Page 17 of Mountain Storm (Mountain Shadows #1)
ZEB
Ipull free, reach down and release her hand, buckling my belt back into place, the echo of her surrender still pounding through me.
Caryn’s gaze follows me, fierce with fury, edged with something darker she doesn’t want me to see.
She’s still on her knees when I step back, wrists free, the fire painting shadows across her face.
I can’t let myself soften. Not with Brenner rotting in the woodshed and too many ghosts rattling in my head.
I shrug into my coat and step out into the storm. The snow bites at my skin, but I welcome the sting. It cuts cleaner than the things I carry inside.
The woodshed is colder than the grave, but it suits Brenner just fine.
Rope binds his wrists behind his back, the knots sunk deep from my pull.
He slumps against the wall, breath frosting in the dim light of the lantern.
He doesn’t fight anymore. He knows better.
His silence hangs heavy, like he’s already calculating how long he can last out here.
He should know the answer by now. Longer than I’ll allow.
I check the Toyo stove—running and fueled—so he won’t freeze.
I throw the latch and leave him in the dark.
My boots crunch through the ice crusting over the snow as I head back toward the cabin.
The storm has eased for now, but the sky is swollen, ready to split wide open.
The mountain doesn’t warn without cause.
Inside, the fire has burned low. Caryn sits curled on the couch, a blanket pulled tight around her shoulders.
Her eyes snap to mine the second I enter.
There’s no softness there, only the tension of a woman caught between fear and fury.
It twists something in me I don’t want to name.
I tell myself it’s control I’m after, but the truth edges closer to the surface than I like.
Her stare pulls me under, away from the snow and the fire, away from the cabin and the storm raking at the walls. It drags me to another night, another captive, another silence weighted heavier than words. Afghanistan. Betrayal. A memory that clamps down like iron, refusing to loosen its hold.
I turn away and drag a hand down my face, exhaustion clawing at me though I know sleep will never come.
It never does after blood and violence, not when the memories close in like wolves circling a campfire.
My past stalks me, a predator pacing the cage of my skull, testing the bars, waiting for a weakness to slip through.
Tonight they press harder, heavier, refusing to let me breathe.
Afghanistan. Hindu Kush. A ridge not so different from this one.
Snow fell like ash, muting the world, covering the bodies of men I trusted with my life.
I remember the chaos. The deafening crack of rifles, the metallic taste of adrenaline thick on my tongue.
My team dropped one by one, precision fire cutting them down.
We’d been sold out. I knew it the second comms went dead and the extraction bird never came.
We had been ordered into that valley under the promise of good intel, but everything about it stank.
The coordinates were too clean, the timing too perfect.
When the ambush hit, it was surgical. They knew exactly where we’d be and when.
Someone back home traded our lives for something.
Power. Money. Maybe both. Our handler kept us believing we were ghosts, untouchable and untraceable.
Turns out we were pawns on a board rigged against us.
I remember Brenner’s silhouette in the blizzard, rifle in hand, breath fogging.
He didn’t shoot me, but he didn’t save me either.
He left me crawling through bodies while the snow filled their mouths and eyes.
He muttered, “Orders,” as if that single word absolved him of leaving me to die.
Our handler had already cashed out, trading our lives for a payday, and then commanded the team to abandon me like another body for the report.
KIA on the record. Forgotten and disposable in reality.
The sting of that betrayal cut deeper than the frost, carving a wound no heat could ever close.
The betrayal bit deeper than Brenner’s silence.
I saw the handler’s face before the ambush, steady and false when he signed off on the mission.
He told me to trust the intel, his words calm in a way that felt rehearsed.
Later I recognized it for what it was, a mask stretched over greed and corruption.
Word filtered back that contracts had been signed and money had changed hands.
The lives of my team bought someone political influence, bought someone advancement.
My blood and theirs became nothing more than a calculation, my name penciled into the margins of a ledger and crossed out when the sum was collected.
I should have died that night. Instead, I crawled through that valley half-dead, scavenging ammo from fallen brothers and dragging myself into a ravine littered with echoes of gunfire and blood.
I remember staring up at the frozen sky, every breath cutting like glass, and realizing the truth: I had been erased.
Not just abandoned. Erased. My file stamped and closed, my existence reduced to a red line in a report, convenient and final.
Back home, the man who betrayed us collected his paycheck, shook hands with officials, and walked away clean while I rotted in silence.
That betrayal never left me. It carved me hollow, stripped me of whatever humanity I had left.
The Beast was not born on this mountain.
It was made overseas, forged in betrayal and blood.
By the time I clawed my way out of that ravine, the man I had been was gone.
What rose from that valley was something else entirely.
I tear the memory away before it swallows me whole.
The cabin is quiet except for the steady crack of wood in the hearth.
Caryn keeps her gaze fixed on me, unblinking, unyielding.
There is a question in her eyes, veiled beneath the defiance she wears like armor.
She does not trust me, yet she has not run.
That truth gnaws at me, an ache that refuses to fade.
She does not understand, perhaps she never will, but her presence here cannot be chance.
Every instinct tells me it is deliberate, and I feel it deep in my bones.
Someone sent her. Maybe she believes she came chasing a lead, but I cannot accept that as chance.
Women don’t show up on this mountain with armed men at their heels by accident, and they don’t wear the face of the one woman burned into my memory.
Whether she understands it or not, she is bait, and I walked into the trap with my eyes open.
The thought stalks me, pressing deeper until my body locks tight, every muscle strung taut like a bowstring, braced and waiting for the inevitable strike I know is coming.
My jaw grinds. I cross the room to the desk, rip open the drawer, and grab the folder with her name scrawled across it.
I toss it onto the table in front of her, the papers spilling free, photographs and notes sliding across the wood, the record of years spent watching.
Her breath snags, but she doesn’t look away.
“Explain,” I demand, my voice a growl scraped from the bottom of my chest, cold and relentless, the sound of a man who has commanded obedience on battlefields and expects it here.
Her chin lifts, stubborn even as her hands clutch the blanket tighter, knuckles white. Her voice lashes out, brittle and defiant, carrying more heat than steadiness. “Explain what?”
“Why you’re here. Why they followed. Why the ghosts I buried overseas clawed their way back into the light the moment you set foot on this mountain. Every shadow I thought was dead rose again when you arrived, and I want to know why.”
She glares. “I told you. I was chasing a story.”
“Bullshit.” My palm slams against the table hard enough to make the lantern rattle and the fire leap high in its stone cage.
The sound is violent, final, echoing through the cabin like a shot.
I lean in, eyes locked on hers, voice low and dangerous.
“You expect me to believe you stumbled up this mountain, walked into a whiteout, with no clue you were walking straight into my world?”
“Yes,” she snaps, voice rising with raw defiance. “Because that’s the truth. You think I’d choose to hurl myself into this nightmare, to walk into the jaws of danger on purpose? You think I’d willingly come here to you, knowing the ruin you would bring? Do you think I want this?”
The words slice deep, but the blaze in my chest leaves no space for pain. I stalk closer, looming over her, making sure she feels the weight of what stands before her. My voice drops, low and dangerous. "Yes."
She doesn’t recoil. Instead she rises, the blanket sliding from her shoulders to the floor. Her palm whips across my face with a force that rings throughout the cabin. The sting is immediate, leaving heat across my cheek before I can react.
The crack reverberates through the cabin, a brutal reminder of her defiance.
My head jerks to the side, skin searing from the strike.
I straighten slowly, the sting fusing with the storm already inside me.
Her chest heaves, her eyes blaze with fury, her lips parted as if daring me to push further.
A dark tide rises within, rage and hunger tangled with obsession, mutating into a brutal need that threatens to consume us both.
I seize her face in both hands and crush my mouth to hers. The kiss is brutal, searing, a clash of teeth and breath that tastes like fury and possession. Her lips part against mine, and I taste myself still lingering on her tongue, the raw reminder of what she gave me moments ago.
Caryn pushes at my chest, her palms pressing with desperate strength, yet a fractured moan escapes her lips, betraying the fight she clings to.
I seize that sound, drinking it down, forcing her to face how completely I have already taken hold of her.
Her trembling only sharpens the ache inside me, fueling the hunger that rages to consume her.
My hands slide from her jaw to her throat, holding her there, not strangling but keeping her bound beneath my touch, a visceral reminder that she is caught, that escape is no longer hers to claim.
I tear my mouth from hers before the hunger drags me past the edge, chest heaving as I press my forehead against hers. Her breath mingles with mine, ragged and unsteady, her lips swollen and damp from the force of my kiss.
Her eyes blaze into mine, wide with fury, yet behind the fire flickers something raw and unguarded, a trembling spark of need she does not want me to see.
The taste of her, mingled with the lingering salt of my release on her tongue, clings to me and feeds the maelstrom rising inside.
Every heartbeat dares me to claim more, to drown us both in the fire in which we already burn.
“You don’t get to walk away from this,” I whisper, voice rough with restraint. “Not from me. Not now.”
Her breath shudders as she wrenches back, clutching the blanket to her chest like flimsy armor against the live wire still sparking between us.
The blanket trembles with her grip, her knuckles white, her body shaking from more than cold.
Fury burns in her gaze, but beneath it smolders the undeniable heat of need she cannot extinguish.
I watch the conflict ripple through her, every line of her body caught between defiance and surrender, and I allow it, stepping back just enough to remind her that distance is only what I grant. For now.
The wind howls against the cabin walls, low and hungry.
I glance toward the window. Snow swirls in thick sheets, heavier than before, battering the glass.
The mountain groans with it, alive and restless.
Another storm is rolling in, worse than the last. I can feel it in my bones, in the way the air tightens, in the way the fire struggles against the draft.
We’re not leaving this mountain anytime soon. The knowledge sits heavy on my chest like a sentence carved in ice. The storm has sealed us in, and the knowledge grinds through me with the certainty of a trap closing shut.
Enemies prowl in the dark, Brenner is secure in the woodshed, and Caryn’s eyes sear into me with defiance and need. The air between us vibrates with danger. The real tempest isn’t outside but here between us, building with every look, every breath, every silent promise of impact.