Page 9 of Rescued By the Alpha SEAL

My palm? I don't even feel it tear the skin. Adrenaline has turned my body into a machine with one purpose: survive now, feel pain later.

I push away from the tree and force myself onward, each step more unsteady than the last.

The moon is hidden behind clouds, and the forest floor is treacherous in the dark. Roots catch at my ankles. Branches whip across my face. Every shadow looks like a man with a gun.

Suddenly, the worldtiltsbeneath my feet.

A patch of earth gives way—wet snow concealing treachery—and I plunge down, a startled cry ripping from my throat like a wounded animal.

My body tumbles, smashing against hardpack snow, skidding across ice until I land on gravel, breath knocked out of me.

For a moment, I can’t process anything. Can't think. Can’t breathe.

Stars burst behind my eyes, and my body feels pinned under an invisible weight, suffocated by sheer panic.

And then, the dread washes over me.

Boot prints.

Fresh ones imprinted in the thin layer of snow dusting the gravel. Too deliberate. Toomilitary.

Ice crystallizes in my veins, cold and paralyzing, distinct from the chill of winter. Someone else is out here, and it's not the man from the cabin. His were wider, heavier.

These instincts—my journalist instincts, honed through years of danger—scream at me now, a primal warning.

The silence around me presses against my ears, too still, too perfect. Natural silence has a heartbeat—subtle rustles, distant cries, the whisper of wind. This silence is void—the breath before the storm.

Then, I hear it. The ominousclickof metal meeting metal.

A safety disengaging.

And from the trees, a voice emerges. Low, amused, weaving through the darkness with terrible ease.

“Found you, sweetheart.”

4

LOGAN

Itrack her through the snow, my boots moving in quick, silent strides, breath clouding in front of me in the frigid night air.

The temperature's dropped since sunset, hovering somewhere in the low twenties. Dangerous weather for someone in her condition.

She couldn't have gotten far—not in her state.

Not with no shoes and half her strength gone.

But when I spot the blanket abandoned in the trees like a fallen flag, something cold and sharp settles between my ribs.

Then I see it—blood smeared on a patch of bark. Not much, but enough.

Shit.

She ran.

Wounded. Freezing. Alone. With high fever.

I press my gloved fingers against the bark. The scent of blood twists my gut. I scan the treeline, eyes adjusting to the darkness, reading the forest floor like a map.