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Blood coats my hands.

For one terrible second, neither of us moves.

Then she breaks first.

Not away from me.

Toward me.

She practically crashes into my chest, and the second her body hits mine, something inside me settles enough to breathe again.

“I’ve got you,” I murmur roughly, hands sliding around her immediately. “I’ve got you.”

Her breathing breaks apart against my throat.

“God, Rhett, he was there the whole time.”

I hold her tighter.

Behind us, the stalker groans somewhere in the snow.

I don’t even look at him.

Right now all I care about is the woman shaking in my arms.

“You’re okay,” I say firmly.

“I thought—” Her voice cracks. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t find me.”

That nearly destroys me.

I pull back just enough to grip her face between my hands. “Nora.” My voice drops lower. Rougher. “There’s nowhere on this mountain I wouldn’t go for you.”

Her eyes flood instantly.

And fuck, that does me in completely.

I cut the zip ties from her wrists with my hunting knife before shrugging out of my coat and wrapping it around her shoulders. She’s freezing.

“You hurt anywhere?”

“My shoulder,” she admits quietly. “He shoved me into the wall.”

My jaw tightens again.

“Don’t,” she says immediately, reading my expression too easily now.

“I’m gonna kill him.”

“No, you’re not.”

“He deserves it.”

“Maybe,” she whispers. “But I don’t want that on you.”

That stops me.

Because even now, bruised and terrified and standing in the middle of a blizzard after being kidnapped, she’s worried about me.