Page 17 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
I let that sit, and the quiet between us is easy in a way I don't take for granted.
Harper pushes back from the table a few minutes later, carries her mug to the kitchen, says something to Lila that makes her look up from her journal with a warm smile, and drifts toward the window on the far side of the lodge. I stay where I am and watch her go, and when I glance toward the kitchen, I find Nora watching me with a look that is doing too many things at once.
They heard enough. Maybe not all of it, but enough.
I push back from the table and cross to Nora. She turns to the counter as if she were doing something there all along, which fools neither of us.
"Keep an eye on her," I say, low. "Not hovering. Just?—"
"I know what just means." She doesn't turn around. Then, quieter: "I've got her, Logan."
Something about hearing it said that plainly settles something in my chest that's been running loud all morning.
"I'm stepping out for a bit," I say.
"Go," Nora says simply.
I head for the door, and behind me the lodge carries on—Nora's voice picking back up, easy and warm; Lila's pen moving; and the sounds of a morning that has quietly, without anyone announcing it, started to include someone new.
I step outside into the cold mountain air and stand on the porch and look out at the treeline and the mountain that has been mine my whole life, and I think about what it would mean to watch someone drive away from it and carry a piece of it with them without knowing. I think about the way she said,I didn't expect it to feel like this here,and then pulled it back before it could mean anything.
Maybe it already means something.
I'll want it quietly. The way the mountain wants things—no urgency, no demand. Just the steady certainty that some things are worth the wait, and this is one of them.
I stand there a while longer than I need to.
And I let myself hope she decides to come back.
7
HARPER
Itell myself it's strictly something to do.
That's how I justify it when Lila asks if I'd like to help her sort through the clinic supplies after breakfast—it's merely something to do, it keeps my hands busy, and it beats sitting alone thinking about everything I'm not ready to piece together yet. Practical reasons. Sensible reasons. Entirely unrelated to the fact that Lila has a warm, unhurried quality that makes a person want to stay in whatever room she's in.
The clinic is a small room off the back of the lodge—clean and organized in the way that suggests someone with a methodical mindset set it up, and someone else has been slowly undoing that organization over time. Shelves of labeled supplies, a treatment table along one wall, a cabinet that Lila opens and immediately closes again with a pained expression.
"Declan," she says, by way of explanation.
"What did he do?"
"He reorganized the bandage supplies two weeks ago because he said my system wasn't logical." She opens the cabinet again. Packages of gauze, wound dressings, and medical tape arearranged in a system that appears to follow no discernible logic whatsoever. "This is what he considers logical."
"To be fair," I say, studying it, "I think he might have organized it by color."
Lila stares at it. "He did. He organized medical supplies by color."
"In his defense, it's very visually consistent."
Something passes between us—one second, exactly one—and then we both lose it, and it's the kind of laughing that comes from somewhere genuine and surprised, the kind I haven't done in so long that the feeling is almost unfamiliar.
We work through the morning, restoring Lila's original system—supplies organized by category and frequency of use, expiry dates rotated properly, and everything labeled in a way that could be read under pressure. It's not so different from the event logistics work I've done for years: the same underlying architecture ofwhat do you need, when do you need it, and where does it live. My hands know this kind of work and fall into it easily.
"You're good at this," Lila says, watching me reconstruct the cabinet.
"I organized charity galas for five years. The skill set translates more than you'd think."
