Chapter 11 #2
She turned away from the window and began to pace.
The cabin felt smaller than usual, the walls pressing in around her as her thoughts spiraled.
She would have to go back eventually. The pass would clear—soon if the weather stayed warm—and she would have to return to Port Cantor to face whatever awaited her there.
Her father’s company, her inheritance, the enemies who had tried to kill her—all of it waited at the bottom of this mountain like a reckoning postponed.
And when that time came, what then?
The question had been lurking at the edges of her mind for weeks, but she’d managed to avoid confronting it directly. Now, with her body still humming from his touch and her heart cracked open, she couldn’t hide from it any longer.
Would he come with her?
Could he come with her?
She tried to imagine Rykan in Port Cantor—his massive frame filling the sterile corridors of Duvain Enterprises, his fierce eyes scanning the crowd at a business function, his claws gripping a delicate champagne flute. The image was almost absurd.
He belonged here, on this mountain, in this wild and untamed place.
He belonged to the forest and the snow and the howling wind, to hunting and solitude and spaces too vast for human understanding.
Port Cantor would be a cage for someone like him—a prison of concrete and propriety that would slowly suffocate everything wild and beautiful about him.
And yet…
The thought of leaving him behind carved a hole in her chest. She had known him for less than a month, and already she couldn’t imagine a future that didn’t include him.
He had seen her at her weakest and helped her become stronger.
He had looked at her like she was capable of anything and then pushed her until she believed it herself.
How could she walk away from that?
How could she ask him to give up everything he knew for a world that would never accept him?
The questions had no easy answers. She turned them over in her mind as the fire burned low, as the moon rose over the mountains, as the cold crept in through the gaps in the cabin walls. She was still awake when the door finally opened.
He stepped inside, snowflakes melting in his dark hair, his expression carefully blank. He didn’t look at her as he crossed to the fire and began adding wood, but she saw the tension in his shoulders, the deliberate care with which he moved.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I should be asking you that.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re awake.” He finally met her eyes, and she saw the guilt there, sharp as broken glass. “You should be sleeping.”
“So should you.”
Something flickered across his face—not quite a smile, but close. “Sleep is difficult to find at the moment.”
She rose from her bedding and crossed to where he knelt by the fire. He stiffened as she approached but didn’t pull away when she settled beside him.
“I’m not going to apologize for what happened,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to ask you to.”
“Good. Because I wanted it. I still want it. I want your hands on my body and your mouth and…”
She didn’t quite have the nerve to continue and his jaw clenched.
“Ember—”
“But I also want to do this right.” She placed her hand over his, feeling the tension coiled beneath his skin. “Whatever ‘right’ means for us.”
He was silent for a long moment, staring at their joined hands. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough with emotion.
“You will leave this mountain eventually.”
It wasn’t a question, but she heard the question beneath it.
“Yes.”
“And then?”
She didn’t have an answer. She didn’t know how to reconcile the life waiting for her in Port Cantor with the life she was building here. She didn’t know how to bridge the gap between who she had been and who she was becoming.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I know I don’t want to think about leaving you behind.”
His hand turned beneath hers, carefully surrounding hers. The touch was gentle, achingly so—nothing like the desperate passion from earlier, but somehow more intimate.
“That is a conversation for another day,” he said. “For now, you should sleep.”
“Will you stay?”
He looked at her then—really looked at her—and she saw the war still raging behind his eyes. The beast that wanted to claim her. The male who was terrified of losing her. The exile who had lived alone for so long that he’d forgotten how to hope for anything different.
“I’ll stay,” he said finally. “But on my side of the bed.”
She nodded, accepting the boundary even as part of her longed to argue. One step at a time, she reminded herself. They had taken many steps tonight. Perhaps tomorrow there would be more.
She returned to her bedding and closed her eyes, listening to the sound of his breathing next to her.
The distance between them felt vast and insignificant all at once—a space that could be crossed in a heartbeat, if only they were ready.
But she couldn’t shake the weight of the questions she’d been avoiding.
Port Cantor. The company. Her father’s legacy.
All of it waited at the bottom of the mountains, patient and inevitable.
And she still had no idea how to fit him into that future—or how to imagine that future without him.