Page 20 of Mountain Storm (Mountain Shadows #1)

CARYN

The storm breaks with a sound like the mountain exhaling after holding its breath for too long.

When I open my eyes, the light is pale, filtered through curtains of snow that still fall in slow, drifting sheets.

The cabin creaks as if it has survived a battle.

My body is warm, tangled in blankets that still hold the echo of him.

For a heartbeat, I think Zeb is there, a shadow by the fire.

But the chair is empty. The rifle is gone. So is he.

A hollow pain opens in my chest, wide and merciless.

I push myself upright and the blanket slides to my waist. The silence of the room closes in like an accusation.

He has vanished before. Left without warning, swallowed by the wilderness as if he never existed.

I tell myself not to believe it this time, but the echo of abandonment burns too deep.

Maybe I was nothing but the story after all.

Maybe he fed on me like the storm and then let the wind take me apart.

The door moans in its frame. I flinch, heart thundering.

Snow swirls around him as Zeb steps inside, broad shoulders dusted in white, a heavy pack slung over one, a rifle over the other.

Another pack dangles from his hand. He looks at me the way the mountain looks at the trees it shelters.

Fierce. Unyielding. Unwilling to let them go.

"If you still want your story," he says, voice low, "you are going to have to write it from up here."

He drops the packs to the floor. Two survival kits. One for him. One for me. Relief hits with dizzy force, so fierce it makes my eyes sting. He isn't leaving. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

"You came back," I whisper.

"I told you I would." His gaze holds mine, storm gray, steady, but crinkling at the corners. "Maybe you weren't as awake as I thought."

The certainty in his tone threads through the cracked places in me and pulls them closer together.

He strips off his gloves and sets the rifle aside.

Frost turns to droplets along the barrel and falls to the floor in a slow, steady rhythm.

He moves to the table, opens one pack, and lays out supplies in neat rows.

Fire starters. Water tabs. A field dressing kit.

A satellite phone. He glances at me and then back to the gear.

"They had trackers," he says. "Hidden on the sled and under the cowling. I smashed one and sent the other into the river. The signal still went out."

Fear lashes up my spine. "So they know."

"They know the cave. They can draw a line from there to us.

" He keeps his voice level. "I will handle it if they try again.

But the sat phone buzzed before I left—the sweep started as soon as I handed Brenner over.

They're pulling every path between here and the cave.

No one's making it up the mountain for a while. "

A moment ago I believed he had left me. Now I face the truth that others may come. Danger has not blown past with the storm. It has only paused to take a breath.

"I should go..."

"Not a chance. Sit," he says, softer now. "You look pale."

I lower myself to the chair. He kneels, wraps a blanket around my shoulders, and tucks it close like he is trying to put heat back into bone.

His hands linger. The calluses that punished have learned to soothe.

He looks up at me and the hunger I have come to know still burns there, but it is tempered by something rawer.

Worry. Devotion he does not know how to name.

"You don't have to stay," I tell him. "If I am the reason they come, I will go down when the road opens." The words taste like ice. I hate them as soon as I speak them.

His jaw tightens. "You're not the reason. You were the excuse. I am the reason."

"Zeb."

He rests his forearms on my knees and holds my gaze.

"Listen to me. I built a life that made me untouchable.

Then I watched you walk back into it. I told myself I could keep you safe by keeping you close.

I told myself distance would kill us anyway.

I did not plan what came next. You broke the shroud I had wrapped around myself and you ripped it off. "

I know this already in the way he touches me. Hearing it strips the last of my defenses. My voice shakes in my throat. "I didn't come just for the story."

He goes very still.

"I told myself it was research," I say. "I told myself it was a question that needed an answer.

It was more. You saved me once and I tried to make peace with not knowing who you were.

I couldn't. I kept seeing your eyes in the dark.

I kept hearing your voice in the wind. I chased a ghost because I wanted it to be real.

I only now realized I couldn't live in that world.

Somehow I must have always known I belong with you. "

His breath leaves on a rough sound that is not quite relief. Not quite pain. "And now?"

"It's chaos," I admit. "I don't know what to do with what you are. I don't know what to do with myself around you. I thought finding you would quiet the noise in my head. It didn't. It made everything louder. I am afraid of what we are, but I'm even more afraid of walking away."

A glimmer moves through his eyes, something like reverence, something like hunger, something like hope. He lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my palm. The kiss is not apology and not demand. It feels like a vow.

"I need you to hear something else," I tell him, voice small and brave at once.

"I have questioned myself every hour since I got here.

I have reviewed every moment and turned each one until the edges smoothed.

I keep asking if you took what I didn't give.

You touched me when I couldn't think and you pushed when I couldn't see past the heat.

I fought you and I wanted you. I wanted you every time.

Even in the bathroom when you bound my wrists and used my mouth.

I wanted it. I wanted you. I'm not confused by that. "

His eyes close for a breath. When they open again they are wet. "Say it again."

"I wanted you," I say. "I chose you."

The silence that follows is thick and aching. He bows his head to my knees. His shoulders shake once. When he lifts his face it looks like the first thaw after a brutal winter.

"Caryn," he says. My name sounds like a prayer. "I didn't have a word for this. I have it now."

"What word?"

"Love."

Everything in me goes still. The room narrows to him and the way he has braced himself for rejection. I touch his cheek. His beard rasps my palm and steadies me.

"I love you too," I tell him. "I have loved you since a stranger lifted me out of the snow and carried me through the dark. I tried to build a life that didn't include you. I failed."

He rises and pulls me into his chest. The embrace is careful, almost reverent. He presses his mouth to my hair and then to my forehead and then to my lips as if learning the map of a country he intends to defend.

"Say it again," he murmurs.

"I love you."

The words pass between us and settle like anchors. The room feels new, as if the storm somehow rearranged the furniture and left us a place to begin.

He draws back. "I need to tell you the rest," he says. "All of it."

I can see his look focus on the past. I know he's remembering the handler who sold his team for money and leverage.

The op that went to hell by design. The order to leave him.

The way Brenner had looked at him and chose survival over loyalty.

The months after when the only voice he trusted was the one that said live and endure.

How he bought this ridge because the world felt safer at a distance.

How the Beast name grew around him until it fit like armor he couldn't take off.

"Silence was the only thing I could control," he says. "If I said nothing and felt nothing, I couldn't fail anyone again."

I reach for his hand and lace our fingers. "You didn't fail anyone. They failed you. You survived."

He studies our linked hands as if the shape they make is new. "And then you came back."

"Then I came back," I echo. "Looking for a ghost and finding a man."

Something in him eases. He pulls a chair to the hearth and gestures. I take it. He kneels and unlaces my boots, lifts my feet to the stool, and begins to rub heat into my arches with his thumbs. The care turns me liquid. When he finishes he stands and nods toward the bed.

"Rest," he says. "You haven't slept for more than an hour at a time since you crashed."

I shake my head. "Talk to me instead."

He moves to the bed and sits with his back against the post. I climb beside him and tuck myself into the curve of his shoulder. We breathe together until our lungs find the same pace.

"I have one more truth," he says. "It's not pretty."

"Tell me."

"I watched you after I left you at the hospital. I told myself it was protection, but it was also hunger. I don't apologize for that. I won't lie to you about what I am."

"You know," I say. "I saw the photos. The notes. It should have scared me. It did... at first. It also told me I wasn't insane for feeling watched. It told me I matter to you in a way that isn't simple, and I realize, I don't want simple."

His arm tightens around me. The fire hisses and settles. Snow slides from the eaves with a slow grind. Somewhere a branch sheds its burden and thuds to the ground.

"What happens now?" I ask.

He angles his head to meet my eyes. "Now we decide. You can go down when the road opens. I won't stop you. Or you can stay and write from here. It won't be easy. I won't be easy. I'll still be what I am. I'll try to be softer. I'll fail sometimes."

"You think I want easy?" I let a small smile lift my mouth. "I drove into a blizzard to find a myth. I'm not a woman who looks for easy."

"True," he says, and the corner of his mouth tilts in a way that warms me.

I rise to my knees and swing a leg over his lap so I straddle him. His hands find my hips like they belong there. I press my forehead to his.

"I choose you," I say. "I choose the mountain. I choose the truth you offered me. I will write what I can and keep what is ours. I will not run when you go quiet. You will not shut me out when the past reaches for you."

His breath gusts against my mouth. "I'll try. If I falter, you drag me back."

"Don't worry. I will."

The air thickens. Heat rises. He kisses me, not with fury and not with demand.

He kisses me like a man who understands the weight of consent and intends to carry it.

I roll my hips and feel him respond, slow and certain.

He lifts my shirt. I raise my arms. He takes his time, as if each inch of skin deserves notice.

The fire paints us in amber. The window holds a square of white.

He lowers me to the mattress and follows.

There is no rush. There is only a steady climb that feels like memory and promise braided together.

His hands map paths he has taken before, but now he asks with each touch and I answer with each breath.

He moves inside me, deep and sure, and I meet him, opening, taking, giving.

The world narrows to heat and the soft rasp of skin and the sounds we make when we stop pretending we are not built for this.

My release gathers and crests. I clutch his shoulders and let it take me. He follows with a groan that vibrates through my ribs. He stays inside me, forehead to mine, breath unsteady.

"I love you," he says again, voice raw. "I will spend what is left of me proving it."

"Then start now," I whisper. "Start by trusting me with the next choice."

He eases free and pulls the blankets over us. We lie on our sides, facing each other. His thumb traces the line of my cheekbone. I catch his hand and kiss the center of his palm.

"You still owe me a story," I say. "Not for the world. For me."

"What story?"

"The first time the Beast met the girl who would not run."

He huffs a quiet breath. "I saw you on a trail you shouldn't have taken. You didn't cry. You didn't beg. You looked at me like I was a storm you meant to learn to endure. I carried you out and left you because I knew if I stayed, I would never leave. I have been walking in circles ever since."

"Until now," I say.

"Until now."

We drift in a warm hush that tastes like peace.

The mountain groans and settles. Somewhere, ice cracks with a sound like distant thunder.

The day leans toward afternoon and the light spills gold.

I close my eyes and let myself believe, for the first time, that the storm carried me exactly where I was meant to be.

Somewhere far below, engines snarl and fade, the sweep moving out of range. For now, the mountain is ours.