Page 15 of Cold Foot Komodo

A very, very hot and complicated guide.

Chapter Four

Timber had sent her exactly zero pictures of the homes up in Wreck’s Mountains, so Sasha had no idea what to expect as Reed drove them up past the final ridge and into a clearing. In her imaginings, it had been single-wide mobile homes all lined up like the pictures she’d found on the internet of some of the Damon’s Mountains Crew territories, but while this had a familiar layout, the homes were not single-wides.

A half-circle of A-frame, expensive looking, dark-wood cabins lined the clearing. The backdrop was huge pine trees dusted with snow. Each cabin had a different color painted on the wooden shingles around the front doors. There were six of them, all lining a circular gravel drive, with a firepit up front covered by a big canopy. Someone had dragged heaters out there, as well as burgundy and navy blue rocking chairs.

The warm light filtering from the cabins cast the snowy ground in hues of gold.

It looked like a postcard.

“Oh my gosh,” she said on a breath, hand clutching her necklace as she scanned the beautiful scene. Her sister lived in paradise.

There was a crowd at the firepit who waved to her, and Timber came sprinting out of the group, a megawatt grin on her pretty face.

A sob clogged up Sasha’s throat, but she didn’t know the reason for the emotion as she shoved the door open and got tackled by her sister.

She laughed thickly as Timber hugged her in the snow, and embraced her as hard as she physically could. She could do thatnow that Timber was a polar bear shifter. She was ten times stronger than Sasha.

“You’re here! You’re really here!” Timber exclaimed as she eased back.

“Are you going to let me up now, heifer?”

Timber laughed and stood, pulling Sasha up by the jacket flaps like she weighed nothing at all. Sasha was probably never going to get used to how powerful her younger sister was now.

She tossed a glance at Reed, who came around the truck at that same moment, and time slowed. He was wearing his wool-lined jacket, the collar flipped up. One of his hands was shoved deep in his pocket, and his strides were long and powerful. He wore the ghost of a smile that made his face look so handsome in the flickering gold light from the firepit. He came to a stop, his bi-colored eyes on her, and wore the softest expression as Timber was pulling her in for another hug, chattering away in her ear.

Sasha smiled at him as she gripped Timber’s sweater. “Where is your jacket?” she admonished her sister. “It’s freezing out.”

“Polar bear, remember?”

Aaah, yes. Polar bear shifters probably didn’t get terribly cold.

Wreck approached, blocking her view of Reed, and he pulled her from Timber’s hug into his. “Hey there,” he murmured, and then released her. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“He’s glad you’re here so he doesn’t have to listen to me whining about how I miss you,” Timber said.

“She’s always been a stage-five clinger,” Sasha told Wreck.

“I’m beginning to understand that,” he deadpanned.

“Look!” Timber said, pointing to the house on the very left. “I made you a welcome sign!”

Indeed, a bunch of pieces of notebook paper spelling out the wordWelcomewere draped across the front.

“It looks like a toddler made it.”

Timber shoved her in the shoulder and laughed again. “My handwriting won’t get better with age. At least you can read it though.”

“And it’s spelled right,” one of the guys from the crowd said. He gave her an eye roll and offered his hand for a shake. “Because I spell-checked it. I’m Kade.”

“Sasha,” she introduced herself, shaking his hand.

She met Cash next, and King, and Katrina. A quiet woman named Raynah introduced herself last, and Sasha noticed she was pregnant. “How far along are you?”

Raynah shrugged her shoulders up to her ears. “Honestly, I lost count in Cold Foot. And I also don’t know what the gestation is for my…kind. I should know that answer,” she said. “I feel like my motherly-instincts are a little shaky.”

“No worries at all. If you want to figure it out, I bet we can do some research. I’m a nurse. Give me a week, and I’ll have access to the ultrasound machines.”

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