Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
brAXTON
Did she just say she loves me? Fuck, now I really need to figure out a way to get us off this mountain and safe from the snow.
There is no way I’m going to let the woman I love die.
Especially when I’ve only just found her and haven’t told her how I felt.
But I refuse to do it while running down the mountain.
Her words force me to use my head and think about a way to escape the wall of snow closing in on us.
There’s no way to outrun it, so we need to find a place that would shelter us from the worst of it.
I scan my memories and the land in front of us, trying to think of anything that could aid in our escape.
That’s when I see it. The crack. In normal circumstances, it would be something I try to avoid at all costs.
It was a large crack in the frozen terrain that went down inside the mountain.
I was very certain it led to a cave system beneath, as I had seen some small animals crawl up from it.
But I never wanted to risk getting stuck down there.
I hate to admit it, but I have a fear of small spaces.
With a frame my size, the thought of getting stuck between two sheets of ice was slightly terrifying.
“This way!” I yell as I angle myself towards it. “Up ahead, there’s a crack in the ice. It’s extremely steep, but we’ll have to move fast as the snow will close us in. If we can get deep enough, we should be able to find a tunnel beneath.
“Should be?” Ryker asks, sounding terrified.
“It’s the best I can do,” I pant out as I try to put on a burst of speed. “We can’t outrun it.”
“I’m with you, brother, this is your terrain.” Being called brother warms something inside me. Like a longing I didn’t know I had. It fuels my need to get us all out of here safely.
“Baby, how close is it?” I don’t dare to try to turn, for risk of slowing down or losing my footing.
“Maybe… 150 feet,” she guesses.
“Good girl, we’re almost there now. We’re going to make it.”
After another thirty seconds, I spot the black sliver amongst the white terrain.
“I see it!” Ryker yells from beside me.
It doesn’t take us long to close the gap.
And as I start to slide down the steep embankment, I take a glance behind me and see the snow closing in at only fifty feet behind us now.
I reach behind me, and thankfully Ryker seems to know exactly what I’m doing as he grips my hand with his.
We don’t want to get separated. When the snow drops down here, which It will, we need to make sure we stay close.
“There!” I point to the opening below that looks to be the largest path for us to take. It looks big enough that I should be able to fit. The snow shouldn’t be able to move down the tunnel after us, either.
Penny shrieks a moment before the snow starts falling down on us. We only have ten feet to go, the snow falling fast now. Our decline stops as the ground evens out and we run the last few feet, diving into the tunnel just as the snow drops in behind us, enclosing us in complete darkness.
“Baby, are you okay?” I ask as I blindly move my hands over her head. I had turned at the last second, so I landed on my back with her on top of me.
“Yeah, you make a good cushion. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Ryker, are you?” she asks worriedly and thankfully, he answers straight away.
“I’m fine. Penny, where are you?” I can feel her moving and realize they must be reaching out their arms trying to find each other.
Ryker and I had let go of each other when we dove into the tunnel.
I reach out and feel him right beside me on the ground, so I grab his wrist and move his hand up to her cheek.
She gasps as her hands fly to his hand and I feel them trail down to his face.
“Oh, thank goodness, I was worried for a minute there.”
“Only a minute?” he teases.
“How are we supposed to move around down here? We can’t see a thing. I don’t suppose you have a way of making us a torch down here, do you, Brax?”
I think about the items I have in my bag. I do have some of the items I need, but not everything.
“No,” I say as my hands roam around Penny’s body. Not being able to see her has my nerves on edge. At least if I’m touching her, I can assure myself she’s whole. “I don’t have anything to light. I need some kindling and wood.”
Penny moves around on top of me and I hear some rustling of fabric. “Baby, what are you doing?” I ask her in confusion.
“I think I have something that can help.”
“You got some wood in that bag of yours, Red?” I know he’s teasing, but I can hear the tension in his voice. None of us are happy with this situation right now.
“No, birdman, but I might have something even better. Ah ha!” she exclaims.
“What is it?” he asks as we wait for her to reveal her findings.
She’s sitting on my stomach, with her legs either side of me, and I stroke my hands up and down her thighs before my hands find her hips.
I love the feeling of them in my hands, I can’t get enough, she feels so soft.
I can feel myself hardening and internally I groan.
This is not the time to get aroused. Who knows what’s crawling around in here with us.
Suddenly Penny’s face is illuminated, making me freeze my actions as Ryker gasps.
“What in the world?” he asks.
A big smile crosses her face as she turns the item in her hand and the light shines on Ryker.
“This, birdman, is my cell phone. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess you guys don’t have much technology?”
“Technology?” he asks.
“Yeah, you know phones, computers, Internet, tv. Any of this ringing a bell?”
Ryker shakes his head. “I don’t know what any of those things are.”
“Yeah, I was starting to wonder. I saw it first at the mating hunt, then I noticed the way you guys dress kind of reflected it too. And the fact that neither of you had pulled your phones out or even referenced making a call or GPS…”
“You’re losing me, Red.”
“I’m trying to say that I think your realm is like what mine used to be a few hundred years ago.”
“Whoa, so it’s kind of like you’ve been sent back in time from your perspective?” Ryker asks her as she turns her light to my face.
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I haven’t seen much of your world at all, so I could be wrong.
But if you don’t know what any of those things are, then yeah, it’s likely this is similar to my world’s past. But she was clear about this being another realm, not a parallel one.
So I have a feeling that there’ll be quite a few differences.
We never had giant birds people could fly on.
Also, in my world, if I told somebody that I came through a portal and replaced an identical version of me, people would think I’m crazy and probably put me in an insane asylum.
You two seem to be taking it pretty easily. ”
“I’m not so sure that’s how everybody here would take it. But I know you wouldn’t lie to me, so I have to believe you.”
“Me too, Baby.” I squeeze her hips for good measure. “ Now, tell us about that… phone you’re holding. It’s a portable light?”
“That’s just one of the things it can do. Its main function is a phone. Which is a device that can be used to call anybody else who has one. In my world, basically everybody carries one of them with them so you can contact anybody no matter where they are.”
“Wow, that sounds amazing. We need those here for sure.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty cool. But people get caught up in them too much these days. There’s so many other things you can do on the phone that people tend to use them instead of having genuine connections with people.”
“That’s kind of sad, I can’t even imagine that. What else can you do on it?”
“Two of the main things are playing games and social media. That’s like umm… how do I explain it? Do you ever have village meetings that everybody attends? Where everybody can talk about upcoming stuff or air out their grievances or something like that?”
“Yes, we call them community village gatherings.”
“Okay, well, imagine that you could have these gatherings without leaving your house or even seeing each other. From your phone you can write out comments and other people can add comments to it, and you see it almost instantly. It’s like a document that everybody can access on their own phone.
It’s really hard to explain without you understanding what the internet is. ”
“It sounds pretty complicated, but interesting. Your world must be so different from this one,” I tell her.
“Yeah, I think it might be.”
“Do you… do you think you want to go back there? Knowing what you’re missing now?” I can feel my heartbeat pick up as I wait for her answer.
She bites her lip before shaking her head, and I sigh out a breath of relief. “No, there’s nothing back there for me now. Besides, my fairy godmother told me it was a one-way ticket.”
“Does that make you sad? Being stuck here?”
She looks at me before turning the light to Ryker’s face, where he’s now sitting upright beside us.
“Not if I have you two with me.”
Ryker reaches out to caress her cheek before pulling her face to his in a gentle kiss. As he pulls back, I squeeze her hips and command her, “Come here, Baby.”
She presses her hands to my chest and leans down to kiss me. Fuck, this woman already meant everything to me.