He’d kept the paperclip.
She remembered every trinket she’d ever found. It was a blessing and a curse to a raven. So many baubles bounced around in her head, but her memory was impeccable, and she wasn’t able to let go of even one.
That had been the first gift she’d ever given to him. She’d done it to get his mind off his Mom crying inside the small cabin he shared with his parents. She’d given it to Easton to show that she cared, and then he’d gone and rewarded her by telling his dad she was his best friend.
That day, she’d given him the folded paperclip and her heart.
From the branch she’d dug her claws into, she could hear his low, rumbling growl before he ripped those eerie green eyes away from her and looked back at a man climbing down the mountainside toward him.
Tiny heartbeat pounding, she bounced sideways down the limb and hid behind the body of the tree. The tree was hurting, and its spirit almost faded to nothing. Pine beetles had suffocated and starved it. She could feel its pain, but that was nothing compared to the ache of watching what had transpired with Easton and the rest of his crew.
He was struggling. An outcast in a crew of outcasts. It seemed he was in trouble with his alpha, but she couldn’t figure out why. It was apparent he was on the verge of a Change, too. His eyes had always blazed like a demon’s when he was close to a Change, but in the last two days, the glow had been constant.
She liked that man, the one with the clipboard who’d dared to grip Easton’s shoulder despite the terrifying rumble in his throat. He’d tried to make Easton feel better about things she was helpless to understand.
It was suddenly overwhelming, the years that stood between them.
She’d missed most of his life.
There was tragedy in that.
A trio of heavy steel cables, hanging from a line high above, blasted down the mountain side. There was staggering power in the machine that pushed the cables toward Easton and the other Gray Back. Matt? It was hard to put their faces to the pictures on Jason’s social media when they were wearing yellow hard hats.
Easton and Matt worked to tie the long cables in loops around logs, three at a time. Then they gestured with a thumbs up to the alpha above them on a ledge, and the logs were dragged up the slope at a frightening speed. Tirelessly they worked, hooking logs, always running around, jumping, sure-footed as mountain goats. Easton sported a limp now, but it didn’t seem to hinder his work. Pain slashed through her chest when she saw him wince, though.
Perhaps his limp was from the bear trap.
It was March and still cool up in the mountains, but Easton only wore a white T-shirt and threadbare jeans with holes in the knees over heavy work boots. His pants clung to his tapered waist and powerful legs. When she was younger, she thought Easton the most dashing boy she’d ever laid eyes on, but Easton the man was a work of art. His cut arms pressed against the thin fabric of his shirt, and as the day wore on and he worked up a sweat, his shirt clung to the defined muscles in his back. And when he linked his hands behind his head while waiting for the cables to come flying back down the hillside at him, she could make out ripped abs as the damp material clung to his torso. His skin was tanned from the outdoor manual labor, and at one point, he smiled at Jason who was working a big machine that stripped the limbs off logs and leveled the ends. Easton’s teeth were white and straight. If he would only smile deep enough, she’d be able to make out the shallow dimples he’d had when he was a boy. The ones he used to flash her before everything got so messed up. Before he was broken.
Easton was stunning. Masculine, lithe, powerful. Full of barely checked aggression as he worked alongside Matt, who seemed to dig at Easton’s nerves when he spoke. Easton was terrifying and beautiful, like a tornado she’d witnessed from a distance when she was ten. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.
Her heart rate wouldn’t settle down, and it left her feeling dizzy. She gripped her tiny talons into the bark more securely as Easton rolled his neck and wiped his cheek on the shoulder of his shirt.
This feeling right here—the breathless, stomach-dipping, bewildered one—this was what falling for a man should feel like. Perhaps the elders could’ve convinced her this feeling didn’t exist if she hadn’t already felt it. Caden had formally asked to court her, and for twelve long months, she’d been trying to force herself to feel something—anything—for him.
But after seeing that bent paperclip on Easton’s palm today, any hope of settling for Caden was lost.
Easton as a boy had tempted her heart.
Easton as a man was ruining her for anyone else.
****
As the sun sank down, half-hidden behind the mountains, the alpha waved his crew up to the ledge he stood on. They chuckled at something Jason said, all but Easton, who stared at the ground as if it held the answers to all the secrets in the world.