Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
The altitude hit James harder than I'd expected.
I'd adjusted within the first hour—Gregor had taken me above ten thousand feet enough times that my body knew how to compensate.
But James was struggling. I could see it in the gray tinge to his skin, the way he paused between steps to catch his breath, the slight tremor in his hands when he reached for a hold.
He hadn't complained once. That worried me more than if he had.
We'd been climbing for six hours. The conditions were manageable—cold but not brutal, wind steady, visibility clear enough to navigate. Standard late-season weather. Nothing I hadn't trained for.
The question was whether James could handle it.
"Here." I pointed to a rocky shelf that offered minimal shelter from the wind. "Twenty minutes. Eat something."
James dropped onto the rock without argument, which told me more about his exhaustion than any complaint would have. He'd kept pace with me all morning, never falling behind, never asking to slow down. Stubborn. So goddamn stubborn.
"You're doing well," I said, settling beside him.
"Liar." But he smiled when he said it. "I feel like I've been run over. Repeatedly."
"That's the altitude. Your body's working harder to oxygenate. It'll get easier once you acclimatize."
"When's that happen?"
"Usually takes a few days."
"Great." He accepted the energy bar I handed him and ate mechanically, staring out at the white expanse below us. "It's beautiful up here. Terrible. But beautiful."
I followed his gaze. The world stretched out beneath us—peaks and valleys, snow and rock, the vast indifferent wilderness that didn't care whether we lived or died. I'd seen views like this a hundred times. They never got old.
"Gregor used to say the mountains don't hate you," I said. "They just don't notice you. It's not personal."
"That's somehow worse."
We sat in comfortable silence, and I let myself feel it—the shift from last night, the new weight of what existed between us. The hum had settled into something steady, no longer desperate but present. When our eyes met, I saw my own awareness reflected back.
We hadn't talked about what happened in the tent. Some things didn't need words.
"How much further?" James asked.
I checked the terrain against the map I'd memorized. "The ridge I need is about four miles. The route gets steeper from here. More technical."
"You keep saying 'I need.' Not 'we.'"
"Because I don't know what we're walking into." I met his eyes. "I told you—there's something I have to do. Something I can't explain yet. When we get close, I might need you to wait."
"Lumi—"
"Not negotiating."
He held my gaze, and I watched him wrestle with it—his stubbornness fighting against the trust he'd promised. Finally, he nodded.
"Okay. But I'm not leaving this mountain without you."
"Fair."
We finished our break and started climbing again.
I smelled the bear before I saw it.
The scent hit me wrong—musty, animal, too strong. I stopped mid-step, arm shooting out to halt James behind me.
"What—"
"Quiet."
I scanned the slope ahead. Rock formations. Snow drifts. Nothing moving.
A shape rose from behind a boulder thirty yards up the slope.
Grizzly.
Big. Eight hundred pounds, easy. Thick shoulders, heavy head, fur dulled with dirt and frost.
Its head lifted. The nose worked the air.
Hungry. Focused. Fully awake. The most dangerous kind.
It saw us the same moment I saw it.
"Don't run." I kept my voice low and even. "James. No matter what happens, don't run."
"Wasn't planning on it." His voice was strained, but he held position. "What do we do?"
"Make ourselves big. Make noise. Back away slow. Don't turn around."
I raised my arms above my head and started shouting—loud, aggressive, wordless sounds designed to signal threat rather than prey. James did the same. We took measured steps backward, maintaining eye contact, giving ground without showing fear.
The bear didn't retreat.
It dropped to all fours and started toward us. Not charging—not yet. But closing distance with that deceptive rolling gait that covered ground faster than it looked.
I ran calculations. Bear spray was in my pack—too far to reach in time. Playing dead only worked for defensive attacks, and this bear's body language read predatory. Climbing was pointless; grizzlies could outclimb humans. Fighting back against eight hundred pounds of claws and teeth was suicide.
Our options were narrowing fast.
The bear broke into a run.
"Move!" I shoved James to the left and dove right, hoping to split its attention.
It didn't work. The bear tracked James with single-minded focus, veering toward him with terrifying speed. He scrambled backward, foot catching on a rock, and went down hard.
"James!"
The bear was on him in seconds, rearing up on hind legs, mouth open in a roar that shook the air. I was running before I could think, reaching for the knife at my belt, knowing it wouldn't be enough—
Then James made a sound I'd never heard from a human throat.
Not fear.
Something tearing loose.
There was a sharp crack—clean and final—and the space where James had been simply wasn’t human anymore.
One blink he was on his back in the snow. The next, a wolf stood in his place.
Big. Solid. Dark brown fur already dusted white, paws sunk deep into the snow as if he’d always belonged there.
I stopped dead.
The wolf snarled, lips pulling back from teeth meant to end things.
The bear hesitated. Not confused. Assessing.
Two predators, both fully awake, both deciding whether the fight was worth the cost. The wolf didn’t look at me.
But every inch of him was angled to keep the bear from reaching me.
The bear recovered faster than either of us. It dropped back to all fours, reassessing this new threat, and let out a roar that echoed off the peaks.
James answered.
The sound that came from his throat was nothing I could have imagined. Low at first, building, becoming something primal and massive. A growl that said I am not prey. I have never been prey. And you have made a terrible mistake.
The bear charged.
James met it.
He moved on pure instinct—no training, no experience, just animal drive taking over where human thought had failed. He dodged the first swipe of claws, snapped at the bear's face. The bear was bigger, stronger, more experienced.
But James was faster. And he was fighting to protect something, even if he didn't know what.
They clashed again and again. Blood appeared—a gash on the bear's shoulder, a wound on James's flank. The snow churned beneath them, stained red in patches.
"James!" I shouted. "Drive it back! Don't engage—just push it away!"
His ears flicked toward me. Something registered.
He changed tactics. Stopped trying to fight and started trying to intimidate, using his speed to charge, snapping and snarling without fully committing. The bear was injured now, confused, facing an opponent that refused to behave predictably.
It made a decision.
With one final roar—frustrated, almost petulant—the grizzly turned and retreated. It lumbered behind the boulder it had emerged from, and the sounds of its movement faded until only silence remained.
James stood in the middle of the churned-up snow, sides heaving, head hanging low.
Then he turned to look at me.
The hum exploded.
I'd suspected. Of course I'd suspected. Frosthaven was a latent shifter academy—every student there carried the potential, even if they didn't know it.
And the bond between us, that persistent hum that flared every time he was near.
.. mate bonds didn't form with humans. Some part of me had known since orientation what James might be.
But suspecting and seeing were different things.
He stared at me with those wolf eyes.
He looked down at his paws. Back at me. Down again. A sound escaped him—not a growl, not a whine, something in between. Something that sounded like a question he couldn't form.
What happened to me?
He didn't know. That was the part that cracked my chest open. He'd come to Frosthaven like so many latent shifters—told it was an elite wilderness academy, never told the real reason he'd been recruited. Never told what he might become.
And now he was standing in blood-stained snow in a body he didn't recognize.