by Zoe Chant
"Thank the rangers," Teri told her. "I've been here with you the entire time."
"Oh, but you helped," Jean said, and next to her, David nodded firmly. "We've been going crazy this whole time, and if you hadn't been there, we would've just worked ourselves up into a frenzy—I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from going after the rangers to see for myself if Andy was up there, and of course you were right, they needed to work without any interruptions. So thank you. I'll be sure to tell the Park how wonderful you were."
"Oh, I'm not—" Teri started, but Jean had turned to hug her husband. Oh, well. She supposed it didn't matter if someone happened to tell the Park she'd done a good job even though she didn't work there.
At that thought, she was struck by a sudden, intensely wistful desire. If only she did work at the Park. How wonderful would that be? Being here every day, at the most beautiful place in the world. If she were a ranger, she could be outside every day, hiking around, helping people like the Morrisons, making sure the park stayed beautiful and safe for everyone who visited it.
Teri bit her lip and turned away from the Morrisons, blinking quickly. It wasn’t possible, of course. She couldn’t be a park ranger without training, and training cost money, and she had less than no money right now. Even if she got a job tomorrow, it would be months before she had enough money to even move out of her parents’ house.
If you were living with Zach, that wouldn’t matter.
Living with Zach. The idea distracted her for a second. Waking up with him, having dinner with him, watching him build the deck he’d talking about—maybe even helping. Mmm, Zach with tools, working out in the summer sun, maybe shirtless...pulling him inside for more of the mind-blowing sex they’d had last night...
Teri yanked her mind back to the present. Practicalities. She was thinking about money. And even if she did live with Zach and get a job fast, it would still be a long, long time before she made enough to pay off the rest of her medical bills, let alone contribute to their household and save up enough to pay for ranger school on top of that. And who knew if she’d even be able to make it in?
I could do it.
She shook her head. As lovely as the idea sounded, it wasn’t possible right now. And she wouldn’t get very far with her immediate problems if she were just daydreaming about possibilities in the distant future.
Besides, she didn’t want to be one of those girlfriends who was like, Honey, let’s do everything together! Look, I got a job at the same place where you work, isn’t that wonderful? She’d always thought that sort of thing was sad—forcing yourself on someone 24/7, like people didn’t need a break from each other now and then. No one could be happy living together and working together.
The fantasy of living with Zach crept back. She thought about also seeing him at work every day. His smile, his warm voice, his strong, competent movements, coming along with her no matter where she was...
Somehow, it didn’t seem too awful.
This was silly. They’d only just met, and mates or not, they’d get tired of each other eventually. Why was she inventing a future where she had a job she’d never considered before, making up problems that would never happen? Teri wasn’t going to be a park ranger.
Besides, all the Glacier rangers were shifters. A human woman probably wouldn’t be welcome in their ranks, anyway.
The radio crackled, making her jump. Cal was telling her that the group was on their way back down, and would probably pass by the campsite soon, so they should come out to the main hiking trail up the mountain if they wanted to rendezvous.
Good. Something concrete to focus on. Teri turned back to the Morrisons. “Okay,” she said. “Time to pack up all these emergency supplies that we’re not going to need anymore, and head out!”
Busying herself with in-the-moment tasks made it easy to forget about all that wishful thinking, and soon the three of them were hiking out to meet up with the rangers as they came down the mountain. The Morrisons pushed hard, and Teri followed doggedly behind, trying to hide how tired she was.
She still wasn’t a hundred percent, after all. She’d almost forgotten that she was in recovery, too caught up in the search for Andy Morrison to think about her own issues. But it was true that she was still getting her strength back, even if her bones were finally all completely healed.
She hung back behind the eager parents, who were too laser-focused on finding their son to look back, and concentrated on keeping her breath. By the time they saw the rangers coming down the trail toward them, she was achy and gasping, and happy to sink down to sit on a rock while the Morrisons ran ahead with a last burst of speed to get to their child.
The whole party stopped when the parents reached them, but one figure broke off and kept coming. Teri smiled through her panting breaths, and waited for him.
Zach looked concerned as he came up to her rock. “Teri? Are you okay?”
She nodded. She was finally starting to catch her breath. “Just tired.” She took a drink of water from the bottle she’d snagged from the Morrisons’ camp. And her eyes took a long drink of Zach, all official in his ranger uniform, but with such warmth and care in his silvery eyes.
She thought that the look strengthened her even more than the water did.
He was still looking concerned, though. She told him, “We went pretty fast to get up here, and I’m not quite used to it yet. I haven’t done any serious exercise since before the accident.”
“But you’re okay.” Zach studied her face. “Drinking water, catching your breath all right? Not nauseated or feeling faint?”
“Nope. Just had to sit and rest for a minute. I should be good to go soon.”
Zach nodded, the concern fading from his face, and came to sit next to her on the rock. She scooted over to make room, and leaned into him. He took her hand, twining their fingers together, and she sighed at the warmth from his body, wishing they were alone out here so she could just curl up into his side.
“We’re not going too fast because of Andy, so the way back shouldn’t be as hard on you,” he said. “But if you do need to rest again, just let me know, all right? I can stay with you. We don’t need five rangers to get Andy and Joel back down the mountain.”
Teri squeezed his hand. Once again, she appreciated the difference between how Zach took care of her and how her family tried to do it. Zach obviously wanted to be sure that she was all right. But at the same time, he was listening to what she told him about how she felt, and respecting her own ability to assess what she could do.
Her mother would’ve had paramedics on their way by now. She would’ve insisted that Teri couldn’t get up and walk on her own ever again.
“I’m really glad you came with us,” Zach said quietly. “I wish you could’ve been up on the mountain, but it was good to just know you were out here with the family.”
And that was another difference. Zach accepted her help. Teri had never in her life appreciated what it meant when someone allowed you to help them.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.” She snuck a quick kiss, and he made a satisfied sound deep in his chest. The kiss lingered longer than she’d meant it to, soft and warm, until they had to pull away before it became obvious what they were doing.
They kept their hands entwined, though, until the rest of the group caught up with them, and then they joined them on their way down the mountain.
Teri noticed Zach keeping an eye on her...but he was also keeping an eye on his brother, and on Andy, and checking in with the rest of the rangers every so often.
He was a natural at this job, she thought fondly. Always aware of how things were going, making sure that everyone was all right, but with a good-natured confidence that wouldn’t get anyone’s back up. Not anxious, not interfering, not controlling...just a good, helpful man.
She still couldn’t quite believe he was hers. God, she was lucky.
After a little while of hiking, Zach’s brother Joel dropped back from wher
e he’d been walking beside Andy to settle beside her instead.
“Hi,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Do you know the Morrisons?”
“Actually, no,” said Teri, suddenly nervous. The stakes were much higher now than they’d been when she met Joel last night. What if it turned out that he didn’t like her, or she didn’t like him? That would make things so difficult.
“Zach called me when he heard you were missing,” she said. “I came as fast as I could and, well...I used to volunteer here, and I kind of got conscripted back into service.” She offered him a smile.
Up ahead, Zach glanced around, probably looking for the two people he was most concerned about. He turned to see Joel and Teri together, and immediately dropped back.
“Joel.” Was Teri imagining the wary tone in his voice? No, she decided, he wasn’t sure how this was going to go. Her nervousness hiked itself up a notch. “I need to introduce you.”
Joel frowned. “Uh, we met last night? Did you forget already?”
Zach shook his head. “No. I mean—Joel, I’d like you to meet my mate, Teri.”
Joel stopped short in the middle of the trail, staring.
Teri stopped too, and smiled tentatively. “Hello,” she said. “This is just as surprising to me as it is to you, I promise.”
Joel was frowning. “But—are you a shifter?”
She shook her head. “Just human.”
“You’re not just anything,” Zach intervened quickly. “You’re Teri, and that’s the only thing that’s important.”
Even though the moment felt fraught somehow, Teri couldn’t help the prickling behind her eyes at those words. It was the sort of thing people who loved each other were supposed to say—the sort of thing she’d always wanted to hear from her family, and had never gotten.
Now she had it. And she had to hope that Joel was okay with this, because she wasn’t giving it up for the world.
“Mates,” Joel said slowly. Like the word tasted weird. “You’re mates. Like Mom and Dad.”
Zach nodded. “That’s right.”
“Hey!” Cal’s bark echoed back along the trail. “What’s keeping you three? Something wrong?”
“No, sir,” Zach called back, already turning around.
“Then hurry it up!”
Joel took the opportunity to speed up until he was near the front, walking beside Andy again. Teri couldn’t hurry quite as fast, and Zach stayed beside her.
“Should you go talk to him?” she murmured. “It seemed like he wasn’t sure how to take the...news.”
But Zach shook his head. “I have to give him time to think about it. It’s the only thing that works with Joel. When he’s upset about something, he disappears, and takes time to calm down and think about whatever’s wrong. If he doesn’t get a chance to go off on his own, he’ll just get more and more upset.”
“Do you think he’s upset?” Teri stared after Joel. God, she hoped he wasn’t angry.
Zach hesitated. “I think he’s...surprised. Neither of us have been expecting to find our mates. And it’s been just the two of us for so long, I think we were both figuring we’d live in that house together until we got old.”
“I understand that. It’s weird when you think things are going to play out one way and suddenly everything’s different.”
Zach reached out to take her hand. “I hope you know that it’s not like there’s going to be a choice. Even if he doesn’t like this, I’m never giving you up.”
“I know,” Teri said softly. And she did. She could feel their bond, deep inside of her, and she knew that it couldn’t be broken. There was no giving Zach up, no leaving him behind, and she was absolutely rock-solid confident that he felt the same way. They were mates, and that was forever.
“But,” Zach continued, “I can’t tell him what to think, either.”
“It’s okay. Even if he really, really hates it, he’s already more pleasant to be around than most of my actual family.” Teri tried to make it into a joke, but she couldn’t help remembering the fight she’d just had with her mom, and it felt a little flat.
Zach didn’t look like he thought it was funny, either. “I really want you to move out of that house and in with us.”
“I will not move in with you unless Joel says it’s okay.” Teri was totally adamant on this point. “And you can’t try and convince him or argue him into it! He has to actually be okay with it.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Zach’s hand clenched around hers. “I don’t think I would, anyway. I’ve been wondering.”
Teri looked up at him. He was frowning, looking troubled. “What do you mean?”
“You said your sister acts like she’s the same as your mom, so anxious about you that it’s controlling. That she gets in your business and tells you what to do, and it’s awful. I’ve been wondering if I might be doing the same thing as Joel.”
“No. No way.” Teri shook her head. “You’re not the same as Lillian. You guys are nothing alike, honestly.”
The fight she’d had with her mom came flooding back. Somehow, it hadn’t seemed important in the face of Joel going missing.
And honestly, it was such a relief to be able to just forget about her mom for a while.
“But I do worry about him,” Zach was saying. “I was terrified when he was reported missing. I yelled at him after we found him, and it wasn’t because I was mad—just because I was scared.”
“What did you say?” Teri asked softly.
“I asked him what the hell he’d been thinking, how he could’ve ended up at the bottom of a crevasse, why didn’t he radio in, didn’t he know I’d thought he was dead...” The muscles in Zach’s jaw tightened. “Now that I’m saying it over, it sounds even worse. Just like the sort of thing your mom might say to you.”
“No.” Teri tugged on Zach’s hand until he looked her in the eye. “Zach, you’re nothing like my mother. You were worried and upset because Joel’s life was actually in danger. What did he say back to you?”
Zach looked sheepish. “He explained how he’d gotten into the situation. It was all reasonable, Teri, and that’s the problem. When I yelled at him, I was behaving as though it was his fault, when really, he was rescuing a kid from falling into a crevasse and being killed.” He shook his head and started walking again.
He didn’t drop Teri’s hand, though, and she held on tight as she set out again alongside him.
“Zach. This right here—this is the difference. You were scared and worried, and you did what most people do in that situation. You know—Thank God you’re safe, I’m going to strangle you with my bare hands!”
She made it as dramatic-sounding as possible, and Zach chuckled a little, probably despite himself. Teri smiled and pushed on.
“But once you were done with that, you stopped, you let Joel explain what happened. And you know Joel didn’t actually get himself in trouble on purpose, or because he’s careless or stupid. You asked him what happened, he told you, and you believed him.”
Teri paused, clenched her fists—Zach squeezed her hand back—and took a deep breath. “You know what my mother’s actual problem is?”
“Tell me,” Zach said softly. The love and concern in his voice gave her the strength to keep going.
“It’s not being worried or anxious. I think every parent worries about their kids. The problem is that my mother is...selfish.” Teri blinked a little, because it really hurt to admit this out loud, but she kept going. “What she feels, and what she wants for herself, are always more important than what I feel or what I want. She always has to be right, and everyone else has to bend themselves around her to accommodate her. My dad’s personality has totally disappeared, if it ever existed. My sister is turning herself into Mom’s clone.”
She’d stopped walking again, and she was dimly aware that she should keep going, or Cal was going to yell at them again. But Zach stopped with her and took her other hand in his, and that was what gave her the strength to k
eep going.
“If she’s mad at me about something, she can’t be wrong. She won’t accept that she was ever wrong. So if she’s mad, I must have done something to make her that way, and I can never, ever convince her that I didn’t.”
Teri shook her head, tears standing in her eyes. “Just the fact that you’re telling me that Joel was right and you were wrong shows me that you’re nothing like my mother. But also, you’ve been showing me that in little ways ever since we met. Like when you asked me if I wanted to drive, instead of assuming that I must be an unsafe driver because I got into an accident.”
“Is that what your mother thinks?” Zach asked in disbelief. “Because you skidded at night on an icy road?”
Teri nodded. “That’s what she said. See? You’re nothing like her. Even just now, when I got tired and had to sit on the rock. You asked if I was all right, and when I said I was, you believed me. Zach, part of what I love about you is that you know that helping someone is about what they need, not what you need. And Joel has to know that, too.”
Zach leaned in and kissed her softly. Teri closed her eyes and kissed back.
After a second, he pulled away. “You are so strong, and so brave, and so caring,” he said softly. “I can’t believe how lucky I am that I’m your mate.”
A smile broke through Teri’s almost-tears. This was her family now—this man, and his brother. They were going to make it work. “I’m the lucky one,” she told him.
He just shook his head. Then he glanced up. “We’d better hurry, or Cal won’t be happy with us.”
Teri turned to start walking again. “Then let’s go.” She felt like she could run a marathon.
***
When they got back down to the vehicles, everyone split up: Andy and his parents went off to get Andy checked out for any injuries, and one of the other rangers—Jeff, Teri thought his name was—went with them.
The Morrisons had been concerned that Joel wasn’t coming with them, after spending the night out in the cold as well, but Joel demurred, putting them off and telling them he was fine. As they pulled away, Teri looked up at Zach. “Is he really fine?”