CHAPTER 8
Mallory
By the time Mallory made it back to the resort, the sun was fully up and casted the lobby in a bright, warm, light.
Her body felt wrung out. She was tired, warm, and humming in places she refused to examine too closely.
She slipped inside as quietly as she could and hoped against reason that no one had noticed her absence.
Hope, apparently, was not on her side.
“Mallory MacDougal, you’ve got some explaining to do!”
She froze.
Violet stood near the elevators with her arms crossed and eyes that blazed with equal parts relief and fury. Brooke hovered beside her and held coffee cups in both hands with her ponytail crooked. She stared like she’d just spotted a ghost.
“It would be my luck to catch them getting breakfast,” Mallory muttered to herself.
“Oh my God,” Brooke breathed as she surged forward to wrap Mallory in a fierce hug. “You’re alive.”
Violet followed a beat late and crushed them both together. “You disappeared. All night. No text. No call. Do you have any idea how close we were to filing a missing persons report?”
Mallory laughed weakly and the tension finally loosened in her chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Save it,” Violet said, but she was smiling now. “You are not getting out of this.”
They dragged her back to their room like bounty hunters and plopped her onto the edge of the bed while Brooke locked the door with dramatic flair. Violet shoved a cup of coffee into her hands.
“Okay, you.” Brooke perched on the desk chair and spun toward her. “Start talking.”
Violet grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest. “Tell us everything. I heard a rumor in the cafe that the king was missing last night, too.”
“He was with you, wasn’t he?”
Mallory’s cheeks instantly flared.
“Ohhh,” Violet sang. “That face. He totally was.”
“And,” Brooke continued and leaned forward with sharp eyes, “you were with him and then?”
Mallory hesitated just a fraction too long.
Violet slapped her knee. “She banged King Jakob.”
Mallory groaned and covered her face. “Please don’t call him that.”
“We absolutely will,” Violet said. “Now. Details.”
Mallory exhaled slowly. She told them about leaving for a long hike and getting caught in the storm, about the old shack tucked away in the mountains, and about the way Jakob had looked at her like the world narrowed when she stepped into it.
She talked about the cold, the quiet, the intensity of being alone with him in a place that was cut off from everything.
She told them about the tension. The almosts. The way he always stopped just before the line blurred too far.
But she did not tell them about the auroras.
It felt like a secret sacred to only her and Jakob. The girls didn’t need to know about the living sky or the way he had put his coat around her to keep her warm. That part stayed tucked safely inside her chest, warm and private.
“So let me get this straight,” Brooke said when Mallory finished. “He takes you to a loveshack, looks at you like he’s barely holding himself together, and then… nothing happens?”
She burst into laughter. “A loveshack? Have you been listening to the 80’s station again?”
“Forget that. What happened if nothing happened?” Brooke threw her hands up.
“Something happened,” Mallory said softly.
Violet tilted her head, studying her. “Just not that something.”
Mallory nodded. “And we were just hiking. He didn’t take me to any loveshack on purpose. We were just lucky it was there.”
Brooke groaned. “Maybe he’s just taking things slow.”
“The slow burn is going to kill me.” Mallory let out a weak smile. “And I’m not the type to hop into bed like that.”
Brooke leaned over and hugged her. “You haven’t hopped into bed with anyone, ever. But I agree. His slow approach is going to get annoying.”
Violet smiled knowingly. “It already is.”
Mallory finally escaped to her own room and leaned back against the pillows. Exhaustion finally caught up with her. Her body ached and her heart felt stretched thin, but full.
Jakob was a mystery. A storm wrapped in restraint. And she was falling for him, or had already.
Whatever they were circling around together, it wasn’t finished yet. Not even close.
As tired as she was, Mallory didn’t sleep like she expected.
She drifted in and out of shallow, restless dreams while her body twisted beneath the sheets as if she could outrun her own thoughts. The resort room was quiet but her mind refused to be.
In her dream, the sky was alive.
Auroras spilled across it in impossible colors with green melting into violet, silver streaked with blue, and all curling and pulsing like something with a heartbeat. She stood on the ridge again, snow crunching beneath her boots, Jakob beside her. Only this time, he didn’t stop.
His coat slid from her shoulders, falling into the snow. His hands were warm, sure, tracing her face, her neck, her arms as if he were memorizing her. When he leaned in, there was no hesitation, no restraint. His mouth found hers and—
Mallory jolted awake with a sharp inhale. Her heart hammered in her chest.
The room swam back into focus. The muted glow of the alarm clock. The faint hum of the heater. Her own breath coming too fast.
She rolled onto her side, then onto her back, then back again. The sheets tangled even worse around her legs. Sleep was done with her. All that remained was memory.
The auroras.
His coat around her shoulders.
The way his hand had cupped her cheek so gently it stole her breath.
And then his words. I won’t stop.
Heat flushed through her even now, a slow, curling warmth that settled deep in her chest and lower, making her acutely aware of her own body. Jakob hadn’t pulled back because he didn’t want her.
He’d pulled back because he wanted her too much. Dangerously much. The realization both thrilled and terrified her in equal measure.
She stared at the ceiling and blinked against the sting behind her eyes. A quieter fear crept in beneath the longing, one she hadn’t let herself name until now.
She was inexperienced. Untouched. A virgin.
The word felt heavy, outdated, like something that shouldn’t matter anymore, but it did. At least to her. She wondered if Jakob sensed it somehow. Maybe her hesitation and carefulness marked her as someone fragile. Someone he had to protect from himself.
What if that was part of why he kept pulling away?
The thought lodged painfully in her chest. She wasn’t na?ve. She wasn’t a child. But next to him, someone so controlled and so intense, and probably experienced, she worried she was already at a disadvantage.
She forced herself to stay in bed all day, and by morning, she was exhausted in that hollow, wired way that came from too much thinking and not enough rest.
So when Jakob appeared at her door with his face unreadable, eyes dark-rimmed, and voice strangely hoarse, she didn’t hesitate.
“Do you want to see something,” he asked, not quite meeting her gaze, “most people never will?”
She nodded before he even finished the sentence. After leaving a note for Brooke and Violet, she grabbed her heavy jacket and followed him without question.
They walked in the opposite direction of the marked trail to an area where the woods seemed too thick and rugged to enter. Jakob easily found a wooded path that led through the trees and a world hushed and damp with early morning dew.
As they went deeper, the air shifted and grew warmer until Mallory unzipped her jacket. Up ahead, she saw steam drift upwards from behind a jagged rock formation
“What is that?”
“We’re almost there.” Jakob slowed, then led her through a narrow gap in the stone.
Mallory stopped dead.
A hidden hot spring lay nestled in a ring of smooth, dark rock. The water glowed pale green in the morning light with mist that rose in lazy spirals. The air smelled clean and mineral-rich and wrapped around her skin like warm breath.
“Jakob,” she whispered, afraid to break the spell, “this is… magical.”
“It’s old,” he said softly. “And forbidden to most.”
She turned to him. “You brought me anyway?”
His jaw flexed and tension rippled through him. “I wanted you to see it.”
He sat at the edge of the pool and slipped off his boots before he dipped his feet into the water with a quiet sigh. Mallory hesitated and her nerves fluttered low in her belly before she pulled off her boots and socks and joined him.
Heat rippled up her spine from the water and the awareness of him so close sparked in her chest. The steam curled around them and softened the world into a pale, shimmering haze. Their legs dangled into the warm water, close enough that her foot accidentally bumped his.
A shock raced through her entire body.
Jakob inhaled sharply and jerked his foot back as if she had burned him.
Mallory looked up.
His gaze had dropped to her lips. Slowly. Intentionally. As though pulled by gravity he no longer fought.
Her breath stalled.
“You don’t have to be careful with me,” she whispered. The words slipped out before she could second-guess them. Maybe it was the steam. Maybe it was the way her heart refused to settle. Maybe it was the fear that if she didn’t say it now, she never would.
She meant it even despite everything she didn’t know, despite everything she hadn’t done.
Jakob’s head snapped toward her, eyes burning.
“That,” he said in a voice low and rough, “is exactly why I must be careful with you.”
Her pulse thundered, loud in her ears.
He leaned in just enough that she felt the warmth of his breath against her cheek and felt the moment stretch thin and fragile between them.
Her heart stopped, but he didn’t kiss her.
Instead, he tore his gaze away and pressed his palms hard against his thighs, like he needed to physically anchor himself. His chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven breaths.
Mallory watched him while ache and longing tangled inside her. “Jakob,” she said softly, “what are you afraid of?”
His eyes flicked to hers and she read the raw wanting.
“You,” he whispered.
Her breath caught. He wasn’t afraid of hurting her. He was afraid of what she made him become.
Mallory inched closer, drawn to him like a tide, like something inevitable. But Jakob stood abruptly and the sudden distance landed like a punch to her chest.
“We should go,” he said. His voice was strained and he was already turning away.
Mallory nodded even though her heart ached. She wanted to scream at him for bringing her to this beautiful place just to crush her heart. But she knew better.
The air between them pulsed like it was charged with electricity as they left the hidden spring. She walked behind him and stared at the broad line of his shoulders, the power in his stride, and the storm that simmered just beneath his control.
Jakob wasn’t just fighting temptation. He was fighting something deeper. Something wild.
Something that felt frighteningly like a destiny that she was all for.