I work the camera, snapping hundreds of high-resolution images, while Nash acts as spotter, calling out behaviors.
"Bull is displacing the subordinate male," Nash murmurs, his eye pressed to the scope. "Aggressive posture, but no contact. He's conserving energy."
"Noting dominance display," I reply, my fingers flying across my tablet. "Is he favoring the left hind leg? Thaddeus thought he had an old injury."
Nash watches for a long minute. "Negative. Movement is fluid. He looks prime, Aris. Healthy. Strong."
"Good. That's good."
"He's checking the wind," Nash notes. "Smart. He keeps putting the cows between him and the open ground."
"Using the herd as a buffer," I say, typing. "Self-preservation over protection?"
"Or he knows if he goes down, the herd loses its navigator," Nash counters. "Maybe he's protecting the asset."
I pause, looking at Nash. He's focused entirely on the animal, his profile sharp against the white sky. He understands this creature. He analyzes the behavior not just as a biologist would, charts and graphs, but as a fellow predator, understanding the logic of survival.
"You really admire them," I say quietly.
He lowers the scope, glancing at me. "Hard not to. They survive in a place that tries to kill them every day. They don't complain, they don't give up. They just endure."
"Like you," I say before I can stop myself.
Nash goes still. He looks at me, really looks at me, and I feel that dangerous pull again. The one that makes me want to lean across the six inches of snow separating us and find out if his mouth tastes like the coffee we drank this morning.
"Aris," he says, his voice dropping to that rough register that vibrates in my chest.
"We should … we should get the wind speed measurements," I say quickly, scrambling backward into my professional shell. I grab the anemometer from my pack, fumbling with the case. "For the data set."
Nash watches me for a beat too long, seeing right through my panic. Then he nods.
"Right. Wind speed."
We work until the light begins to fail, the sun dipping below the peaks and turning the valley into a bowl of purple shadow. Waldo and his small band move into the dense timber for the night, vanishing as effectively as if they'd never been there.
But we have the photos, the GPS coordinates. We have proof.
"We need to head back," Nash says, packing the scope. "Don't want to navigate the ridge in the dark."
The ride back is different. The triumph of the day buzzes in my blood, keeping the cold at bay. I hold onto Nash, and this time, I let myself rest my head against his back, just for a beat, because I'm tired.
When we get back to camp, the adrenaline crash hits us both. We stumble into the tent, clumsy with fatigue. Nash fires up the stove outside, vent flap propped, while I download the day's data to the backup drive, terrified that something might happen to the images.
"Here," Nash says, handing me a mug of hot chocolate. He must have packed the mix as a surprise; it wasn't on the inventory list.
"Luxury item?" I ask, wrapping my hands around the warmth.
"Morale booster," he corrects. "You earned it."
He sits cross-legged opposite me, blowing on his own mug. The lantern light casts dancing shadows on the tent walls, creating a small, golden world that contains only the two of us.
"So," he says, stretching his legs out. "You found him. Three years of work. How does it feel?"
"Surreal," I admit. I take a sip of the chocolate. It's sweet, hot, and insanely good. "I kept thinking … I kept thinking Thaddeus would be here. In my head, I always pictured showing him the photos."
"He knows," Nash says. He says it flat, with the same certainty he uses when he talks about ice thickness or wind direction.
"You think?"
