Chapter 4 - Rhett
The first drops hit the roof like bullets.
I look up from the blade I'm sharpening, frowning at the sudden darkness. The sky has turned the color of old bruises, clouds roiling and churning in a way that makes the bear stir uneasily.
This isn't a normal storm. This is the kind that kills people.
My first thought, unbidden, unwanted, is of her.
She left hours ago. She's probably back in town by now, safe in whatever house or apartment she lives in, editing her videos and eating her organic oranges.
Probably.
The rain increases, hammering against the metal roof in a deafening roar. Lightning splits the sky, and the thunder that follows is immediate, cracking like the world is breaking in half.
I set down the blade and move to the garage opening, watching the storm roll in with the kind of speed that only happens in the mountains. One moment there's visibility, the next it's a gray wall of water.
No one should be out in this. No one could survive in this.
She's in town. She has to be.
But the bear is pacing again, agitated in a way it hasn't been since last night. Since she appeared in my clearing with her camera and her smile and her complete lack of self-preservation instinct.
"She's fine," I tell the empty garage. Tell the bear. Tell myself.
It doesn't help.
I should go inside. Wait out the storm in the cabin like I always do, with a bottle, the silence and the weight of isolation. Instead, I find myself walking to the edge of the clearing, staring into the forest like I'll be able to see anything through the downpour.
Her scent is still here. Faint now, diluted by rain and time, but present. Leading back toward town like it should.
Except.
I breathe in deeper, letting the bear rise enough to sharpen my senses. The scent trail splits. Most of it goes toward town, yes. But there's another thread, fainter, heading in the opposite direction.
Toward the Ridgeline Trail.
"No," I say out loud. "She wouldn't."
But even as I say it, I know she would. She absolutely would. She's the kind of person who goes off-trail just to see what's there, who hikes twelve miles and then decides to do three more, who brings chocolate to a hostile stranger because he gave her directions.
Of course she didn't go straight back to town. Of course she decided to explore.
The bear snarls, urgent and insistent. *Find her. Protect her. Now.*
"She's not my responsibility," I argue with myself, with it. "She made her choice. If she's stupid enough to be out in this—"
Thunder drowns out the rest of my words. The temperature is dropping fast. In another hour, this will be more than just dangerous. It'll be deadly.
Hypothermia doesn't care how young you are, how fit, how experienced. Get wet enough, cold enough, and your body shuts down. I stand there for a full minute, rain soaking through my clothes, warring with myself.
I can't go after her. I can't. That means shifting, or at least partially shifting, using the bear's senses to track her in this mess. And I swore I'd never let it out again, never give it that much control, never risk—
Lightning strikes a tree a hundred yards away. It explodes in a shower of sparks and burning wood, the crack so loud I feel it in my bones.
"Fuck!" The word is ripped from my throat.
I'm moving before I consciously make the decision, running back to the cabin, grabbing my pack. Emergency supplies—blanket, first aid kit, fire starter, rope. My knife. The satellite phone I bought years ago and never used, because who would I call?
I shove it all into the pack and head back out into the storm.
The scent trail is already fading, washed away by the rain. I follow what's left of it to where it diverges, where she made the catastrophically stupid decision to take the Ridgeline Trail instead of going home.
"I'm going to kill her," I mutter, starting up the trail at a pace that would be reckless for anyone else. "If she's not already dead, I'm going to kill her myself."
Empty threat. The bear knows it even if I don't want to admit it.
The trail is a river. Water pours down the mountain, turning everything to mud and chaos. I can barely see five feet ahead, but I don't need to see. I know these mountains better than I know anything else in the world.
And I have her scent.
Faint, almost gone, but there. Wildflowers and sunshine, cut through with fear-sweat and blood.
Blood.
The bear roars inside my head, demanding to be let out, demanding to hunt.
"Not yet," I growl.
But I'm running now, abandoning any pretense of caution. My boots slip on wet rock and I catch myself with a hand, keep going. Jump over a stream that didn't exist this morning. Duck under a fallen branch.
Her scent is getting stronger, which means I'm getting closer, but it's also more diffuse. She's panicking, moving erratically, getting more lost with every step.
I stop at a place where the trail splits, except it doesn't split, not really. One path is the trail. The other is a game path, barely visible even in good weather, that dead-ends at a cliff face half a mile ahead.
Her scent goes down the game path.
"Jesus Christ," I breathe.
I follow it at a dead run.
The path deteriorates rapidly, becoming less of a path and more of a suggestion. She must have lost the main trail in the rain, grabbed onto this by accident.
There's a steep slope ahead, slick with mud and rain. I see where she went down, where her feet lost purchase. The slide marks are fresh, torn through the undergrowth.
I go down after her, controlled, using my weight and strength to manage the descent. At the bottom, there's blood on a tree trunk. Not much, but enough.
The bear is clawing at my control now, desperate to shift, to find her faster. It knows what I know. She's running out of time.
"Hold on," I tell it. Tell her, wherever she is. "Just hold on."
Her scent leads me deeper into the forest, into terrain that's dangerous even for me.
She's moving downhill now, probably following some survival instinct, but she's going the wrong direction.
There's nothing this way except more wilderness, steeper drops, and eventually a gorge with a fifty-foot waterfall.
If she reaches that in this visibility, she's dead.
I push harder, ignoring the burn in my lungs, the protest of muscles that have been awake since before dawn. The bear lends me strength, surging just beneath my skin, making me faster, stronger, more than human even without fully shifting.
I can feel her now. Not just smell her, but really feel her. Like there's a rope tied between us, pulling taut, vibrating with her fear.
The mate bond.
No. That's not possible. Mate bonds are fairy tales, stories bears tell themselves. I've never believed in them, never wanted them.
But I can feel her terror like it's my own. Can sense her heartbeat, too fast and then too slow. Can taste her desperation on my tongue.
She's dying.
"HOLD ON!" I roar into the storm, not caring if she hears, just needing to say it. "I'M COMING!"
And then I see it—a small structure, barely visible through the trees. An old ranger outpost, abandoned decades ago. I'd forgotten it was even here.
Her scent is everywhere around it. She made it to shelter. I'm at the door in seconds, slamming it open hard enough to rip it off its hinges. She's on the floor just inside, curled in a ball, her skin pale as death. Not moving.
"No." The word comes out broken. "No, no, no."
I drop to my knees beside her, pressing my fingers to her throat. There's a pulse. It’s weak, irregular, but present. She's in the late stages of hypothermia. Her body has stopped shivering, which means it's shutting down. Her breathing is shallow, her lips blue.
I need to get her warm. Now.
I strip off my jacket, my shirt, not caring that I'm soaked too. My body temperature runs hot. Bear shifter metabolism, and I'm nowhere near hypothermic despite the rain.
"Come here," I mutter, gathering her against my bare chest. She's so cold it's shocking, like holding ice. "Come on, stay with me."
I wrap my jacket around both of us, then the emergency blanket from my pack, layering everything I can to trap what little heat she has left. Her wet clothes need to come off, but I can't do that here, in this freezing shack with no way to warm her afterward.
I need to take her to my cabin. To heat and dry clothes and safety.
It's at least a mile through the storm, over terrain that's dangerous in good weather and potentially deadly now.
The bear surges forward. *Let me out. I can carry her. I can keep her safe.*
For the first time in five years, I don't fight it.
"Okay," I whisper. "But you follow my rules. You protect her. You don't lose control. Understood?"
The bear rumbles agreement, and I let the shift start.
It's agony. After so long repressing it, forcing it down, the change feels like being ripped apart and reassembled wrong. My bones crack and reform. My skin splits and knits with fur. My hands become paws, claws extending.
But I don't go all the way. I stop at the halfway point: more bear than man, but still enough man to think, to plan, to control myself.
My senses explode. Every scent is amplified a hundredfold. Every sound clear despite the rain. I can feel the tremor of her weak heartbeat like it's my own.
I gather her in my massive arms, cradling her against the fur of my chest. She's so small like this, so fragile. I could break her without trying.
But I won't.
I step out into the storm and start running.
The world is different through the bear's eyes. Clearer in some ways, more instinctual in others. I don't think about where to put my feet, they know. Don't worry about finding the path, I am the path.
Trees blur past. I leap over obstacles that would have slowed me as a man. My paws find purchase where boots would slip. The rain doesn't blind me because I'm not relying on sight.
She makes a sound against my chest, a tiny whimper. Her body is trying to warm itself, trying to shiver, but it doesn't have the energy.
*Faster,* the bear urges.
I pour on speed, pushing past exhaustion, past the burn of muscles worked too hard. Nothing matters except getting her somewhere safe.
The cabin appears through the trees like salvation.
I barrel through the door, not bothering to slow down, and lay her on my bed: the only bed, a rough frame with a mattress and blankets that are cleaner than anything else I own because I'm particular about where I sleep.
Human again. I need to be human again for this.
The shift back is easier, faster. My body remembers this shape better than the other. Within seconds I'm a man again, naked and dripping but functional.
I light the fire first, building it high and hot. Then I turn back to her. Her clothes have to come off. There's no way around it. Wet fabric will keep leeching heat from her body until she dies.
"I'm sorry," I mutter, even though she can't hear me. "I'm not… This isn't… Fuck."
I'm as gentle as possible, peeling off her jacket, her shirt, her boots and socks and pants.
I try not to look, try to be clinical about it, but it's impossible not to notice the curves of her body, the freckles scattered across her shoulders, the sports bra that's somehow both practical and beautiful.
I leave her underwear. That's the line I won't cross.
There are injuries: scraped palms, a bruised knee, a cut on her cheek. Nothing life-threatening, but they'll need attention once she's stable.
I wrap her in dry blankets, layering them thick, then add my own body heat because it's the fastest way to warm someone. I climb into the bed behind her and pull her against my chest, wrapping myself around her like a shield.
She's so cold. Dangerously cold.
"Come on," I murmur into her wet hair. "Come back. You don't get to die. Not after bringing me chocolate. That would be a waste of perfectly good chocolate."
The fire crackles and pops, filling the cabin with heat and light. I adjust the blankets, tuck them tighter, press her closer.
Minutes pass. Five, ten, fifteen.
And then, she shivers. It's small at first, just a tremor. But then another, stronger. Her body is warming up enough to try to generate heat again.
"That's it," I breathe. "That's good. Keep going."
The shivering increases, violent and uncontrollable. It's actually a good sign. It means her body is fighting back. But it also means she's going to wake up soon, disoriented and confused and probably terrified.
In bed with a strange man who's seen her half-naked.
This is going to go well.
Her breathing changes, deepening. Her eyelids flutter.
"Easy," I say quietly, even though I know it won't help. "You're safe. You're in my cabin. You were hypothermic and I had to get you warm."
Her eyes open. Hazel, unfocused, struggling to process where she is. She looks up at me. Looks down at herself, wrapped in blankets. Looks at the bare chest she's pressed against.
I brace for the scream, the panic, the accusations.
Instead, she whispers: "You came for me."
"You were dying," I say roughly. "Someone had to."
"You didn't look yourself." Her voice is hoarse, barely audible. "I felt it. When you carried me. You were different."
Fuck. She was conscious enough to remember that?
"You were delirious," I lie. "From the cold. You don't know what you're talking about."
She closes her eyes, a small smile touching her blue lips. "Liar."
Then she's out again, slipping back into sleep. But it's real sleep now, not unconsciousness. Her breathing is steady, her heartbeat stronger. Color is returning to her face.
She's going to be okay.
I slump against the headboard, exhaustion crashing over me like a wave. My whole body aches. The shift took more out of me than I want to admit. Five years of repression doesn't go away easily.
But she's alive.
This stubborn, reckless, infuriating woman is alive and warm and sleeping in my bed.
And the mate bond I felt in the forest is still there, thrumming between us like a live wire.
I'm so fucked.