Whispers of Winter

14

Jo

Alex snored in her sleep. She also sporadically giggled, which was terrifying, but I got used to it after three nights. Heath stopped sleeping on the couch after four nights. I'd spotted Cara earlier in the day washing bedsheets. Bedsheets I easily recognized. For some reason, the thought of Heath needing any evidence of me washed away in order to sleep in his own space had made my stomach roll.

I had attempted to convince Heath to let me see Ryan exactly one time, and his harsh, sharp reaction had hindered any future attempts for at least a week. I'd been tempted to sneak in during the night, once, when I'd listened to Grant leave the house to run the territory line, and Beck was out at the shed working on the Bronco, but when I'd left Alex's room to find Cara downstairs in the kitchen, getting herself a glass of water, my plans had halted. I'd been tempted to wait for her to leave, but she'd spotted me and then suddenly I was trapped in the living room with her and talking about the things she wanted to add to the house.

My days were spent boring and to myself. I mostly read, or avoided them by hiding in Alex's room or sitting on the deck. None of them seemed to care about my reclusive habits during the day for the first three weeks I was there. They all mostly went about their own business; making small repairs to the house, cooking, cleaning, relaxing, exercising. They were all aggravatingly fit, Heath most of all. The brute had a terrible habit of going on runs in the woods without a shirt on, and then parading around the house with a sweat-glistened, perfect chest, knowing exactly what he was doing.

The mundaneness of their lives surprised me. I didn't know what I'd expected from a pack of werewolves, but it wasn't the reality.

After my first month, Grant dragged me from my seat out to a shed a short walk from the house and started teaching me various lumber work. His work was impressive; strong and delicate, and always perfectly smooth without losing texture. Mine was pathetic besides his; it mostly resembled something a child would try to make with a hammer and chisel. He was a surprisingly good teacher, though. Even when he did get impatient with me, he never let it show. Even more impressive was his music taste while he worked. I hadn't pegged the lumberjack as a fan of classical, but he adored it.

Alex had followed his lead and dragged me into cooking with her whenever she set foot in the kitchen. Beck joined us, sometimes, but he was clearly the chef of the group and a bit of a dictator in the kitchen, so Alex and I usually gave the room to him and made ourselves busy elsewhere. When I'd mentioned offhand that I knew how to crochet, she'd been adamant that I teach her; she even dragged me into town to buy out nearly an entire yarn store. We were individually working on blankets. Cara sometimes joined us when we worked together in the living room or in Alex's room.

Cara did everything with me. After I'd healed enough and we'd gotten the okay from Mark after another visit to him, she even dragged me with her to work out. I usually hated every second of it, but after the first two months, when I looked at myself for a little too long in the mirror after a shower and noticed my new muscle definition, I bit my tongue. There was something calming about exercising; I grew to like the burn of my muscles, and the activity.

The weather was warming. The days were longer and the sun radiated waves of heat that sunk into my bones any time I sat outside. It made exercising with Cara a bit deadly, and I was always embarrassingly sweaty by the end of it, but I still found no reason to complain. The pack loved the heat, too; whenever they'd finished with anything they needed to finish inside the house, they all drifted outside to lay on patches of moss and soak in the sunshine.

The nights were still cold enough to justify a fire, which I was glad for, because I wasn't sure what I would do without the comfort of it. Tiptoeing into the living room and sitting on the green wingback, huddled near a small fire, had become part of a routine for me. I spent far too much time sitting there at night, just breathing in a private, quiet space. I always snuck back into Alex's room before anybody saw me. I was getting very talented at running on only four hours of sleep.