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Bringing Javad into the woods was a mistake, Chen thought. She should have been able to guess from the state of the clothes he’d brought along, but she needed the extra set of hands to get the wood back to the cabin. Or so she’d believed—it might have been faster to do it alone. Certainly it would have been quieter.
Behind her, Javad grunted and cursed in time with the heavy footfall that meant he’d tripped. Again. She shouldn’t take such amusement in his clear misery, but... She stopped and turned around. Nujalik was already padding across the short distance to check on him. “You okay back there?”
“I didn’t expect there to be so many roots. Or rocks. Or tufts of whatever this is.” He swept his hand at a moss-choked tussock, against which he’d apparently stubbed his foot. “The treadmill keeps the ground level.”
He looked ridiculous. She’d given him two sweaters to pull on, in an effort to keep him warm, but the arms were two short, and he practically swam in the torso. And his soft-soled trainers were completely unacceptable for the terrain. She reached out a hand and helped him to his feet. “I’m just going to pretend like I know what you’re talking about there.”
“On the ship. You can set your own virtual environment on the treadmill when you’re running. I always pick ‘forest path,’ but the ground’s a damn sight more level than this. How do you do it?”
That explained things slightly. The closest he’d been to spending time in the forest was a digital recreation. The revelation did not bode well for the next day or two.
“Years of practice,” she said at last, though he wasn’t likely to realize the understatement. Her grandfather had had her walking the perimeter of the property from almost as soon as she could walk, and he’d never bothered to help her up from a fall. Toughening, he’d called it. When the land accepted you, you could move through it. To him it had been simple. She hated that she had to struggle against the incursion of his black-and-white thinking sometimes.
With Javad, especially. Her grandfather would have had no problem with the decision. Javad had betrayed the pack; intent didn’t matter. Let the woods, and who- or whatever was coming have him. Chen had spent a lifetime unlearning things like that.
“Khonsu doesn’t have forests, not really,” Javad said. “There are some parks, especially in the old city and U-town. But most of the nature areas are designed to preserve its unterraformed appearance.”
Chen nodded. After the terraforming of Farhope had begun, a lot of the other worlds in the TriSystems pushed for keeping the natural environment, at least in places. She’d been to Khonsu once; The only two things she could remember were rocks and brimstone-stinking air. “Every environment has a rhythm to it. Did you ever go out into Khonsu’s deserts?”
Javad scoffed. “No chance. Like I said, my parents ran a restaurant. Vacation time didn’t exist. We had an aborted camping trip to one of the preservation sites that ended when someone let the oven go cold, and my family had to rush back. After that, if we couldn’t walk there, we didn’t go. The only trees I knew had vast lawns around them. My only other exposure to cabins in the woods was through holovid, and those stories usually had an axe murderer in them.”
She smiled. “There’s no guarantee this one doesn’t.”
He laughed too, fortunately, and bent down to ruffle the fur on Nujalik’s head. It disturbed Chen the way he could unerringly pick out her wolf even when camouflaged, but the man spent a lot of time around umbra wolves. He’d probably trained himself to pick out the shimmer. It still felt suspiciously like her wolf and the doctor bonding, and that was going to be bad for everyone.
“Well, according to the vids, as long as we don’t drink or have sex, we’re safe.”
That conjured a string of thoughts that she had no business entertaining. He was sexy in his own, academian style, and he clearly took care of himself. But he was also a problem that needed solving, and intentional or not, sorry or not, he’d created a situation for her and Nujalik that she wasn’t certain how to deal with. The silence dragged on longer than she intended, and Javad looked like he wanted to swallow his own tongue from fear. “Can’t help you there. I brought good whiskey with me, and I’ll be having a glass when we get back.”
He laughed quietly, though it rang with discomfort. Chen turned and started walking, rather than probing deeper.
He followed along in silence for a few steps, then asked, “How are you planning to down a tree?”
“I’m not. Tree clearing is by license only in these woods. It’s part of a preserve. Besides, the last thing you want to do is burn a fresh, live tree—the sap and green will smoke and pop, and that’s worse than useless. No, I’m looking for downed and dead, which anyone can grab. Something we can get back to the cabin and off the ground to finish drying.” She dug into the thigh pocket on her trousers and pulled out the hatchet she’d brought. “And I’ve got this to clean it up if we need it.”
She’d spotted a likely candidate on the walk in from the clearing where the shuttle had dropped her. Big enough to be a decent supply of wood, small enough that she and Javad could carry it if they had to. If they could avoid any more incidents, they should be there in a few minutes.
To her shock, he didn’t fall during the final leg of the trip. She stepped off the animal track to survey the short tree. It looked like it had fallen earlier in the year, but not so long for rot to set in. She’d have some work cutting it into usable pieces, but it should transport back to the cabin easily enough.
Nujalik had moved to check on Javad, and she made her goofy, yowling noises as he scritched along her ribs and back.
Chen couldn’t help but grin as the scintillation of happiness traveled across the wolfbond like a glissando, and she turned away before he could see her smiling. “You act like I never give you any affection at all.”
“What’s it like? The bond, that is.”
The question made Chen stop, forehead creased and her lips a tight line as she picked an answer. Describing her arm would have been easier. “I’ve never thought about it feeling like anything. It’s probably cliché to say this, but mostly it feels like completion. Like there had always been a part of me missing, and somehow I didn’t know about it. Worse, there’s this nagging sense that without the wolfbond I might never have understood what was missing. This fear that I’d have just been...empty. Does that make sense?”
“That sounds amazing. Still, sharing each other’s thoughts must be disconcerting.”
“People always get that wrong, you know. Wolves and humans don’t think the same way. They think in abstractions—colors and emotions. I don’t get to share her senses, more’s the pity. And it’s not like she’s in my head, having a conversation with me. I know her moods well enough that I can guess what she’s thinking, but mostly it’s just her presence, keeping me aware of her so we can work in concert.” Chen rubbed the back of her neck. “Which I suppose is for the best. She’s too damn noisy as it is. She’d never shut up if I could actually hear her words in my skull.”
“If my few hours of experience are anything to go by, it would all be demands for food and belly-rubs.” He doubled down on the scratches and made baby-talk noises to her wolf. She had to admit it was adorable.
Nujalik’s happiness was contagious, and Chen could keep from chuckling. “He’s got you pegged, chow-hound.”
There was a jagged spark of dissonance along the bond, as her wolf took offence at the teasing and straightened up. Javad gave her one more consoling pat along the spine as he apologized. “You’re right, it wasn’t nice to point that out. I’m sorry. You’re motivated by more than food.”
Chen’s heart squeezed at the words, at the realization of how much he could read her wolf. At the idea he was eavesdropping on the bond. “This tree will do,” she said once she could speak. “Do I need to trim your end or can you lift it like that?”
He looked at her, confused and hurt by her sudden shutting down. “Did I say something wrong?”
Nujalik’s disappointment and confusion stabbed along the bond. Chen stared at the horizon, then lifted the thick end of the dead tree. “We took too long getting out here already. I want to get back before it gets dark. If you were that clumsy in daylight...” She let it trail off, hoping it might lighten the mood she had soured.
It didn’t, but he let it go. “Good point,” he agreed. He didn’t speak again until they got back to the cabin.
#
“YOU’RE DOING THIS ON purpose.” Chen glared at Nujalik, who made every effort to appear reprimanded from her spot on the couch. “And don’t give me that look. You know exactly what I mean.”
She resisted the urge to check out the window, knowing what she’d find. Priddy, chopping up the tree they’d carried back together. He’d insisted, as atonement for ruining her getaway, and she’d been too annoyed with him to tell him no. Having him out of the small living space of the cabin didn’t hurt either. Chen only hoped she could clear her head of him as easily. He’d understood her wolf, not just made an assumption, but interpreted a feeling and responded. She narrowed her eyes at the wolf. “You’re letting him in on purpose.”
Nujalik grumbled a protest, her apology brushing the edges of Chen’s mind.
“No, he isn’t a nice person. You heard him. He’s led God-knows-what kind of trouble to our doorstep. And he’s got all the survival sense of a newly whelped pup.” The steady whack of steel on wood paused a heartbeat too long, and she held her breath, half-expecting him to come rushing in with a bloody stump. She had almost committed herself to investigating, but then the axe started back up. She released the breath she’d been holding. “Besides, you only like him because he pets you.”
The wolf shifted her dark eyes and lay her black-furred head down on her front paws, while a splinter of amusement seeped across the bond. The message behind the wolf’s intimations hit her a moment later, and she playfully tossed a pillow at Nujalik. “No, he cannot pet me too.”
A curl of warm want shifted in her belly, and she crushed it before her wolf could notice. Even if she were on the market for a new partner, it wasn’t going to be someone who would come into the mountains in lightweight summer clothes. Full lips and tousled hair be damned. She let out a long huff. “Besides, you have a terrible track record with finding partners for me.”
It also reminded her of the distinct disadvantage to her grandfather’s cabin—the single bed. She hadn’t broached the topic with Priddy yet, but she needed to let him know he was sleeping on the couch. It was the safest path for both of them.
Chen stood and walked into the kitchen, just to move her legs. To do something other than carry on a not-quite-one-sided argument with her wolf. The bond made it feel slightly less daft, but the parallels were too thin for comfort. Nujalik shifted to rest her chin on the arm of the sofa, watching her with all the gentle admonition her eyes could muster.
And well deserved too. Chen knew better than to blame her relationship going supernova on the wolf. Yes, Nujalik and Elena hadn’t much cared for each other. Each tolerated the other because they both made Chen happy, but neither seemed particularly willing to be part of a triangle, which was how all ranger relationships had to be. Honestly, the best part of breaking up had been losing the feeling of tug-of-war that ensued when the three of them were together. It left Chen like the fulcrum on a very angry seesaw, as each tried to gain leverage over the other.
Chen braced her hands on the white enameled iron of the sink and chewed her lower lip. “Just don’t get attached to him. That’s what I’m saying.”
The door swung open, and Priddy stepped into the cabin, his thin, wiry frame still somehow taking all the air out of the place. Despite the chill, sweat shone in the curls of his blue-black hair and beaded on his forehead. He hadn’t removed her sweaters, and the obvious size issues only heightened his long, lanky look. “Wood’s chopped up. You didn’t ask, but I split about a third of it into smaller pieces for starting.”
She looked out the window to confirm that he had, in fact, done what he’d said. The fresh-cut wood had been stacked at the far end of the log pile, so it would have time to dry further before they burned their way down to it. “Nicely done.”
He grinned and let out a “You’re welcome” before crossing over to scratch Nujalik’s sides. The wolf immediately rolled over to present her belly for rubs and provided an array of embarrassingly enthusiastic noises. Bright notes of the wolf’s contented joy splashed like yellow starshine in her awareness, as if she was telling Chen, See? All this could be yours.
Annoyance snuffed out the wolf’s joy. Nujalik could afford to let go and live in the moment. Chen had second and third thoughts about everything, made sure she had considered the outcomes of a situation and positioned herself to best protect the people she cared about. That part of her didn’t just turn off when they weren’t in combat.
Right now, she included herself in the people-she-cared-about category. She didn’t begrudge Nujalik her joy, but the wolf didn’t understand that Priddy had an ulterior motive. She’d seen the way he stroked the animal—long, slender fingers checking for injury and deformity. Hands searching for a reason to put the wolf under the knife again.
Priddy caught her gaze, his eyes warm and dark as they found her. “I know I keep saying thank you for taking me in, but—”
“You should know,” she cut him off before he could say whatever he’d intended. “You’ll have to sleep on the couch. Nujalik is a bed hog, and she takes up a lot of space.” Might as well rip that bandage off now.
He blushed, the skin of his cheeks darkening in a display she had to remind herself wasn’t cute. “Oh, good. That’s what I’d been about to offer. So, I’m glad we agree. I’d love to use the shower though, if that’s possible.” He sniffed at his armpit with a grimace. “The exertion is nice, but it clearly doesn’t suit me.”
Chen thought the physical exertion suited him perfectly fine, showcasing his wiry strength. “Of course. And there are extra blankets. Since you won’t have the advantage of a certain fluffy bed warmer.” The idea of him wet and naked in her shower prompted another array of thoughts best left unpursued.
Nujalik huffed and gave her an upside-down grin, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth.
“Yes, I mean you, you big goof.”
The wolf rolled back onto her belly and gave a couple of sneezes that Priddy was too slow to avoid.
“Ugh.” He laughed. “Now I definitely need a shower.”
Chen noticed he wasn’t in any hurry to stop playing with the wolf that had just snotted all over him. “I’ll get the towels set up for you.” She was thankful she’d cleaned the shower after removing Elena’s collection of jams and jellies. The last thing she needed was for Priddy to question them, or worse think she liked the overly floral and fruity concoctions.
She was many things, but girly was not typically one of the words she associated with. The realization that she cared, even a little, about how Priddy thought of her, or that she wanted him to see the real her, was annoying. A frustrating temptation that in other situations might even have been welcome, but not here, and not now.
And not with the person who had endangered Nujalik and could still take the wolf away for surgery. Not that she wanted Nujalik in pain, either. But if the surgery further damaged the wolfbond... Chen didn’t want to think about that outcome.
She grabbed the top two towels and a washcloth, double-checked the shower to make sure no trace of Elena remained, and headed back to the living room.