10
Hannah
I’ve heard of soulmates who move across the country to be together, one giving up a job they love to relocate.
How many books exist where soulmates’ parents hate their choice, and they run away together? Shakespeare wasn’t even the first to write that trope.
However, walking through subzero temperatures for hours—maybe days, stupid earth curvature, daylight bullshit—because your mate flew off the handle and doesn’t know how to start her apology is not my soulmate story…but here we are.
“Aaaah!”
I cry out before dropping to my knees in agony.
The cramps have escalated without resting my muscles with a hot compress and pain meds.
I squeeze my thighs, but my fingers are too frozen to grip them hard enough.
My tears scorch my inflamed, wind-burned cheeks. I rock on my hands and knees, puffing, trying to soothe the violent pains from my body.
“Hannah, are you okay?”
Gleb drops the bags between my hands.
I’m floored by his warmth as he lifts me onto his lap.
“I recognize those trees! They make a W-shape with the two red berry bushes under the points.
We’ve been here before!”
“Yes, you lead us back the way we came.
You said not to stop you, or I would have said something—”
He pauses with wild eyes when I wail like I’ve been stabbed.
Of course, the sweet man wouldn’t argue with the enraged woman, even if she were leading them into the fires of hell, which sound pretty warm and cozy right now.
“Besides being cold and lost, are you okay?”
“I have c-cramps every month, but I don’t walk miles in s-subzero temperatures without p-pain medicines while suffering them,”
I say between stutters.
My teeth rattle as cold seeps through my pores.
I hate how I cling to his warm body, but he could be a serial killer I wouldn’t care.
“You’re not walking anymore.
You can hate me from my arms, wrapped in furs, on the way to shelter,”
he growls at me.
Sitting in a frozen mud puddle, pelted in the face by sleet, he wrestles me into my fur suit with my clothes on.
His growl when I try to take off my coat so I can fit, curls my toes in my boots.
“Are you saving me because I’m your soulmate?”
I whisper the question after he struggles to his feet carrying both me and the bags.”
“No,”
he snarls, changing direction and charging ahead.
“I’m saving you because we are a perfect match—fiery tempers, stubborn streaks a kilometer wide, and not once lick of common sense.
There’s an abandoned dyla weturanya west of here to wait out the storm.
You need shelter from the wind, and a hot drink—”
“And family-sized bottle of ibuprofen.
Ouch, it hurts to laugh,”
I wail, curling tighter around my throbbing uterus.
“You probably think I’m a crybaby.
I’m such a wimp.
Why couldn’t I walk a little further to make it to the forest?”
“Not many furless ones of your size could have walked the hours you walked today,”
Gleb says, bowing his head closer to mind.
“Fighting pain and weather steals your strength.
What forest were you hoping to reach?”
“I think we both know I thought I traveled in the opposite direction for a day.”
“Please don’t be mad,”
he whispers.
“Save it for when you are warm, fed, and comfortable.
Your pain is my pain, and I can’t take much more.”
“Spoken like a true soulmate,”
I whisper.
Gleb tucks his fangs into his taunt lips to sneer at the landscape.
He must have an internal compass to know where we are and the shelters hidden underground.
Here’s someone who can literally remove me from the storms I’ve thrust myself into and shelter me.
Provide for me—not just pay my way on a date either. Gleb doesn’t want money in his life, which erases my biggest insecurity when dating. Jack’s money makes him my financial equal, but we haven’t been tested in a fight for survival.
Who is my soulmate—Jack or Gleb? Both men have wildly different reasons for claiming they are my soulmate…both totally delulu.
They scare me to death.
I loved my parents out of obligation, so I know what that feels like.
What they offer me isn’t something I am familiar with, which is why I can’t process any of this. What criteria do I use? Jack is too serious to joke around and with Gleb, it’s been one crisis after another. Both bend over backward to make me feel special.
What about the spark of desire? Gleb’s hard-on pokes me every time we touch.
Jack’s constantly bugging me for sex, too.
All things equal with no judgment? I’d choose Gleb.
Maybe because I know Jack is rough and not really romantic about the act…blaming me for making him wait so long between tumbles. Maybe because Gleb is a new partner and I’m curious. The fact that I’m questioning my ties with Jack and doubting my connection to Gleb means I’m not a soulmate to either of them. The kind thing would be to drop them both.
“Hold on,”
Gleb yells in my ear as he bends over.
Where are we? There’s nothing as far as the freezing rain and icy fog allow me to see.
I clutch Gleb’s neck as he fiddles with something on the ground.
When he stands fully, he drops the bag and wraps his arms around me so tightly that my hips scream in agony.
Then I’m falling.
“Are you okay?”
Gleb’s words are dual function.
He checks on me while blowing my hair out of his face.
“The wind stopped,”
I reply in awe.
The strands of my red hair against his light grey fur are arrestingly beautiful.
His bright blue eyes sparkle like the crystals embedded in the rocky wall behind him.
My lips split and my cheeks burn, but I can’t stop smiling. “It’s a crystal palace!”
“The central homes are inside a combination of ice, rocks, and crystal formations.
Do you like it?”
“I love this! Maybe it’s because I’m escaping the outdoors, but this is the most beautiful home I’ve ever seen.”
“We can claim it—”
“You aren’t giving me a home.
Gleb, you are too much!”
“Wait until you use the bathing pool—”
He rushes me down a narrow tunnel toward the dark void.
My eyes can’t adjust fast enough to see my surroundings when the passage opens into a large room.
It’s pitch black.
“Can you see?”
“Yes, or we’d slam into a wall.
I haven’t been inside this home since my teens when I went through a phase where I wanted to loot all the abandoned homes,”
he says with a chuckle.
“Let’s hope I was too short to steal the batteries from the lights.”
“You sound like a troublemaker.”
“Not really.
Sergei didn’t have to keep me in line because I wanted to be him so badly.”
“And now?”
“I still want to be him—”
he pauses to squeeze us through a narrow crevice “—but now I realize how much I must grow to get there.
The new room is steamy.
I groan with the luxury of warm, humid air filling my body.
My fingers and toes tingle as the blood rushes to fill them after cowering from the cold all day.
I’m drowsy and exhilarated at the same time.
“Ha! I missed one,”
Gleb says as he floods the room with light.
I squeal and hide my face in the fur on his chest.
His chuckle is music to my ears.
He drops the bags, takes a couple of steps, and slides me down his body.
His body is muscular, square, compact—I swear there isn’t an ounce of fat on him. When I raise my head, tears swarm down my face in relief. My hand clasps over my mouth as my body shakes with silent, joyful sobs.
Steam rises from a waterfall cascading from the ceiling.
Water ripples where it fills a pool approximately three feet deep.
The rocks are polished flat and smooth around the edges of the water, like a custom pool in someone’s luxury grotto.
I can thaw gently. My achy uterine muscles always find relief in my tiny bathtub of tepid water at home. This will feel like heaven!
“I didn’t bring my soap, and I must have stolen the ones left behind.”
Gleb rubs the back of his head in embarrassment.
“There are a few furs, but they’ve sat here for years.
I don’t trust they aren’t some pest’s home.
Best not to disturb them.”
“I won’t,”
I say, nodding.
With the tight crevice, I doubt what’s in there will hurt me.
However, I don’t want to meet my first Arctic spider or snake.
Do snakes live in the Arctic? “I’ll stay out of trouble if you let me bathe. I promise.”
“That’s what I was counting,”
he says with a long exhale of relief.
“You need cramp bark, rabbit furs to catch your bleed, and a warm meal.
I can catch rabbits, and the snowball bushes aren’t far.
I’ll be much faster if I’m not carrying anything—”
He turns pink with what he just implied.
“If you want to rest, I wouldn’t hold it against you.”
Oh, the hopeful expression on his face breaks my heart.
I’m no longer mad, but we aren’t bathing together.
“You haven’t slept and carried me all day.”
“It would be smart to hang your fur suit to dry and wash your human clothes as you bathe.
They can dry overnight too.
I’ll retrieve a fur from the bags to wrap yourself.
In the morning, I’ll smoke today’s clothes and then clean the furs we use to sleep.”
His words are clipped and all business.
He’s hardened his heart to my friendship, I guess.
I’m a dependent, like a child or aging parent in his eyes.
In a way, I am, and I hate it.
How many times has he told me resources are at a premium? It’s not like he has a two-day delivery of anything he orders from his phone. Nobody will bring him carryout from the local Chinese restaurant. I stand between him and his clan’s help when his survival depends on hunting and gathering. Can one man collect enough food for the winter?
“Please don’t leave this room,”
he says over his shoulder in a kinder, softer voice.
“I promise I won’t leave this room until you return.”
It’s the least I can do.
“This isn’t a prison.
I can focus on hunting if I’m not worried about you on your own.
You’re safe here, I promise.
This isn’t a trap—”
“I trust you.”
We meet gazes and I show him it’s the truth.
I do trust him when trust doesn’t come easily to me.
His half-smile is bittersweet.
Years of protecting myself against my parents’ fickle love, and then hiding my wealth from newly found friends damaged me. In a way, I understand Gleb’s fear of winter loneliness. Holding myself at arm’s length, I’ve created the same dark hole. When he disappears through the crevice, it hits me like a meteor.
He could have taught me how to love.
He offered a clan of new friends who don’t care about money, a life in isolation instead of my parents’ shadows, and the devotion of a soulmate…assuming he is a soulmate.
I hang my fursuit and hat on a rocky outcropping by the crevice.
It acts like curtains in case he pops back in suddenly.
Okay, my greedy ass wants to hold in every steamy molecule of air for warmth.
No time like the present, so I slip into the pool.
My knees fold to plant my ass on the bottom.
The water’s crystal clear except for my bubbles rising to the surface.
A crack in the corner sucks water from the pool like a drain. No wonder it’s so clean if the waters constantly cycle through a natural filter.
Finger-combing my hair and rinsing beneath my clothes do wonders for the dried-sweat stickiness of my body.
I’m surprised I feel so clean without soap or so grateful for the experience.
Swimming in this pool is a thousand times more refreshing than the campground showers we used on the tour.
I feel stupid for enduring that experience when luxury awaited me under the ice.
I’m stupid for enduring a lot of things.
Jack’s attitude toward Ms.
Greene for one.
I should have sent him home. He doesn’t belong in the wilderness any more than I do, but I’m less vocal when things go wrong. Another thing, Jack’s strong enough to tell me when I displease him. Why can’t I speak up? I had no problem letting Gleb have it…so the problem isn’t inside me. It’s between Jack and me. Back in California, I’m using this experience as a wake-up call and taking control of my life.
Pulling myself from the pool, my necklaces clink against my chest.
While I have some privacy, I should check in with the spirit world.
I untangle my rose quartz necklace from my hair and dangle it in front of me.
Just in case Gleb interrupts me, I trot to my fursuit and wrap it around my body.
“Spirits, is there anyone listening?”
The pendulum swings happily in broad circles.
I wipe the energy between the pendulum and my body.
The pendulum stops dead.
“Show me yes,”
I say, and the pendulum returns to its happy circles.
When I wave between us to clear the energy, it stops.
“Show me no,”
I say and the pendulum waves back and forth in a straight line.
That’s a clear enough signal.
I wave the air between us to stop the energy connection.
“Is my name Esmerelda right now?”
The pendulum wiggles before waving back and forth for no.
What a relief! I think I would lose it if my pendulum connected to a liar or trickster spirit when I have such an important question to ask.
“Is my soulmate in the Arctic?”
The pendulum swings in wild arcs before settling into giant circles.
They are more intense than the other circles…does that mean yes? Enthusiastic yes? Does it mean Gleb, or is Jack searching for me? “Well, that was a shitty question.”
“Hannah,”
Gleb calls through the crevice.
“Hannah, I don’t want to intrude, but I heard your voice.
A meal with hot tea awaits out here…or I can bring it in there if you are still chilled…maybe I should do that?”
“No, no,”
I say, throwing my necklace over my head.
I climb into the fursuit as I hop to the crevice.
“I’m—”
Gleb stands all smiles…co vered in blood from head to toe.
“What happened to you?”