Page 45

AURELIA

“ F uck, that crazy asshole doesn’t quit.”

“Did you see the way he crawled after her? Jesus. I don’t love my wife that much.”

“Forget her voice. Her cunt’s got to be lined with gold.”

Keeping my gaze straight ahead, I walk and ignore the raucous laughter around me at my expense.

Truthfully, my body is present, but my mind is still back in that dell with Seth. The things I said to him…I don’t have to wonder if he believed them. I saw the defeat in his eyes and the crushing hopelessness I left him with.

His heart’s broken, but at least it’s still beating.

“Ignore them,” Finnegan says somewhat amicably. “Most of them have only felt that kind of devotion from the warm mouth of a two-dollar whore.”

“I want to talk to my uncle,” I demand.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

I stop walking to face him. “Why the hell not?”

“No cell reception out here, darling.”

“Why did my uncle hire you?”

“I told you. To find you and bring you home.”

“You’re saying my uncle thought I was still alive after all this time?”

“No. We were tasked to find your body or proof that you were dead. Luckily for us, we found you alive, so I get to triple my fee.”

I roll my eyes and resume walking. This time, I let my gaze wander the forest, hoping for some sign that Thorin and Khalil have caught up, and it doesn’t go unnoticed.

“You don’t want them finding us, darling. It won’t end well for them.”

“Call me biased, but I’d say this won’t end well for you .”

Finnegan grunts but doesn’t argue. We hike for two hours before I realize we’re nearing the base of Big Bear.

Home.

I don’t know how close I am to the cabin, but I find myself looking back, seeking out that lonely cliff for a glimpse of it. When I don’t see it, my eyes travel the way we came—up the steep, craggy, snow-packed slope to the sun high in the sky right above it. It’s sandwiched between two forest lines like a frozen stream, and about five hundred feet ahead is the ledge where all this lingering snow piled so precariously could fall over at any moment.

One wrong move could send it all sliding.

The climb down won’t be easy, and I realize I might have underestimated my mountain men’s knowledge of these wilds because they would have known a better, safer way down.

Perhaps time is of the essence for the mercenaries since Thorin and Khalil will be hot on our heels. I’ve done what I could to slow our progress, but when Finnegan threatened to hogtie and carry me, I decided I’d rather have my hands free for when the time comes.

The mercenaries stop once we reach the ledge, and I figure they’re trying to figure out a way down, so I inch closer to the edge to see if there’s a possible escape route while Finnegan argues with some of the other mercs I caught staring at me a few times.

Apparently, even battle-hardened killers get star-struck.

Two of the men are sent off to scout while another unnecessarily announces that he’s going to take a shit.

One peek over the side of the ledge, and I know I wouldn’t survive the fall. All those sharp rocks waiting to break me in half will ensure it. Maybe I can make a break for the trees while the mercs are distracted and take cover there.

Unfortunately, I take a little too long to shit or get off the pot.

Finnegan breaks away from the other mercenaries and approaches me. “Hey, so this is a little awkward,” he says while rubbing the back of his neck, “but some of the guys have daughters and girlfriends who are fans of yours.” When I just stare at him, he huffs his irritation at me for not making this easier for him. “They were wondering if they could get you to sign some autographs.”

I cut my gaze at the men in question, who pretend they’re not eavesdropping and waiting for my response and then I sigh. “Sure. Got a pen?”

Having complete strangers ask for my autograph isn’t new to me, so why does this feel weird? I guess because I stopped thinking of myself as that Aurelia weeks ago. The star. The celebrity.

The Aurelia I am now feels more human. She feels real and flawed. I can relate to her.

“Yup. Here you go.” Finnegan hands me a notepad and pen and tells me who to sign the autographs for. Once I’m done, he takes them back and slips them inside his tactical vest with a smile that feels slimy, so I turn away to face the ledge again. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I didn’t expect you to be so cool about this after what happened with your boyfriend. It almost makes what I have to do now difficult.”

I turn my head to see him standing closer than he was before. Much too close. I look him up and down, not bothering to hide my displeasure. “What are you talking about?”

“I’d have made it quick,” he continues to ramble, “but your uncle wanted us to make it look like an accident.”

“Excuse me?”

I feel a heavy hand on my back a moment later, shoving me toward the edge…

A sharp whistle is the only thing that keeps me from going over.

“Hey, asshole!”

Finnegan’s hand disappears from back, and I spin around with a surprised gasp, my heart racing with hope and disbelief. It can’t be…

It is.

Seth is here. And he’s not alone.

When I follow the sound of his voice, I see all three of my guys standing together. Thorin and Khalil are holding the two scouts at gunpoint while Seth has the shitter kneeling at his feet with a gun pressed to his temple.

I fall to my knees into the rocks and snow with a grateful sob.

Seth looks a little manic, but he’s here. He’s okay.

I notice the bandage around his thigh at the same time he yells, “You missed, bitches!” Seth pulls the trigger without warning and the mercenary drops at his feet. “I didn’t.”

I can’t bring myself to be horrified at the cold-blooded murder of the merc. I don’t even think I’m capable of guilt anymore. If I could cry happy tears at seeing Seth again, I would.

He’s okay .

Maybe the bullet only grazed him, or perhaps he was only pretending to be hurt so he could gain the upper hand.

Seth definitely has it now.

I can tell by the way these “hardened” mercenaries are scrambling for their weapons. I can tell by the way Finnegan removes his hand from my back to grab my arm in a tight hold instead. He brings me in front of him to use me as a human shield, and I let him because I don’t want him to die just yet.

“What the hell are you just standing there for? Kill them!”

“But, sir! Roberts and Sanders!” one of the men reminds their leader. He gets a bullet to the brain, and pandemonium ensues when the rest of the squad realizes it was friendly fire.

Finnegan killed his own man.

It motivates the rest to start shooting.

Realizing there’s no loyalty or brotherhood among their ranks, Khalil and Thorin use the mercs as human shields as they take cover.

Roberts and Sanders are dead by the time Thorin and Khalil take cover behind two of the boulders, leaving only Finnegan and three other mercs alive.

Seth has also taken cover, but only after Thorin shouts at him to get down.

Khalil raises his head to return fire, and he’s so focused on dropping the others that he doesn’t notice Finnegan drawing his handgun.

The wolf Thorin sees every time he looks at me raises her head, and I grab Finnegan’s arm with both hands. Lunging forward, I sink my teeth into his wrist.

“Aaaaargh! You fucking bitch!”

Finnegan starts shaking me around like a rag doll, trying to turn me loose, but I don’t let go—not even when his skin gives, and I taste blood. And not when I remember how close we are to the precarious ledge.

We could both fall, but at least Khalil will be safe.

Finnegan finally gets desperate and punches my temple hard enough to make me see stars. I drop to the ground while the shooting continues, and I curse Finnegan for tossing my bow.

He kept my axe, though.

It’s currently hooked to a D-clip on his back.

When he tries to grab me, I spit my mouth full of his blood in his face, and it stuns him long enough for me to lunge for his gun. Finnegan recovers the moment I grab it, and our struggle for control of the gun ends with us both tipping over the edge of the cliff.

“Aureliaaaaa!” one of my guys screams .

Khalil, I think.

He must have seen me go over.

My heart stops when I see the sharp rocks below rushing up to meet me, but then my next breath punches out of me when the ground reaches me much sooner than expected, and I slam chest first onto the hard surface.

The first thing I notice is that I’m not dead.

Unfortunately, neither is Finnegan.

He’s hanging onto the tiny ledge protruding from the cliff face with one hand clinging to the missing chunk in the rock while the other dangles unseen next to his body.

“Wow, you’re really strong. You must work out a lot. I’m guessing you can hold that just long enough to answer my questions, and then I’ll think about letting you up. What do you say?”

“I’m all ears, Aurelia. ”

“You said my uncle wanted it to look like an accident.”

“That’s not a question.”

“Exactly what did he hire you to do?”

“To find your body and bring it home for burial, and believe me, princess. He spared no expense.”

But even if Finnegan hadn’t already tried to push me off the cliff, I would have smelled the bullshit. My uncle has never been particularly religious or sentimental. There’s no way he would have gone through all of this trouble for a funeral if there wasn’t something in it for him.

“And what were your orders if you found me alive?”

Finnegan isn’t quick to answer, and I can see by the distant look that flashes in his eyes that he’s weighing his chances between lying and honesty.

I’d say he has fifty-fifty odds.

Realizing the same, Finnegan chooses the honest route, and while his answer doesn’t surprise me, my non-reaction to it most certainly does.

“My orders were to bring back your body. It didn’t matter if your soul was still attached to it when I found you.”

I’m still processing that my uncle wants me dead—even if I suspected it a time or two this past year—so when Finnegan raises the hand that’s not holding the cliff, I’m caught off guard in more ways than one. There’s a gun pointed at me now.

What a fucking idiot.

“Not so fast, Finnegan. This one is for all the marbles…” Finnegan’s curiosity wins out, and he keeps his finger off the trigger. Bad kitty. “When did my uncle hire you to kill me?” I know by his minute pause that he wasn’t expecting me to ask that question. My gaze narrows, and he widens in return. “When did…my fucking uncle…hire you…to kill me?”

Finnegan blows out a defeated breath. “Fuck it. Three months ago, okay? A few weeks before your plane crashed.”

I’d always wondered how my uncle was able to arrange everything so quickly—particularly the ranch he purchased not far from here that I still haven’t seen. My exile from public scrutiny had nothing to do with my leaked sex tape. The blizzard, the crash, finding the cabin…

This was always going to happen.

“Our orders were to wait a few days and follow you. We were going to make it look like an accident then too. Your uncle thought he got lucky with the plane crash, but then your body was never recovered, so he sent us to find you. This will have to do.”

Click.

Finnegan gapes at the gun and then glowers as he stupidly tries again . Click, click, click, click, click, click.

Placing my hands on my hips, I lean most of my weight on my right leg. “Seriously, you’re a gun-for-hire and can’t even tell the difference in the weight when there’s no mag inside? I want a refund.”

“How? When?”

I twirl the end of a curl around my finger. “During our little tussle. I ejected the clip and emptied the chamber while you were too busy trying to cop a feel. Yeah…I noticed. My harem —as you called them—showed me a few tricks. Can you believe they’re good for more than just delivering the D?”

“You fucking bitch.” He throws the gun away and grips the ledge with his other hand. Still, his face turns red from the strain of holding himself up.

“You’re about to be murdered, dude. At least try an insult that bites .”

This goddamn wasted cum-juice-turned-human-mold-spore looks me dead in my eyes and says, “I like Tania’s music better.”

I guess I had that coming.

I still shift forward and step on both of his hands in case he gets any ideas about grabbing me while I unclip my axe from his back with quick fingers.

A few weeks ago, the mere mention of Tania would have sent me into a rage, and I probably would have done something idiotic, giving Finnegan the chance to regain the upper hand but not today.

I’m already pretty fucking pissed, and I’ve been harnessing that rage ever since he had Seth shot.

“Well then…no need to hang around on my account. Get it?” I giggle and snort at my own joke. “ Hang around ?”

Raising the axe, I bring it back down as hard as I can, cutting off four of his fingers from the second knuckle down. Finnegan releases a blood-curdling scream as he stares at the gruesome gap between what’s left of his right hand and his severed fingers.

“You fucking bitch! You fucking cunt!”

“You have to do better than that if you want to hurt my feelings, Finnegan!” I bring the axe down a second time, severing the fingers on his left hand. Finnegan continues to scream as he falls down, down, dooooown…

SPLAT.

Blood sprays across the powder-white snow when he lands on the rocks below, and for a while, I’m frozen. I can’t do anything but stare down at the body to assure myself that he won’t get back up, even though I know no one can survive that.

When a full minute passes and Finnegan remains unmoving—a macabre black and red stain in the distance—I feel my shoulders slump.

It’s not until I hear feathers rustling and wings flapping that I realize I’m not alone. I turn around and see an owl resting in its nest with its back to me and head fully rotated while staring at me through wide, yellow eyes.

“Uhhh…”

Rocks tumble over the side of the upper ledge and my heart drops.

Someone’s coming.

Fearing the worst, I press myself against the wall to hide while my murder witness flies away.

“Goldilocks!”

Khalil.

My lips part to answer his call, but I don’t allow myself to make a sound and stay hidden for some reason. Before I can examine the reason, Khalil yells again.

“Fuck!” he explodes, and I imagine him looking over the ledge and spotting Finnegan.

“What?” Seth demands. “What do you see?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know! It’s…she’s…there’s blood, man. A lot of it. Someone’s down there. It’s too far to tell…”

“AURELIAAAAA!” Thorin roars.

My chest caves with relief while my stomach churns with dread. I have no idea which reaction to trust while the three of them lose their shit thinking I fell to my death.

Finnegan’s words about my feelings for them not being real have been replaying in my head on a constant loop. What if he’s right? What if I’m just coping through surrender? What I tricked myself into believing I loved them?

And then there’s Seth…

I don’t know what he’s told Thorin and Khalil or what they’ll do to me once they find out.

Closing my eyes, it takes me a few seconds more to swallow down the uncertainty clogging my throat.

It was real.

So when I feel my heart calling out for them, I finally let myself push away from the wall until I’m visible. “I’m here!”

“Goldilocks!” The stricken look on Khalil’s face morphs into crippling relief when he sees me alive and in one piece. Fortunately, he doesn’t stay incapacitated for long. “Hold on, baby. We’re going to pull you up.” When I nod, he quickly disappears back over the upper ledge. A couple of minutes later, a thick red rope is slung over the side. The long length pools onto the ground by my feet, and I grab it.

“Tie that around your waist,” Khalil instructs. “And make the knot as tight as you can. I’m going to pull you up.”

“Okay.”

Once I have what I hope is a decent knot tied around my waist, I hold onto the slack, and Khalil begins to pull me up. Thorin grabs me the moment I clear the lip of the upper ledge, and he pulls me over until I collapse on top of him while breathing hard.

This feels familiar.

When I look around, I see dead bodies everywhere, but my gaze doesn’t linger on them. I search for Seth and find him standing back with his hands in his pockets like some passing bystander.

“Seth…” I climb to my feet with Khalil’s help and go to Seth. He doesn’t back away from me, but I can tell he wants to. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“My leg is fine,” he answers evenly. “The bullet grazed me.”

I nod with a hard exhale. “Good. That’s good.”

I can feel Thorin and Khalil watching our exchange closely, and I’m again left wondering what Seth told them. Had he believed my lies when I said I didn’t love him, or am I living in a fool’s paradise thinking he might have seen through them?

“Is something up with you two?” Khalil inquires when the awkward silence stretches on.

I can’t bring myself to answer while Seth just stares at me blankly with blood on his shirt like he hadn’t just killed for me.

“Seth?” I decide to ask him instead. I need to know that he knows it was all real for me too.

Instead, he turns away, giving his back to me. “We should go,” he suggests while starting the hike back up the slope. “We need to get the supplies to clear these bodies out.”

I stand there feeling like my heart is splintering in two while Thorin and Khalil give us both weird looks.

So Seth hadn’t told them, and yet, he obviously believes all those things I said in the dell. The only question is…why hadn’t he ratted me out?

“Come on,” Thorin softly orders while taking my elbow.

I force myself to put one foot in front of the other as I make my way back up the slope. Khalil lingers behind, making sure the mercenaries are all really dead. He’s over by one of the larger slanted rocks, checking Sanders when I hear it.

The horrifying familiar crack like thunder and the sound of heavy rain pouring down…

Except the sky is clear and there is no rain.

The snow beneath our feet begins to crack and slide, slowly heading for the ledge where it spills over the side. I imagine the image from below where Finnegan lies dead is that of a waterfall except with snow.

The ground starts trembling, and it feels like a stampede heading straight for us.

Seth, who had stopped to pick a flower turns to face us with a confused frown. “What is that?” he calls out from fifty feet ahead.

The blood drains from my face as I gape at the horrifying image behind him. Mist crests the hill that leads home, and then a wall of white so thick and high it blocks out the sun follows as it heads straight for us.

The answer to Seth’s question spills from my lips in a horrified shudder. “Avalanche.”

Fuck, it’s cold.

I stopped feeling my fingers and toes hours ago, but if I complain again, I have a feeling I’ll perish from strangulation instead of exposure.

The storms have finally stopped, but the sun still hasn’t appeared as snow slowly falls, making visibility poor. Today, the wilds are cloaked in fog and mist that blanket the forest floor and wrap around my ankles.

“So I’m guessing you’ve realized life is too short to spend it guarding a soulless witch, and you’re planning to quit once we make it out of here, huh?”

I peek over at Tyler, who is currently trying to use the hands on his grandfather’s watch to determine our direction. Caught off guard, his head snaps toward me, and his brown eyes widen when he finds me watching him. Amusement breaks through his surprise, and then he snorts.

“Or I realized the soulless witch needs me more than I thought, and I’m asking for a raise once we make it out of here.”

“No need to wait. Done. Doubled.” Wrapping my arms around one of his, I rest my cheek on his strong shoulder. “I know I can be hard to deal with.”

Laughing, Tyler shakes his head. “What is it you told Joanna? Better hard to deal with than easy to play with?” Smiling, I nod. “Besides, how could I leave you? You’d be lost without me.”

“Literally.”

I’m rewarded with another snort, and then he says, “Come on. The beacon is this way.” He points to the other side of a ravine forty feet below us where the forest continues.

I immediately wrinkle my nose. “But how are we supposed to get down there?” Please don’t say climb. Please don’t say climb.

“We climb, princess.”

I groan. “Can’t we go around?”

“That could take hours and cost us another day to reach the tail. Another storm could hit, and we may not be lucky finding shelter again.”

“We could also fall to our death, Ty.”

Tyler’s jaw ticks, and I know he probably wants to take control and tell me we’re doing this, but he’s also remembering that he works for me, which means I’m in charge.

Technically.

After watching him struggle with indecision, I decide to cut the only person in the world who actually likes and gives a shit about me some slack.

“So how do we do this? We don’t have any rope.”

Tyler looks relieved that I’m not going to go Godzilla on him, and then he’s frowning again as he trudges over to the edge of the small cliff and peers over. “Slowly. I think I see a way down. I’ll go first, and then you follow. Step where I step. Hold what I hold. We should be fine.”

“Piece of cake,” I tease. We’re gonna die.

Pushing away from the tree I’m huddling under, I take one step toward the cliff’s edge when I hear something like a clap and a boom. Startled, I look around in confusion, but before I can ask Tyler what it could be, the ground under my feet begins to shake. It trembles so hard I have to hold onto the tree I abandoned for balance.

“Earthquake!”

The rumbling grows louder, and I follow its direction through the trees from the north. There’s a wall of white that seems to get closer and closer. At first, I assume my eyes are playing tricks on me because it looks like the air is moving.

“Aurelia…” The horror in Tyler’s tone has me looking away in time to see his deep-dark skin turn gray as he looks through the trees, bending and swaying from the quake. “Fuck! That’s not an earthquake! Run!”

Ignoring his order, I hold my hand out for him as he makes a break for the tree that I’m still clutching. My head swivels back and forth as I measure the distance between us and the distance between Tyler and all that white.

He’s naturally fast, but the deep snow slows him, forcing him to take giant steps to cover more distance, which also slows him down. Each step costs him precious life-saving seconds. Meanwhile, the mass of snow gets closer and closer, and I realize with impending doom that I’m just out of its reach. If Tyler can get to me, he’ll be saved, too.

The mass of snow rockets by me and sucks all the air from my lungs from how biting the cold is. My shriveled fingers become impossibly stiff, but I keep my hand out for Tyler, and I wait for the brush of our fingers that never come.

Tyler is still too far away.

“Aurelia! Ru—”

The mass swallows him up, and I scream as it hurdles him back toward the ravine, back toward the cliff’s edge. Helplessly, I watch as it carries my bodyguard over. The snow keeps spilling over the edges like a frozen, deadly waterfall, and then, as fast as it began, it ends.

Ignoring the numb seizing control of my body, I crawl through the snow to the cliff’s edge and scream over the ravine for my bodyguard.

“Tyyyyylerrrrrr!”