Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
AVA
The cold hit me like a fist. January in the mountains was brutal. Unforgiving. The kind of cold that seeped into your bones and refused to leave, that turned exposed skin to ice in minutes, that killed the unprepared without mercy or hesitation.
I'd grabbed a jacket, but it wasn't enough. Nothing would be enough out here.
I ran anyway.
The snow was deep, past my ankles in places, soaking through my boots with every step.
Branches clawed at my face and arms, leaving stinging scratches that the cold immediately numbed.
My breath came in ragged gasps, pluming white in the frozen air, and my heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my throat.
Behind me, the cabin grew smaller, then disappeared into the trees altogether. I didn't look back.
The first hour was pure adrenaline.
I pushed through the snow, through the burning in my lungs, through the voice in my head screaming that this was insane, that I was going to die out here, that I should turn around right now.
I didn't turn around. I had to know. I had to prove I could leave. That staying was a choice, not a surrender, not just the path of least resistance. My feet went numb around the thirty-minute mark. I should have been grateful for the relief from pain, but I knew what it meant. Frostbite.
I kept running. The adrenaline faded around the second hour. That's when the bond started screaming. It began as a flutter of anxiety in my chest, a vague sense that something was wrong. I ignored it, pushed forward, told myself it was just nerves, just fear of being caught.
The feeling grew. Spread. It became something I couldn't ignore. It was like a hand around my heart, squeezing tighter with every step I took away from the cabin. A thread in my chest being pulled taut, stretched to the breaking point, screaming at me to turn around.
Nausea hit first. Sudden and violent, rising up my throat like a wave. I stumbled to a stop, bracing myself against a tree, and dry-heaved into the snow. My stomach churned, cramping so hard I doubled over, and sweat broke out across my forehead despite the freezing air.
Then came the dizziness. The world tilted sideways, trees spinning around me like I'd spent the night drinking.
I grabbed for something solid and found only air, stumbling, nearly falling.
My vision blurred at the edges, going gray, threatening to tunnel down to nothing.
My heart was racing wrong. Too fast, too hard, the rhythm stuttering and skipping in a way that made it hard to breathe.
I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling the erratic pounding, and for a moment I thought I was having a heart attack.
Ethan's voice echoed in my memory, calm and clinical, a lecture I'd only half listened to weeks ago: Bonded Omegas can't be separated from their Alphas for extended periods.
The bond creates a biological dependency, a need for regular physical contact and proximity.
Without it, an Omega will experience withdrawal symptoms. Anxiety.
Nausea. Cardiac irregularities. Disorientation.
In extreme cases, prolonged separation can be fatal.
I'd thought it was just another way to control me. Another chain wrapped in scientific language, designed to keep me tethered, to make escape impossible.
Now I felt it. God, now I felt it. Every step away from them was agony. Not just the cold, not just the exhaustion, but something deeper. Something primal. Something inside me was being torn apart, stretched thin, screaming for me to turn around, to go back, to find my Alphas.
The bond was a living thing in my chest, clawing at my ribs, howling with desperate need.
Alpha. Alpha. Where is Alpha? Need Alpha. Go back. GO BACK.
I didn't go back.
Three hours in, maybe four, I'd lost track of time, I was completely lost. The trees all looked the same.
Endless white trunks against endless white snow, stretching in every direction as far as I could see.
The sun was hidden behind thick gray clouds, giving me nothing to navigate by.
I could be walking in circles for all I knew.
Probably was walking in circles. My feet had stopped existing somewhere in the past hour.
I couldn't feel them at all, couldn't feel my ankles or my calves, just stumps of ice where my legs used to be.
My fingers were the same, clumsy, useless things that wouldn't bend properly, that felt like they belonged to someone else.
The shivering had stopped too. Some distant part of my brain, the part that wasn't consumed by bond sickness and terror, recognized that as a very bad sign.
Hypothermia. The body giving up on trying to warm itself.
Stage three, maybe four. The stage where people started to feel warm, right before they died.
The bond sickness made everything worse.
Every step was a battle, my body weak and disoriented, my heart racing and stuttering in unpredictable rhythms. Sweat poured down my back despite the freezing cold, soaking through my sweater beneath the jacket.
My stomach heaved constantly, empty and aching, cramping with the need for something I couldn't give it.
Alpha. Need Alpha. Can't survive without Alpha. Please. Please go back.
I fell. Hard. My knees hit ice-crusted snow, sending a jolt of pain up my thighs, and for a long moment I just knelt there, shaking. Gasping. Trying to remember why I was doing this, what I was trying to prove, what answer could possibly be worth dying for.
Get up, I told myself. Get up, keep moving.
I got up. I kept moving.The falls came more frequently after that.
Every few minutes, my legs would buckle, and I'd find myself on my hands and knees in the snow, struggling to rise.
Each time it took longer. Each time my body screamed louder that it couldn't do this, that it was dying, that I had to stop.
Through the bond, I could feel them. It had been muted at first, the distance weakening the connection, but now — now it blazed like fire.
Panic, hot and sharp, like a knife in my chest. Fear, thick and choking, wrapping around my throat.
Rage, so much rage, burning through the connection like wildfire, scorching everything in its path.
They knew. They knew I was gone. They'd found the empty cabin, the missing Omega, and they were hunting me. They got sloppy and didn’t keep things locked…and they were angry I took advantage of that.
I could feel them searching, their emotions a chaotic storm of terror and fury.
Mason's cold, focused determination. Leo's sharp, vicious fear masked as anger.
Caleb's silent, desperate panic. And Ethan, Ethan's hurt and confusion bleeding through the bond, the betrayal of waking from his research haze to find me gone.
The bond begged me to reach back. To open myself up, to let them feel where I was, to guide them to me. Every instinct I had screamed at me to do it, to call for my Alphas, to let them find me and take me home.
Home. The word echoed in my mind, tempting and terrible. I pushed the feelings down and kept walking.
Five hours. Maybe six. Time had lost all meaning. I fell again and didn't get up.
The snow was cold against my cheek, but I barely felt it anymore.
Everything was distant, muffled, like I was watching myself from very far away.
Like I was already half-gone, one foot in the grave and the other sliding toward it.
My body had stopped shivering entirely. There was a strange warmth spreading through my limbs, deceptive and deadly, the final trick hypothermia played on its victims. Making them feel comfortable. Making them want to sleep.
I wanted to sleep. God, I wanted to sleep.
Hypothermia and bond sickness. A double death sentence. I was dying two ways at once, my body shutting down from the cold while the bond tore me apart from the inside.
I'd wanted to prove I could leave. I'd proved it. I was free. Free and frozen and alone and dying.
Was this worth it? Was this what I'd wanted? Lying there in the snow, too weak to move, too cold to feel, I thought about what I was running from.
Caleb's arms around me in the nest, warm and solid, his quiet presence that asked for nothing but my company.
The dozens of carvings he'd made me, each one a declaration of love he couldn't put into words.
The way he looked at me like I was the most precious thing he'd ever seen, like he couldn't quite believe I was real.
Leo's sharp tongue and sharper mind, the poetry he pretended he didn't write, the softness he hid behind cruelty. The way he saw through all my defenses and loved me anyway, even the ugly parts, even the parts I hated. The way he made me laugh, even when I didn't want to.
Ethan's charts and data, his desperate need to understand, to predict, to keep me safe.
The way he tracked my sleep and my meals and my moods because he couldn't bear the thought of me being anything less than perfectly cared for.
The way I'd left him without a word, slipping out while he was lost in his research, betraying his trust in the most cowardly way possible.
Mason's piano in the music room, the piece he'd written for me while I was gone, the raw vulnerability in his eyes when he played.
The weight of his arms around me, solid and steady, promising to hold me together even when I was falling apart.
The love he offered so freely, asking for nothing in return.
The nest that smelled like all of them, like safety and home and belonging. The purring. The peace. The feeling of being exactly where I was meant to be.
I was running from love. I was running from home. Now I was going to die for it. Frozen in a snowbank, miles from anywhere, alone.