Alexandria
The snap of the branch under my boot is nothing compared to the sickening, wet crunch that follows a split second later. The sound echoes inside my own skull as the scree gives way beneath my feet.
The world dissolves into a blur of gray stone and green pine.
I claw at the dirt, my fingernails tearing against roots that snap like threads.
The sky spins—blue into white into gray—until my hip slams into a jutting outcrop with enough force to knock the air from my lungs.
I keep rolling, a ragdoll tossed in a machine, until the slope flattens into a narrow ravine floor.
I land hard on my side.
Silence reigns for a long minute. The wind sighs through the ponderosa pines high above, indifferent to my sudden descent.
Then, the pain arrives.
It explodes. A white-hot spear drives itself through my right ankle, radiating up my shin and settling deep in the marrow of my thigh. I gasp, curling inward, my hands hovering over my leg but terrified to touch it.
"Okay," I wheeze, the sound thin in the vastness of the ravine. "Okay, Alex. Assessment. Triage."
I force my eyes open. The canopy is thick here, filtering the afternoon light into stripes of gold and shadow. Pushing myself up onto my elbows sends a wave of nausea rolling through my gut. I look down.
My right boot is wedged at an unnatural angle. The denim of my jeans is intact, but the shape of the leg beneath it is wrong. Swollen. Twisted.
"Tib-fib fracture," I whisper, the clinical diagnosis doing nothing to dampen the agony. "Or a severe dislocation with ligament trauma."
I reach for the radio clipped to my belt.
My fingers brush empty air. I pat the ground around me, pulse spiking.
The radio is gone, likely smashed against the rocks fifty feet up the slope.
My phone sits in my pack, still strapped to my back, but as I shrug it off and dig through the side pocket, the screen reveals a spiderweb of cracked glass.
I press the power button. Nothing.
"Perfect," I hiss, letting my head drop back against the damp earth. "Just perfect."
The sun dips lower. Twilight in the mountains acts like a curtain drop.
Once the sun goes behind the ridge, the temperature will plummet twenty degrees in an hour.
I’m wearing a flannel shirt and a light vest. I have a survival blanket in my pack, but with a leg like this, I can’t build a fire. I can’t hike out.
I am essentially bait.
Minutes stretch into an hour. The pain in my ankle settles into a deep, throbbing drumbeat syncing with my pulse. Every thud is a fresh insult. I close my eyes, trying to regulate my breath, trying to keep the shock at bay. I count the species of birds I can hear. A Steller's Jay. A nuthatch.
Then, a new sound cuts through the ambient noise of the forest.
Low, rhythmic, and heavy. Not the erratic scuttle of a squirrel or the crash of a bear. Boots crunching against the earth. Intentional steps. Someone who knows exactly where they are placing their feet.
"Hello?" I call out, my voice cracking. "Is someone there? I need help!"
The footsteps stop.
Silence hangs heavy, charged with static. I strain my neck to peer through the underbrush. A shadow detaches itself from the trunk of a massive cedar tree about thirty yards away.
At first, I mistake it for a bear standing on its hind legs. The silhouette is simply too broad, too tall to be human. But then the figure moves, stepping into a shaft of dying sunlight, and my breath catches.
A monolith of a man stands there. He towers well over six feet—six-four, maybe six-five—with shoulders spanning the width of the trail. Worn, dusty black jeans cover his legs, and a black leather cut sits over a gray thermal shirt straining against his chest.
I can’t read the patches from here, but I know who operates in these woods. The Broken Halos MC. The Gunnars.
My heart hammers against my ribs, a new kind of terror mixing with the pain. I’ve heard the stories in town. Everyone has. They run the mountain. They don't take kindly to trespassers, and technically, my research permit borders their land. I might be on the wrong side of the line.
He doesn't speak. He remains completely still, watching me.
"I fell," I rasp, the words rushing out. "My ankle... I think it's broken. My radio is gone."
He starts moving again. He doesn't rush. He walks with a predator’s fluid grace, eating up the distance between us with long, powerful strides. As he gets closer, the details sharpen.
Dark hair, short but shaggy enough to curl slightly at the nape of his neck. A jawline carved from the same granite I just smashed my body against. And eyes...
When he stops towering over me, he looks down, and our gazes lock.
The air leaves the ravine. It’s sucked right out of the atmosphere, leaving a vacuum that pulls everything into tight focus.
His eyes are the color of moss submerged in a river—green, dark, and shifting with depths I can’t fathom. No pity resides in them. No panic. Only a fierce, terrifying intensity pins me to the earth more effectively than gravity ever could.
That look is a physical weight. It feels like a warm hand pressing against my chest, right over my heart. My brain, usually so good at categorizing and analyzing, stutters to a halt. I forget the pain in my leg. I forget the cold seeping into my back. All I am aware of is him.
He drops to a crouch beside me. Up close, he smells of pine resin, old leather, and the metallic tang of a motorcycle engine. An intoxicating, hyper-masculine scent triggers something primal in my hindbrain. Safe. Dangerous. Mine.
The thought is so absurd I almost laugh, but the sound dies in my throat as he reaches out.
"Where?" he demands. His voice is a low rumble, like thunder rolling through a valley. It vibrates through the ground and into my skin.
I point shakily to my right leg. "The ankle. I heard a snap."
His jaw tightens. He doesn't ask for permission.
His large hands move to my leg. I flinch instinctively, bracing for agony, but his touch is shocking in its gentleness.
His fingers are calloused, rough against my skin where my jeans have ridden up, but he handles my injured limb as if it were made of spun glass.
One hand stabilizes my calf, the heat of his palm searing through the denim. The other fingers ghost over the swollen joint of my ankle.
"Boot needs to come off," he murmurs, not looking at my face, his focus entirely on the injury. "It's cutting off circulation."
"It's going to hurt," I whisper, gripping the dead leaves beneath me.
He looks up then, his eyes finding mine again. That connection slams into me a second time, harder than the first. Behind the stoicism, his pupils dilate—a flash of anger that I am hurt, which makes no sense because he doesn't know me.
"Look at me," he commands.
I do. I couldn't look away if I wanted to. I lock my eyes on his sharp cheekbones, the faint scar running through his left eyebrow.
"I’ve got you," he says.
The authority in his tone brooks no argument. He pulls a knife from his belt—a wicked, serrated thing gleaming in the twilight. With a precise, fluid motion, he slices through the laces of my hiking boot. He spreads the leather tongue, easing the pressure.
I hiss through my teeth, tears pricking the corners of my eyes as the blood rushes back into the swollen tissue.
"Breathe," he instructs. He hasn't looked away from my eyes. He’s anchoring me. "In. Out."
I follow his lead, inhaling the scent of him. He carefully slides the boot off. The relief is instant, followed immediately by a fresh wave of throbbing heat.
"Broken," he confirms, sliding the knife back into its sheath. "Tibia. Closed fracture."
"I need... I need to get to the clinic," I manage, trying to pull some PhD-level authority into my trembling voice. "If you can help me get to the road, I can take it from there. I have a very specific recovery protocol for mountain-related stupidity."
"Protocol doesn't account for a shattered leg and a blizzard, sweetheart," he rumbles. The sound is so deep it vibrates in my marrow, momentarily dulling the agony in my ankle.
"And you are?" I rasp, squinting up at the mountain of a man. "The local welcoming committee or just a very large hallucination?"
A dark, dangerous flicker of amusement crosses his face. "Tristan," he says. Just that. No surname. No title. "And you?"
"Alexandria," I breathe, my heart kicking against my ribs for a reason that has nothing to do with the fall. "But my friends call me Alex. Though, given I'm currently bait in a ravine, I'm not sure I deserve the 'smart' version of my name right now."
"Alex," he repeats. The way my name rolls off his tongue feels like a brand. "No clinic. I’m taking you home."
"No?" I wheeze, the pain making my head swim. "Tristan, I need a hospital. A doctor."
"You have me," he growls, his voice a low vibration that settles in my gut.
"I decide where you go. And right now, you’re going home with me.
There's a storm coming in," he says, tilting his head toward the ridge as if the clouds obey him.
"Temperatures are dropping. The nearest road is three miles back that way, and you wouldn't make it a hundred yards. "
"So what do we do?" My heart rate kicks up again. "You have a radio? Can you call Search and Rescue?"
He looks down at me, his expression unreadable. "I am the rescue."
Before I can process that, he bends down. "Arms around my neck."
"Wait, you can't—"
"Arms," he repeats.
I reach up, wrapping my arms around his thick neck. The leather of his vest is cool, but the skin of his neck is hot. His hair brushes against my wrists, soft despite the ruggedness of the rest of him.
He slides one arm under my knees and the other behind my back before lifting me.