I whisper. My voice cracks in a horrendous manner that I can’t prevent as the wind picks up, reminding me that fall in Alaska in the Archipelago is about as brutal as it gets. Or at least, right now, paired with the chopper winding down and my heartache, it feels that way. “You could have done that without terrifying my wolves. Getting them back will be a week’s worth of effort.”
