"Stop flirting with my girlfriend," Nash grumbles.
"I'm not flirting, I'm vetting," Reid says innocently. "It's a brotherly duty."
"So," Rhys cuts in, loud enough to silence the table. He doesn't do small talk. He does logistics. "I've done a preliminary damage assessment based on Reid's … highly colorful report. The smokehouse at Misty Meadows is a total loss. The kitchen window frame is splintered. Something chewed the generator's fuel line to confetti. And you used about four hundred dollars' worth of plywood."
"Bill me," I say, grabbing a pancake. "Or bill the grant. If I still have one."
"Your claim went through," Rhys says calmly, sliding a piece of paper across the table. "Budget code 808-Alpha, the one you gave me before you two slept the clock around. I refiled your 'Tactical Extraction' as 'Emergency Structural Hardening.' Universities fund infrastructure faster than they fund adventures. It cleared overnight."
I stare at him, my fork hovering halfway to my mouth. "Claims take six weeks. I've filed them. Mine once needed a notarized letter about a broken tripod."
"I didn't email Reynolds. I filed the rider the day you flew back to Fairbanks, with his support letter attached. It cleared Friday, close of business," Rhys says, adjusting his glasses. "And while the file was open, I grew it. You have fifty thousand dollars for renovations and new equipment. I also added a line item for 'Hazard Pay' for the research assistants. That's us."
I look at Nash, my eyes wide. "Fifty thousand? In a week?"
"Rhys is good at paperwork," Nash says, finally sitting down next to me. "It's his superpower. That and sucking the fun out of parties."
"I am efficient," Rhys corrects, looking offended. "Someone has to be the adult while Reid is out there playing pirate."
"I wasn't playing pirate," Reid interjects, his mouth full. "I was conducting a maritime rescue operation. And I looked good doing it. Aris, tell him I looked good."
"You looked flammable," I say, while Mags sets a platter of eggs on the table.
Breakfast is a blur of food and noise. For the first time in years, the silence I have cultivated in my academic life feels lonely in retrospect. This kitchen is loud, messy, and full of life. And looking at Nash, watching his shoulders drop as he bickers with Reid about scrambled eggs, I know something.
He hasn't just saved my life on the mountain. He's given me a life to come back to.
"Alright, enough bonding," Finn announces, standing up. "We have daylight burning. Nash, you need to see the cabin. We need to secure it before nightfall."
"Gear up," Nash says, switching from brother to Alpha in a split second. "Reid, you got the trailer?"
"Way ahead of you," Reid says, wiping his mouth. "I loaded the generator and the welder. It's mobile surgery time. We're going to turn that cabin into a fortress."
The ride from the lodge to Misty Meadows takes twenty minutes, but it feels like traveling between worlds. I ride behind Nash, wrapping my arms around his waist, pressing my face against the back of his parka to block out the biting wind. I feel every shift of his weight, every turn of the handlebars.
When we break through the trees and enter the clearing, Nash slows the sled to a crawl.
The scene is stark. The snow in the yard is trampled, a chaotic map of the violence from the siege. The white drifts are stained with dirt where the wolves circled. The incinerator barrel is overturned, spilling ash across the pristine snow.
But the cabin … the cabin is standing. The claw marks on the door are deep, gouging into the solid oak, scars that will never fully heal, but the door held.
"The door held," Nash says, cutting the engine. The silence rushes back in, but it isn't threatening anymore. The predators are gone.
Reid pulls up alongside us, the utility trailer rattling behind him. "Alright," he announces, clapping his gloved hands together. "Let's fortify this castle. I'm thinking we go for a 'Mad Max meets Log Cabin' aesthetic. Spikes? Do we want spikes?"
"No spikes," Nash says. "Just fix the window, Reid."
He goes to work immediately. Within minutes, the blue-white flash of an arc welder lights up the gray shadows of the porch, accompanied by the angry hiss of melting steel.
"Wolf-proof," Reid shouts over the noise of the grinder, flipping up his welding mask to look at us. He points to the heavy custom steel mesh he is fitting over the window's new glass—a pane Rhys pulled from the lodge's repair stores this morning, cut to size before the rest of us finished breakfast. "Nothing gets in here unless it has opposable thumbs and a bolt cutter. It's impenetrable. It's glorious."
"It's … distinct," I say, standing beside Nash on the porch, watching the sparks fly.
"It's perfect," Nash says.
As the afternoon wears on, the sun begins to dip behind the ridge, casting long blue shadows across the snow. The work slows. Reid finishes the window and moves to reinforce the door hinges. Mags—who took one look at four brothers with power tools and announced that nobody wolf-proofs a house on an empty stomach—hands around a thermos of hot cider.
I walk away from the group, heading down the steps toward the edge of the clearing. I stop at the tree line, looking north toward the mountains, toward the calving grounds where the herd would return in the spring.
