Page 10 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
Garrett is leaning against the driver's side door with a travel mug, squinting at me through the dark. He's a large man—broad-framed, with a graying beard that's been the same approximate length for as long as I've known him, and deep-set blue eyes that have always looked like they're running quietcalculations about whatever's in front of them. Heavy canvas jacket, steel-toed boots. He'd dressed for a job, not a pre-dawn call.
"Morning," he says, as if it isn't five-fifteen.
"Thanks for coming out."
"Mateo said a car." He takes a pull from his mug. "Didn't say much else."
"White Subaru, past the granite outcrop." I start walking, and Garrett falls into step beside me. He's never needed more information than the task requires, which is one of the many reasons I trust him completely.
We find it exactly where she described—pulled half onto the shoulder at an angle that says it quit without much warning, no time to pull off cleanly. I rest my hand on the hood. Cold. She's been here a while.
Garrett crouches at the front without being asked, flashlight out, running it along the undercarriage with the focused quiet, like he speaks engine better than conversation.
"Coolant hose," he says after about thirty seconds. "Blew out. She's bone dry." He stands and pops the hood, shining the light inside. "Lucky the engine didn't seize."
"Can you fix it?"
"Yeah. Not here." He drops the hood back down. "Get her to the garage, check what else took heat damage. Couple of days."
"Soon as you can."
Garrett looks at me sideways over the hood, as he does when he senses something beneath the surface of a straightforward request but chooses not to ask about it. "Sure thing, Boss."
We get a line on it, and Garrett drives while I follow, the Subaru rolling behind the truck on the tow cable down the mountain road. The drive to the pack garage takes fifteen minutes, winding and slow in the dark. I sit in the passenger seat and watch the treeline pass and think about the way she'd lookedstanding in my kitchen in borrowed clothes—the stubborn set of her jaw, the careful way she'd accepted help without making it about needing it.
She could be your mate in every sense, my wolf offers, unhelpfully.
She could be asleep in your house and completely terrified of you if you don't handle this right, I answer back.
My wolf has no response to that, which I take as a small victory.
The pack garage sits off the main property, a long, practical building that Garrett has made entirely his own over the years, organized with a precision that doesn't match his easygoing demeanor until you understand that engines are where he puts his full attention. We get the Subaru backed in, and Garrett walks a slow circle around it with his flashlight, already cataloging.
"I'll get the part ordered first thing," he says. "Keep it inside so it's not sitting out where anyone walks by and asks questions."
I look at him. "Mateo talk to you?"
"Mateo told me a woman is staying with you." He doesn't look up from the front panel. "Didn't say much else."
"That's all it is for now," I say. "Keep it quiet."
He glances up at that—briefly cataloging rather than reacting—and then goes back to what he's doing. "Sure thing, Boss." He goes back to the engine without another word.
I leave him to it.
Mateo ison my porch when I come up the trail.
He's leaning against the railing with his arms crossed, dark hair still damp, already in his work clothes. Awake and fully assembled in a way that suggests he didn't go back to sleep after my call, which I expected.
"She still out?" he asks.
I glance up at the dark window. "Think so."
"Good." He straightens. "Talk to me."
I sit on the porch steps, and he drops down beside me, and I give him the rest of it—the scent on the south ridge, the way the bond landed when she met my eyes in the doorway, and what she'd looked like when she got there. I tell him about the wedding dress, the hours of crying etched onto her face, and how she took up the smallest amount of space possible in my kitchen, as if she were calculating exactly how much she was allowed to need.
He listens without interrupting, which costs him.
