Even in his human form, he had shifter strength, so he took the woman’s backpack himself and then easily lifted her in his arms. He could carry her like this as long as he had to, no problem.
Picking her up felt surprisingly intimate, considering how many clothes they were both wearing. But he could still feel the shape of her in his arms, lying against his chest. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her hair, escaping from her hat in a trail of curls, brushed his cheek. Her scent, the deeply feminine smell that he’d been following the tiniest traces of on the road, surrounded him.
The baby looked up at him from only a few inches away, now. As Jeff watched, she looked back at her mom, and then at Jeff. And then her face crumpled and she started to fuss, breaking up the strangely intimate moment.
“Hey, hey, shhhh,” Jeff said to her, as he settled them in a comfortable hold.
The baby kept fussing. He couldn’t blame her. “You’ve had a rough day,” he said as he started walking. “I’m really impressed with you. Most babies would’ve thrown in the towel a long time ago, after a day like yours.”
The baby paused for a second, then started up again, a whining little cry. Thankfully, it sounded more like I’m uncomfortable and I don’t like it than anything that might mean she was genuinely hurt or scared.
Jeff started up a hill, his boots sinking into the deep snow. “I guess you can’t talk at all yet.” It was hard to tell with only her little face to judge from, but he thought she was probably under a year old. “That’s too bad. I wish you could tell me how you and your mom ended up here. It’s dangerous to drive through the mountains in a storm like this. Why didn’t you stop when it started snowing?”
The jouncing motion of Jeff’s stride as he went up the hill seemed to calm the baby down a little. Her fussing quieted, although she was still making little whiny breaths.
“And where’s your dad?” he asked her. “Are you guys going to meet him?” He thought again of the packed car, clearly full of these two’s whole life. Maybe they were getting away from the baby’s dad.
But he hadn’t scented a man in the car, not even a faint, days-old scent. Maybe the dad wasn’t in the picture at all.
Jeff felt a swell of protectiveness in his chest, for the baby and for her mom. He had absolutely no respect for men who didn’t take responsibility for their children, and he couldn’t imagine how single mothers raised kids on their own.
He looked at the woman’s face. Now that her distractingly blue eyes were closed, he could tell that she looked tired and worn. She was pretty, even without the gorgeous eyes, but clearly exhausted.
Jeff figured that packing all of your worldly goods and your baby into your car and driving into the mountains in a snowstorm was exhausting. But that had to be nothing compared to whatever had forced her to do it in the first place.
Jeff was from a big family. His parents weren’t mates—in fact, they were both skeptical of the whole idea of shifter mates—and they hadn’t always gotten along perfectly. But they both cared about their kids more than anything, and they’d taught their children to support each other, and to make sure that when they had kids of their own, those kids were provided for.
When he tried to imagine being alone with a baby like this, no support, no help, no partner...he had no idea what it would be like.
“I’m getting you to safety,” he told the woman in his arms. “You’re going to be okay.”
As he kept walking, the baby’s eyes drifted closed, lulled by the movement. Jeff took that as a sign of trust, and quickened his pace. He’d live up to that trust. This baby wasn’t going to be out in the cold much longer.
Even if she didn’t have a dad, right now she had him, and he’d make sure she and her mom were okay.
His innate sense of direction was always trustworthy, and not too much later, the shape of the cabin emerged from the white blur that surrounded them. Jeff went up to the door and carefully laid his burden down in a snowbank while he tackled the door.
It was locked. Jeff silently apologized to the owners of the cabin and jerked the knob hard enough to break the lock, but not hard enough to break the door itself. He’d be sure to pay for it, and for whatever they used inside the cabin, but for now, the most important thing was getting these two inside.
He lifted them up again, carrying them in and shutting the door behind him with his foot. Then he surveyed the place.
It was a decent-sized cabin, with a wide main room, a big fireplace with a couch in front of it and a small store of wood, a small kitchenette, and two doors. Jeff laid the woman and her baby down on the couch and quickly checked the doors. One was a bedroom with a queen-sized bed, and the other was a bathroom. He tried the water. It sputtered for a few minutes, then ran rusty, and finally clear.
Good thing it was so early in the season. If this had been February, the pipes would probably have been frozen. The owners of the cabin must be intending to come back at least once more this year, if they hadn’t turned the water mains off just yet.
Now he had running water, a fireplace, and a roof over their heads. Good.
The first thing to do was light the fire. There were matches on the mantle, and a bit of kindling alongside the few logs stored by the fireplace. The logs were obviously meant to just tide over the cabin’s owners while they chopped more wood. They wouldn’t last long, but it would be enough to get everyone warmed up.
As he checked the chimney and set up the logs and the kindling—there was no paper to start it with, but he’d just have to make do with the smallest of the dry twigs—he made a mental to-do list.
Get the fire going. Get the woman warmed up, and hopefully woken up, and explain the situation to her. Look for the axe that had to be around here somewhere. Go out and find wood, chop enough to last them a little while. Figure out the food situation, see if there was anything in the kitchenette that they could use, check out the woman’s backpack and see if she had food in her car that he could run and get. See if the baby needed anything.
Then, once they had enough wood to stay warm, hopefully enough food to keep them going, and thankfully running water to drink, they would wait out the storm. Once it was over, Jeff could shift and run back home, get Cal and the other rangers, and they could come out with a vehicle to take the woman and her baby back to town.
Then...well, then it wouldn’t be Jeff’s problem anymore.
But he wondered what would happen to them after he got them back safe. They didn’t look like they had a lot of money, and she’d have to get her car towed and fixed up if she wanted to get wherever she was going.