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“Come on,” I whisper to my bear as I pull off my shirt and hang it on a tree. The cold wind whips my bare skin as I pull off my boots, and then my jeans and underwear. I tuck them into the nook of a thick branch where they hopefully won’t get covered in snow and I’ll have to wait until spring to find them.
My inner grizzly is hovering near the surface, ready to come out.
I need a break from my life right now. I need a break from this reality where my mate is not with me.
So, I set my grizzly free.
He bursts out of me as I’m pulled inside.
Suddenly, I’m seeing the world through his eyes. I’m experiencing it through his senses—the smell of pine, of the approaching storm, the scent of a fox who passed by earlier this morning. The cool tingling of the wind on his fur, the feel of his paws in the cold snow, the taste of water in the air, which always comes before an intense snowstorm.
I sigh as I sink into the darkness and let him take over.
Where is she?
Where is my mate? I’m twenty-eight years old. Shouldn’t she be here by now? What the hell is fate waiting for?
As my bear wanders through the woods, I wonder if the fault is mine.
I mean, how am I going to find my mate if I spend most of my time hiding out in the woods with my two single brothers? It’s not like we run into a ton of women up here. Or any. Maybe I should get out more.
Maybe I should start being more proactive.
I sigh as my grizzly stops to smell a bush where a rabbit wandered by earlier.
Or, maybe I should just give up for real.
Maybe my brothers are wrong.
Do I even really need a mate?
ChapterThree
Tara
All I see is white.
The windshield wipers on my sister’s crappy old car get an A for effort, but they’re not doing much in this hellish snowstorm. They’re screeching in pain as they whip from side to side, pushing away the endless snow that keeps coming and coming and coming. Even when they clear the glass for a split second, a blanket of fresh snow is there to immediately replace it. I can’t see anything.
My hands are gripping the steering wheel so tight they’re hurting, but I still can’t seem to loosen my grip.
I’m on the highway somewhere in Montana. It’s dark out and there are only a few other cars on the snow-covered road—people with death wishes, people who don’t believe in checking the emergency weather reports, and one runway bride who is in way over her head.
“What do I do? What do I do?” I mutter as I press down on the gas with my heart pounding. The worst part is, there’s so much snow on the road that I have to go fast. If I slow down, I’ll get stuck and then some pickup truck or a snowplow is going to ram into me from behind.
But the faster I go, the more I slip and slide. I keep losing control. It’s terrifying.
I can’t pull over. I can’t do anything.
“Forty-one inches of snow,” the male announcer on the radio says with a laugh. “This is shaping up to be one heck of a storm.”
“I hope none of our listeners are on the road now,” the female announcer says.
“Surely our listeners aren’t stupid enough for that,” the male announcer says with a laugh. I want to smack him. “After all the warnings we’ve been giving to stay in your homes.”
I smack the radio off instead.
Forty-one inches isa lotof snow. I’m suddenly realizing how dangerous this situation is. My sister’s car has the power of a lawnmower and I doubt she’s changed the tires in the past decade. I’m wearing nothing but my pointed-toe pumps that only cover half my foot and there’s no winter jacket in here, no boots, no woollen hat, no big fluffy mittens.
