Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
The rock outcropping appeared like a gift.
I'd been scanning the terrain for twenty minutes, half-supporting James as we stumbled through deepening snow, when I spotted it—a natural overhang carved into the mountainside, deep enough to block the wind, wide enough for shelter.
Not perfect, but on a mountain in late season with an injured shifter and a storm building, perfect wasn't an option.
"There." I adjusted my grip on James's waist. "Can you make it another hundred yards?"
He lifted his head, squinting through the snow. "Yeah. Yeah, I can make it."
He couldn't. Not really. His legs were barely holding him, his weight increasingly heavy against my side. But stubbornness was keeping him upright, and I wasn't going to take that from him.
We made it in slow, grinding steps. By the time we reached the overhang, James was gray-faced and shaking, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cold. I eased him down against the rock wall.
“Sit,” I said, already bracing him. “Don’t move.”
He slid down hard, head tipped back, breath coming shallow and uneven. I dropped the pack and turned into the wind.
Tent first.
There was no ground to work with—just wind-packed snow and ice. I stomped out a platform, boots driving down again and again until the surface rang solid beneath me.
The tent went up fast, fabric snapping violently as I wrestled it into place. No stakes. I buried what I had instead—stuff sacks filled with snow, jammed sideways and packed down until they disappeared. I hauled the guylines tight, reset them, hauled again.
The wind tried to tear it away anyway.
I dragged snow up around the base, piling it high, sealing the edges as best I could. The flapping eased. Not gone—but reduced. Enough.
That would have to do.
I crawled back to James, grabbed him under the arms, and hauled him the last few feet.
"Inside," I told James. "Now. Before you lose any more heat."
He crawled through the flap without argument—another sign of how depleted he was. I followed with both packs, zipping us into the small space that would be our world for the next however many hours.
The tent cut the wind immediately. I could still hear it howling outside, but in here, the air was still. Quieter. Almost warm, just from blocking the worst of the elements.
James had collapsed against one wall, eyes closed, breathing shallow. I pulled out the sleeping bag and thermal blankets, then turned to assess him properly.
"I need to check your bandage."
He nodded without opening his eyes. I unwrapped the layers and examined the wound on his side. The bleeding had stopped entirely now, the edges already knitting together. Shifter healing was remarkable—what would have been a week of recovery for a human would be a day or two for him.
But the shift itself had taken a toll. First shifts always did. His body had burned through massive amounts of energy restructuring itself, and now it was demanding repayment.
"When did you last eat?" I asked.
"This morning. The energy bar."
"That's not enough. Not after what your body just did." I dug through my pack, pulling out freeze-dried meals and the small camp stove I'd packed. "I'm going to melt snow for water. You need to eat, and you need to hydrate. Your muscles are probably screaming."
"Everything's screaming," he mumbled. "Loudly."
I almost smiled. If he could joke, he wasn't dying.
The process of melting snow was meditative—pack the pot, light the stove, wait, repeat. James dozed against the tent wall while I worked, his breathing evening out into something closer to sleep than unconsciousness. Good. Sleep would help.
When I had enough water, I rehydrated two meals and pressed one into his hands. "Eat. All of it."
He ate mechanically, not tasting, just fueling. I did the same. The silence between us was heavy with everything unsaid, but I let it sit. He needed food and rest before he needed explanations.
When the meals were finished and the water bottles filled, I organized our space. Sleeping bag unzipped and spread flat, thermal blankets layered on top, both packs arranged as pillows and wind blocks. It wasn't comfortable, but it was functional.
"We should sleep," I said. "Your body needs time to recover."
James looked at the sleeping bag. Looked at me. Something shifted in his expression—vulnerability and want and a question he wasn't quite asking.
"Together?" His voice was rough.
"Body heat. Same as last night."
"Right." He was quiet for a moment. "Lumi, I... I need..."
He trailed off, jaw tightening like he was embarrassed to finish the sentence.
"What do you need?"
"You. Close." The words came out strained. "I know that sounds— I don't know how to explain it. But since I shifted, there's this... pull. Like something in my chest is reaching for you. And when you're not touching me, it hurts."
The bond. I'd felt it too—the way the partial connection had intensified since his shift, the hum now a constant presence rather than an intermittent flare. His wolf had woken up, and it wanted its mate.
So did mine, if I was being honest. Whatever part of me recognized him, it was screaming for contact.
"That's the mate bond," I said. "It gets stronger after a shift. Your wolf knows what I am to you, even if your human brain is still catching up."
"What are you to me?"
I held his gaze. "That's a longer conversation."
"I've got time."
"You've got hypothermia risk and acute exhaustion."
"Then talk fast." He reached for my hand, and the contact sent warmth flooding up my arm. "Please, Lumi. I need to understand what's happening to me."
I looked at him—this ridiculous, stubborn, impossibly brave man who'd followed me into the wilderness and shifted into a wolf to save us both. Who was looking at me now like I held all the answers to questions he'd been asking his whole life.
Maybe I did.
"Okay," I said. "Get in the sleeping bag. I'll tell you everything."
We arranged ourselves carefully—James on his uninjured side, me facing him, our bodies close enough to share heat but not quite touching. The tent felt smaller in the darkness, intimate in a way that made my pulse quicken.
"Where do you want me to start?" I asked.
"The beginning, I guess. What am I? What are shifters?"
I took a breath. Let it out slowly.
"Shifters are people who can change form. The gene's been around for centuries, maybe millennia. No one knows exactly where it came from. Some myths say it was a gift from the gods. Others say it was a curse. Most shifters don't care about the origin—they just live with what they are."
"And Frosthaven?"
"Frosthaven is a latent academy. It exists to find people like you—people who carry the shifter gene but haven't triggered yet.
The academy identifies potential latents through genetic testing, family histories, certain markers that suggest the capability.
Then it recruits them under the cover of an elite academy. "
James was quiet, processing. "So everyone there..."
"Is either a shifter, a latent, or someone who knows about the supernatural world. The professors, the staff, most of the students. Some have already shifted. Others are like you were—carrying the potential, waiting for something to trigger it."
"Twilson?"
"Shifter. Old bloodline, old power. He doesn't like anomalies—people who don't fit his categories." I paused. "People like me."
"What are you?"
The question I'd been dreading. I considered how to answer—how much truth to offer, how much to hold back.
"I'm human, I think," I said finally. "Mostly. But I have... abilities. Visions. I see things that haven't happened yet, or things that are happening far away. No one knows exactly why."
"Visions." He said it slowly, like he was testing the word. "That's why you came up here. You saw something."
"Yes."
"What did you see?"
I closed my eyes. The image was there, as clear as it had been the first time—the ridge, the wind, the wolf howling in the white.
"A feral," I said. "On this mountain. Alone and dying."
"What's a feral?"
"A shifter who's lost themselves. Someone who shifted and couldn't find their way back—not to human form, or to human thought.
They get stuck in the animal mind. Instinct takes over, and the person they were just..
. fades. It's rare, but it happens. Usually with traumatic first shifts, or people who shift alone without anyone to guide them back.
Other traumatic events can lead a person to become feral. "
James's hand found mine under the blanket. "That could have been me."
"Yes." My throat tightened. "If I hadn't been there. If you'd been alone when the bear attacked. You could have shifted and not known how to come back."
His grip tightened. "But you talked me through it."
"I've been learning and studying everything I can about shifters and trauma and becoming feral for the last seven years.” I swallowed hard. "That's why I'm here. There's someone on this mountain who needs that. Someone the visions keep showing me."
"And you're going to save them."
"I'm going to try."
The wind howled outside, rattling the tent walls. James shifted closer, and I let him—let his warmth seep into me, let the bond hum with contentment at the proximity.
"The mate bond," he said after a long silence. "You mentioned it before. What does it actually mean?"
Here it was. The conversation I'd been avoiding since orientation.
"Mate bonds are... connections. Deep ones.
They form between shifters—or between a shifter and someone compatible—and they're basically unbreakable.
Not forced," I added quickly. "The bond doesn't make you feel things you wouldn't feel anyway.
It just... amplifies. Clarifies. Makes it impossible to ignore what's already there. "
"And we have one."
“A partial one,” I said quietly. “It started forming before you shifted. That hum you’ve been feeling—that wasn’t random.”
James’s brow furrowed. “Then what was it?”