Somewhere New (Isle of Doughnut #1)

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

CALLUM

I closed my eyes and let the scents of the island wash over me.

At first, they were a jumbled barrage. Harsh notes clashed with gentle tones, vying for attention.

Another deep breath. Another. Let them shout and shove, let them settle.

Order emerged.

The closest made themselves known. The salty sweat I’d earned trekking across the snow-capped mountains since daybreak. The worn cotton of my shirt and jeans. The tang of my battered leather boots.

I breathed, my chest expanding, and searched further.

The bully of all scents in the mountains demanded attention. The goats. Their musty fur and grass-sweetened breath and earthy dung. They were the reason I lived up here. The wild goats roaming this island might fend well for themselves, but sometimes even the most independent creature needed a little help.

Bonnie had rolled her eyes when I’d said that and murmured hypocrite under her breath before I slammed the car door and walked away.

The powerful scent of the goats settled in my awareness. Now it had been acknowledged, it didn’t need to jostle with the others any more.

Behind and around it, the other smells of the mountains rose up. The sharp freshness of snow on the peaks. The chill in the air threatening more. The ancient earth underneath my boots. Flowers, small and hardy, fighting for life amongst scrubby grass.

These scents were the backdrop of my days. They grounded me, this varied smellscape I could depend on to always be there when I closed my eyes and concentrated.

I took a steadying breath before I pushed any further. The next part couldn’t hurt me.

Leaving the peaceful mountains behind, my awareness drifted down to the inhabited parts of the island. Between the mountains and the island’s village, the stale stench of loss made my nostrils flare.

Bonnie said it was a figment of my imagination. As Alpha, her sense of smell was even more advanced than mine. When I’d first come up to the mountains, when I’d still entertained the few visitors interested in seeing me, I’d asked her to scent the island. She’d described the mountains, had choice words about the stench of the goats, then she’d skipped straight to the village.

I’d pushed her, and she said there was a faint smell of mildew. Right on the edge of her senses.

Absence and lashing loneliness invaded mine. I struggled to keep my breathing steady and my eyes closed as it muscled away every other scent .

I let a flash of searing pain cut through me. I was guilty. This assault was the least I deserved.

I swallowed, took in a shaking breath, and forced my awareness on. The tinge of loss hovered, but let me go. Real or imagined, it roared up in anger but then subsided every time.

The village was a whole muddle of scents. Even with my superior resistance to the cold, I couldn’t stand here for the amount of time it would take to untangle them. Highlights bounced above the rest. Vanilla-tinged paper at Kit’s bookshop. Warm rubber from the few cars. Errol’s salty skin.

With Errol’s feet planted safely on solid ground, the restlessness in my mind quietened. As little as I involved myself in the lives of my pack, a part of me shifted uneasily the whole time one of them was absent.

I frowned as I sifted through the myriad of scents around the village. Usually, this exercise was directionless. I used it to connect to the island, to my distant pack.

Not today. Sitting at the edge of my awareness since this afternoon, like a shadow darting out of sight whenever I turned my head, had been a new scent. It had shifted, not allowing me to get a handle on it. One minute bright, like the sun cresting the waves in the morning. The next it was soft and smooth, like fresh bread from the oven.

I growled deep in my chest. There were too many things I could liken it to but even as I concentrated and stretched my senses to their limits, I couldn’t pin it down. It lurked behind a hundred others. Floral sweet, musky and deep, solid and flighty.

It could be anything. A new shipment of fabric from the mainland. The bakery trying out a twist on a favourite recipe. A visitor from somewhere far away .

The last seemed most plausible, and was the least likely to spear my attention. I couldn’t cope with the interest of the people I knew on this island and didn’t subject myself to passing interactions with the tourists who wandered the easier to reach areas.

Whatever this scent was, no matter how much it intruded on the steadiness of my day, it would be gone soon. It would either depart with whoever brought it with them, or it would meld into the jumble of smells in the village.

I took another deep breath, pulling back as all the scents of the island mingled once again. Smells I’d known since I was young, when Mum taught me and my sisters the secrets of our kind in the hills behind our family home.

I opened my eyes before the memory curdled. One of the more outgoing goats stood mere metres away, chewing on a clod of grass. There had been a time when they’d all fled from me, their instincts screaming predator when I came near. It had taken a long time to earn their trust.

I walked slowly towards the goat, bending to let him butt his horned head into my outstretched hand. This one was so recklessly brave because I’d been there when his mother birthed him two years ago. His wet body slid into my hands after hours of fraught labour. They’d recovered near the fire in my cabin that spring. If I didn’t latch the door incredibly carefully, I still came home to find this goat curled on the hearthrug, his strange eyes fixed on where he expected me to stoke the fire. At least he was well behaved, limiting his chewing to the odd stack of kindling or the laces of my boots.

I’d not had to hand rear a single goat during my time in the mountains due to a mixture of luck and nature taking the decision out of my hands, but prolonged cold weather increased the chances. The scent of late spring snow on the air was worrying. The prospect of caring for newborn kids on top of my ranger duties was daunting.

I stood and walked along streams and around craggy outcrops of rock until I neared my cabin. Smoke trickled from the chimney, promising a warm welcome. Yet I couldn’t shake the uneasy press in my chest. The flakes of snow falling didn’t help.

The real reason for my discomfort became apparent when I pushed open the front door. In my bedroom, which was set at the back of the cabin alongside a generous bathroom, my phone rang.

I pounded muck from my boots and tugged them off. Throwing them at the shoe rack, I hurried through to my bedroom. The blankets were in the same state of disarray I’d left them in when I’d crawled out of bed at first light. The folded piles of clean washing on top of my chest of drawers filled the room with their fresh scent.

I separated the blankets near one of the bedside tables and searched beneath them. My phone had stopped ringing, but it was a matter of time before it started up again. Bonnie only called when she absolutely had to, and was relentless when she did.

Huffing, I dropped to all fours on the rug-covered floor and peered under the bed. Alongside more neatly folded blankets and a spare pair of boots, lay my phone. I tugged it over using the power cable. As I blew dust off the screen, it lit up with another call.

Bonnie’s face beamed at me. She’d taken the picture, had chosen her ringtone and programmed her number. Then she’d shoved the phone into my hand and told me not to be a reclusive loser .

I pressed my thumb to the screen and brought the phone to my ear. ‘Hello, Bon?—’

‘Have you been ignoring your phone again?’

I winced, her tone enough to cow me across the distance separating us. ‘I always answer when you call.’

‘Callum, you’re a fucking caveman and you have absolutely brought this on yourself.’

Dread prickled in my stomach. ‘Brought what on myself?’

‘If you’d read any of my numerous texts over the last few weeks, you’d know a student botanist was applying for funding to study the undisturbed flora on the island for three months. If you’d bothered to check in, you’d know I thought the best idea, when he was ready to come over, was if he stayed in the mountains. If you looked at your phone like a vaguely normal member of society, you would know his funding was approved yesterday and he arrived on the island this afternoon.’

My brain struggled with the sudden influx of information. I didn’t talk to other people much and it always took a few moments to readjust. Especially when it was Bonnie, and she was berating me.

‘How does any of that affect me?’ I asked, hoping against hope that for once in my life I’d gotten lucky and an avalanche of crap wasn’t about to land on me.

‘Oh, it affects you very much, my baby brother,’ Bonnie sneered. I could imagine her teeth flashing. If I was in reaching distance, she would have pulled me into a headlock. Her affection was always dealt out violently.

‘Please don’t say he’s staying here,’ I whined. That was the logical conclusion to everything she’d said. If someone wanted to study flora, then they needed to get away from the village, and there was only one habitable place to stay up away from everyone else.

‘No can do, Cally.’ Now I could imagine a look of barely contained glee on my sister’s face. ‘Consider this punishment for blowing me off the last million times I invited you over.’

Shame warmed my face. Bonnie hadn’t ordered me to come down, so there was no compulsion to join her and her husband in their cottage. I’d been able to ignore her summons, again and again and again. I’d assumed she would stop asking, not that she would devise a new and creative way to torture me.

‘When will he get here?’ I ground out. The living situation Bonnie had arranged wouldn’t work, but I wasn’t about to take that out on this poor flower man. He couldn’t have known the mess he was walking into when he asked to study the flora of our island.

‘No clue. Hopefully soon.’

I frowned. ‘How do you not know?’

‘Another of the times when you acting like a functioning member of the pack would be handy is you occasionally coming down to the village at times other than when you have to restock your essential supplies. Then you could have told me there was a rockfall on the road.’

‘Bonnie, did you leave him to make his way up here on his own?’ I asked slowly.

‘Yup.’ She did that annoying popping thing at the end of the word like she always did when she was feeling particularly smug.

‘Is it snowing in the village?’

‘No,’ Bonnie said. I waited for it. ‘Oh, shit.’

‘Yeah.’ I strode out of my bedroom and towards where I’d shucked off my boots moments before. ‘Where did you leave him?’

‘About a mile or so from you.’ Bonnie’s words crashed into one another. ‘I thought he would be fine. Apart from the rocks, the road is good. He only has a couple of bags and I thought he’d get to you while I came back to organise people to clear the road.’

‘He’s human?’ I tugged on my boots.

‘Yes,’ Bonnie said, her voice weak. ‘Hold on.’

I set the phone down while I tied my laces.

‘Okay,’ Bonnie said as I raised the phone back to my ear. ‘His heartbeat is fine. A little fast, but nothing to indicate he’s in real trouble or anything. Just go out there and get him before he turns into an icicle.’

‘Lovely as always to talk to you.’ I lowered the phone and shoved my thumb at the button to disconnect the call.

Throwing it in the vague direction of my sofa, I yanked the cabin door open and nudged the friendly goat waiting on the doorstep out of the way. A thick flurry of snow tickled my face.

‘I’ll be back,’ I assured the goat as I hurried towards the road. ‘Just clearing up my sister’s mess.’