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With my eyes closed, I’m finally able to tap into my other senses.
“Iara,” I beg of the gods, the planet, the mountain, anyone. “Just let me see her.” But the image in my mind is black and empty. I’ve seen my parents do this a thousand times. But for some reason, the connection seems closed to me.
Now I’m perturbed. It can only mean one thing if our soul connection can’t commune. One thing I dare not imagine.
And then I hear it.
My ears pick up the low guttural moan of the Tournalese mountain tiger. My scent has been found.
In the dark, I can’t make out its shape or proximity. As much as my heart pounds in my ears, I work like mad to lower the beat of my heart. Flaring my nostrils, I search the freezing clime for the musky scent of the animal, but it doesn't want to be found.
“Grrrrr-ya-yah!” I holler to the empty dark, hoping to distract the tiger with the sound of its only predator. A shuffle in the dark means I’m too late.
Within a heartbeat, the tiger pounces on me from behind, pushing me face-first into the gravel. My skin digs into the hard surface with the weight of it on my back. Luckily my pack gets the worst of it, while I force my hands under myself.
“Arrrryaaaah!” I bellow, pulling from strength within to force it off of me to the opposite end of the path. The tiger skids across the gravel, coming to a halt, facing me with a look in its eyes I've seen before.
I know if I don’t move, I’m dinner. The fact that it’s hungry enough to hunt me means there’s still hope Iara is out there, unharmed. I know my training says to backtrack and look for a thorneck bush to hide in. I know I should wait it out until dawn.
I know all of this, and yet I also know that if I don't end it here and now, he’ll find her next.
The tiger growls, saliva dripping from the tips of its double-pointed fangs. I have seconds to make my move, seconds before it devours me, Iara, and anything else in its path.
Her bright blue eyes come into my mind, fortifying me as I run at it, head-on.
“Arrrrrrrrr!” The force of my voice catches it off guard, and it falters just enough that I can make my target.
Running with all my might, I push my right shoulder into the beast and force it off the mountain in one huge lunge. It breaksinto the air, twisting and clawing at the sidewalls of the canyon, and it slides down, down, down, into the darkness.
Sitting at the edge of the cliff, my lungs beat so intensely with air that I have to force myself to lie down. The cold nips at my skin as I try, one more time, to make a connection with her.
My heart is calm, my mind focused, and without the lurking animal to distract me, I know it's my only hope to find her before it's too late.
I feel the pull again from somewhere deep inside of my fated mate, confident she’s at least still alive.
The snow is coming in thicker now, obscuring the already darkened path as I head in the direction I feel the mating bond pull me. I see what happened, now I look at the path it makes sense. The path to Big Tooth is iffy on a good day. If she took the wrong turn on it at dusk, during a snowstorm, she’d be lost every time.
Picking up my pace, I come around the bend, and something white catches in the moonlight at my feet.
Iara’s field journal. Picking it up, I inspect it for information about where she could be. It hasn't been shredded by a mountain tiger or anything else. The hope she’s alive and well pushes my voice from my lips.
“Iara!”
“Rylan!” I hear her call from a snowbank further down the slope. Running as fast as I can, the bend clears and I can see Big Tooth.
“Iara! Make some noise.” I need to be able to hear her if I aim to find her. Our fated mate connections bobbles in my chest knowing she’s near, so near. I can hear her muffled sounds from deep in the snow and, turning my head in her direction, I sprint to her.
A mound in the snow, set apart from the others, is her refuge. She must have built it in a hurry, as the snow around her ishardly packed. I set to digging, and sure enough, there she is. She’s curled into the snow, with her sleeping bag puffed around her head. Her hands clasp a golden chain between her fingers.
“I can’t believe you found me,” she exclaims. “I had started to figure that I was going to have to try to wait until morning when there was enough light to find my way. I used my emergency training to at least build an insulated shelter, but it’s not exactly ideal.”
Pulling my warm jacket from me, I wrap her body in it. The wind pricks at my light blue skin with every gust, but it has to be less than what she’s been through.
“You did a hell of a job,” I admit, admiring her little makeshift shelter. “Still, let’s not put it to the test and see if it really gets you through the night. We’re only a few minutes from a slope that’ll be the perfect place to set up the tent.”
She nods, relief etching her features. To imagine she was so close to safety, but couldn’t find it once she had gotten off the trail. She could have frozen to death out here, just a short distance from where she needed to be but never able to get there.
As I pull her from her little temporary shelter, impressed once again by her clear thinking in an emergency, I’m not sure it would have come to that, though. Iara is smart, smarter than maybe anyone gives her credit for.
