Chapter 1
Chapter One
~Her~
“I don't want to be another damn statistic,” Halo shouted into the storm.
Huddling deeper into the nook of the great oak tree, she tried to keep the fires of her rage stoked.
Perhaps it would be enough to keep her alive.
Fat snowflakes fell steadily around her, building up another foot of snow in only twenty minutes.
She'd be surprised if anyone even tried to venture out in this storm of storms.
Halo Brandt grew up in these woods, knowing them better than the floor plan of her family’s cottage.
Living at the tree line separating the wilds from civilization, the forest was her playground.
She sang songs to the fairies and danced beneath the timeless boughs.
This was her home, and she was fuming mad.
And embarrassed.
How was she caught out in the wilderness unprepared for this freak snowstorm? Gran would have a fit.
To be fair, Copper County hadn't seen snow in fifty years, so how was she supposed to know? Not like it mattered anymore. The storm came, and apparently, it would claim her before the day was done.
“At least if I die in the storm, I won't have to face Ranger Redbird and his disappointment in me,” she mumbled, pulling her arms into her thin, standard issue, Forestry shirt. “I'm going to become a damn cautionary tale for future Park Rangers.”
She swore as she pictured her mentor, Eric Redbird, facing a class of new recruits. His craggy face would scowl and his rumbling rockslide of a voice would caution, “Be prepared for anything, including freak weather changes. Always check your walkie batteries lest you end up like poor Halo Brandt!”
Outside of her grandparents, he was one of the only people who understood her need to be in nature.
As a child, she followed him around, incessantly asking questions about the plants and animals.
He slipped her tidbits of his vast knowledge while scowling and pretending she was a nuisance, but she ended up walking away with a bounce in her step and something new and exciting about her woods tumbling through her mind.
He was the closest thing to an uncle she had, and the idea of his disappointment sat like acid on her tongue.
She glared at the useless radio sitting in the snow beside her. The batteries were either worn out or defective because she couldn't even raise static.
Excited to be back home and working in her woods, she hadn’t been home ten minutes before Gran shooed her out the door to commune with nature. Only pausing to don her official uniform, Halo had raced out of the house to reacquaint herself with the trails.
Mesmerized, she hadn’t realized how quickly the storm’s intensity had grown until bits of snow clung to her eyelashes. She’d never seen snowflakes in person. She childishly spent too much time trying to catch one on her tongue and the blizzard caught her before she realized her folly.
In ideal conditions, the nearest Ranger station was located at least three hours away, and though she hightailed it out of there as fast as her feet could carry her, it became apparent she wouldn’t be making it back.
Her clothes soaked through almost immediately, and within ten minutes, she was ankle deep in the wretched white fluff.
Halo’s knowledge of the woods failed her as winter’s cold stole her strength and caused her to stumble over every stone or raised tree root.
She'd long lost feeling in her feet. Her legs ached with the constant stabbing of pins and needles.
When her knees gave out and her teeth chattered so hard she was afraid she'd break something, she crawled into a small nook created by an abandoned fox den and tried to figure a way out of her dire predicament.
No matches. No radio. No flares. Some Ranger she turned out to be.
Halo’s mind grew sluggish, and memories cycled through her. She landed back on the day she left for college.
Leaving had been bittersweet. Gran filled a box with homemade strawberry preserves, adamant they'd help her make friends in the dorms, and Grandpa Joe hauled her footlocker and two suitcases into the back of his old pickup truck.
Halo took the morning to say goodbye to her friends and grandparents, but reserved the afternoon for a last walk amongst her trees.
She paused by the maple she and Sally Clearwater tried to tap in the third grade, running her fingers over the scar left in the bark from the ridiculous endeavor.
She took a moment to relive her first kiss with Jonny Benson under the boughs of a different oak, cringing at the memory of bumping foreheads and awkward movements.
Definitely not the experience she dreamed it would be.
Her eighteen-year-old self had made her way down memory lane, communing with nature and speaking to the trees as though they were friends.
In a way, they were.
They’d borne the brunt of her teenaged angst and comforted her when she grieved for the loss of her parents.
She took the time to say goodbye to the woods that had done as much to raise her as Gran and Grandpa and promised to return in four years as a legal protector of them and other national parks.
When she turned to leave, she saw him.
Over the years, Halo wondered if he was a hallucination or figment of her imagination.
Regardless, his pale features were permanently etched into her mind.
He stood in the shadows at the edge of the trail.
In the short moment she’d seen him, she memorized his icy blue eyes, filled with a sadness her eighteen-year-old heart couldn’t begin to fathom.
His stark white hair had been pulled back into an intricate braid with a twisted vine, and his bare, sculpted chest was covered in almost translucent geometric tattoos.
He was the personification of her ideal man.
Raw.
Ethereal.
A true manifestation of Nature.
She turned to take a step toward him, but he vanished without a trace.
Knowing there were schedules to keep, she pushed the stranger in her woods to the back of her mind and hurried home.
Though he’d been relegated to the recesses of her imagination, he stalked her dreams and secret desires.
No man had ever been able to hold a candle to the whisper of an image he burned into her heart. It earned her a reputation as frigid.
Now, slowly losing feeling in her extremities and aware she was going to die out here, she pulled his memory forward and wrapped it around herself like the warmest blanket. She smiled at the image of the stranger in her woods.
“M-mayb-be y-you’ll f-find me.” Her head hung heavy, and she couldn’t even tell if her teeth were still chattering. “M-maybe y-you’ll s-s-save m-m-me.”
As her vision dimmed and her consciousness began to drift, the snowflakes around her swirled.
More and more added to the flurry until the dizzying spiral of snow coalesced into the shape of a man.
Her man. Certain her imagination conjured this vision for comfort in her final moments, she sighed.
Raising her chin, she smiled what was certain to be her last smile at his familiar face.