1. Noa #2
The ice looked solid enough. Thick enough to hold, glazed with snow that would give my boots traction. I'd crossed dozens of frozen creeks in my fieldwork. This was routine.
I started down the bank, testing each foothold before committing my weight. The slope was steeper than it looked, the rocks underneath the snow slick with ice. I went slow, grabbing at tree branches for balance, and made it to the creek's edge without incident.
Before I stepped out onto the ice, I held my breath and stared at the sky, hoping that this was going to be one of those weird stories you told your friends one day.
I quickly glanced to each side, hoping to find any better option to cross than stepping onto the ice, but there was nothing.
Not a perfectly placed fallen tree or even a magical bridge that had appeared out of nowhere.
“Crap buckets,” I muttered to myself, hearing the slight slur to my words that proved the cold was hitting me harder than I'd realised.
I had no other choice. So with one last sigh of resignation, I did what you were supposed to do when crossing uncertain ice.
I slipped my pack off my shoulders and lowered it to the frozen surface, keeping hold of one strap.
I'd have to drag it behind me as I crossed.
If the ice gave way, I could let go and save myself instead of being pulled under by forty pounds of gear.
Smart. Sensible. Exactly what the wilderness first aid manuals recommended.
So I stepped out onto the ice as a small voice inside my head predicted exactly what was about to happen.
The first few steps felt fine. Solid. I could hear the water moving somewhere underneath, but the frozen surface didn't creak or shift.
I kept my weight balanced, my steps careful, my focus entirely on the placement of my feet.
Behind me, the pack slid along easily, the nylon scraping softly against the snow-dusted ice.
I was three-quarters of the way across when I heard the crack.
Not under my boots. Behind me. Where the pack was.
I let go of the strap and lunged forward on instinct.
My hands caught the rocky bank on the far side. My chest slammed against the edge of the creek, driving the air from my lungs in a painful rush. My legs were still on the ice, scrambling for purchase, and I felt it shift and groan beneath me as I hauled myself upward with desperate strength.
My ankle caught on something. A rock, a root, a jagged edge of broken ice.
I felt it twist as I pulled myself onto the bank, felt the white-hot snap of pain shoot up my leg, but I didn't stop.
Couldn't stop. I dragged myself forward until I was clear of the creek, gasping and shaking on solid ground.
Then I heard the splash.
I twisted around in time to see my pack start to slip into the water.
The ice had given way in a jagged circle right where I'd been standing, and the current was already pulling at the bright orange fabric.
I watched it catch on an edge of broken ice, watched the water drag at it, and then it was gone.
Everything I needed to survive was in that pack.
My radio, even if the storm had stolen any chance of a signal. My phone in its waterproof case. The emergency beacon I'd never had to use. Food, water and fire-starting supplies. The first aid kit with its bandages and painkillers and emergency blanket.
My suppressants.
I'd taken my daily dose this morning. Swallowed the pill with my coffee like I had every morning for the past ten years, never thinking about it, never worrying. I always carried a few in my pack in case I got stuck out here. The rest were sitting safely in my bathroom vanity and might as well have been a million miles away. I’d never missed a dose before and as I stared up at the completely white-out sky, I had no idea how long I was going to be stuck out here.
For one desperate second, I considered going in after the pack.
The water wasn't deep here. Knee-high, maybe. I could see the rocky bottom through the gap in the ice. If I moved fast, if I was careful, I could probably grab the pack before the current dragged it too far downstream.
But my hands were already clumsy and slow, and my clothes were wet where I'd hit the bank, and the cold was seeping through the soaked fabric with terrifying speed. Going into that water meant making everything worse. Going into that water meant dying.
Not probably. Certainly.
I stared at that hole in the ice, praying for the pack to impossibly bob back up to the surface. But nothing.
Then I rolled onto my back and stared up at the falling snow and let myself have five seconds of pure, wordless despair.
Five seconds. That was all I could afford.
Then I hauled myself to sit upright and took stock of what was left.
My clothes were soaked from the chest down. My boots were full of icy water that squelched with every micro-movement. My ankle throbbed with a deep, nauseating pain that told me I'd done real damage, though I couldn't tell yet how bad.
I had my compass on its lanyard. My pocketknife in my jacket. The clothes on my back.
Nothing else.
No phone. No radio. No beacon. No food, no water, no fire kit. No way to call for help. No way to signal my location. No way to tell anyone that I was hurt and alone and running out of time.
No suppressants. Ten days, maybe two weeks, before my body remembered what it was supposed to do. Before a decade of chemical suppression wore off and I went into heat for the first time in my adult life.
Later. I could panic about that later. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting to shelter before the cold killed me.
I tried to stand. My ankle screamed in protest, and I nearly went down again, catching myself against a tree trunk at the last second.
Not broken, I told myself. If it were broken, I wouldn't be able to put any weight on it at all.
This was just a sprain. A bad one, but manageable. I'd worked through worse.
I found a branch that was close enough to a walking stick to help, and I started moving.
The last mile was the longest of my life.
I couldn't go fast, not with my ankle protesting every step and the snow now thigh-deep in the drifts.
The cold had soaked through my wet clothes and into my skin, into my muscles, into my bones.
I couldn't feel my feet anymore, so at least the gnawing pain of my injury was gone.
But my hands were clumsy and distant, like they belonged to someone else.
And I knew if I stopped now, this would be the end.
The shivering started about halfway through. Great, wracking convulsions that made my teeth chatter and my muscles cramp. I welcomed it at first. Shivering meant my body was still trying to warm itself. Shivering meant I wasn't too far gone.
Then the shivering stopped.
I knew what that meant. I'd studied wilderness first aid.
I'd read the case studies, memorized the symptoms, learned the protocols.
When you stopped shivering, it meant your body had given up trying to generate heat.
It meant you were moving from moderate hypothermia to severe. It meant you were running out of time.
I kept walking.
The world narrowed to a white tunnel. Snow above, snow below, snow in every direction.
I followed the compass bearing through sheer stubbornness, though my thoughts were getting fuzzy and slow and I couldn't quite remember why I was walking or where I was going.
There was something about a homestead. Something about shelter.
Something about not dying alone in the snow like an idiot who should have listened to her instincts and gone home when the bear did.
The cabin appeared like a hallucination.
One moment there was nothing but white and gray and the dark shapes of trees. The next, there was a structure. A real structure, with walls and a roof and smoke rising from a chimney. A porch. A door.
I stared at it for a long moment, convinced it would disappear if I blinked. Dream cabins did that. Hypothermia hallucinations. I'd read about those too. People seeing loved ones, seeing warmth, seeing safety that wasn't really there.
But the smoke kept rising. The walls stayed solid. And when I took a stumbling step forward, the cabin didn't vanish.
Real. Please let it be real.
I didn't remember crossing the last hundred yards.
Didn't remember climbing the porch steps, though my ankle must have screamed with every one.
I remembered the door, solid wood with iron fixtures, and my hand raised to knock.
I remembered being unable to make a fist because my fingers were frozen into claws.
The door opened before I could figure out how to announce myself.
A man filled the frame. Big and broad-shouldered, with dark hair that fell into his eyes and a face that looked like it had been carved from the same stone as these mountains. His expression shifted from irritation to surprise to something sharp and urgent in the space of a heartbeat.
He was saying something. His mouth was moving.
But I couldn't hear him over the roaring in my ears, couldn't process the words through the fog that had settled over my brain.
I tried to speak, tried to explain why I was standing on his porch looking like a half-drowned disaster.
Tried to remember the words I was supposed to say.
“Wes sent me.” My voice came out slurred and strange. “Storm. Couldn't make it back.”
I watched his expression change again. Watched him reach for me with hands that looked impossibly warm. Watched his mouth shape words I still couldn't hear.
Then my legs gave out, and I was falling.
He caught me before I hit the ground. I felt his arms close around me, felt myself being lifted like I weighed nothing, felt warmth against my frozen skin and a scent that cut through the fog in my head. Woodsmoke and pine resin and something underneath like sun-heated stone.
Alpha, my sluggish brain supplied. He's an alpha.
There were other voices now. Other figures. A face with wire-rimmed glasses, worried and sharp. Another shape, rougher, watching from the shadows with eyes that caught the firelight.
Three alphas, Wes had said. Three alphas who kept to themselves.
I'd spent six months avoiding alphas. Keeping my distance. Maintaining my walls. And now I was half-dead in the arms of one, completely at his mercy, with nothing but borrowed time before my body betrayed me entirely.
The universe had a hell of a sense of humor.
The warmth of the cabin pressed against me from all sides. I could feel consciousness slipping away, could feel my body finally surrendering to the exhaustion and cold and trauma of the past hour. There was nothing left to fight with. Nothing left to hold onto.
The last thing I registered before the darkness took me was the rumble of a deep voice above my head, calm and commanding despite the chaos.
“Get the blankets. More wood on the fire. She's hypothermic and injured, and we need to move fast.”
Then everything faded, and I let go.
Nothing hurt in the silence, and when the darkness embraced me with open arms, a part of my soul smiled in relief.