“Every Mountain Cat is born with some level of ice affinity,” I explain, demonstrating by creating a small frost pattern on the rock face. It is a tracking sigil that will remain invisible to most but clear as day to my clan. “But the applications vary. Some excel at combat magic such as freezing joints, creating barriers, making surfaces treacherous. Others develop tracking abilitieslike reading heat signatures in frost patterns, following trails through ice memory.”
“Ice memory?” She moves closer to examine the sigil, close enough that her scent washes over me. Storm-rain and herbs and something uniquely her that makes my control slip another notch.
“Ice remembers,” I say, voice rougher than intended. “Every warm thing that passes leaves an impression in the cold. With the right skills, you can read those impressions days, even weeks later.”
She traces the air just above the frost pattern, not quite touching but following its curves. “That’s beautiful. Like the world keeping a diary in frozen water.”
No one has ever called our magic beautiful before. Dangerous, yes. Useful, certainly. But beautiful?
“Can you teach me to see them?” she asks, looking up at me with those impossible eyes.
The request catches me off guard. Teaching someone outside the clan our magical signatures is... not forbidden, exactly, but intimate. Personal. The kind of thing done between packmates or?—
“Please?” She tilts her head slightly, and a strand of that silver-shot auburn hair falls across her face. “I want to understand. To see the world the way you see it.”
My snow leopard rolls over completely, gone on this woman who wants to understand us, not change us.
“Here,” I say, moving behind her before I can think better of it. I place my hands over hers, guiding them to hover above the frost pattern. “You need to feel for the cold beneath the cold. The memory layer.”
She relaxes into my guidance, letting me position her hands. This close, I can feel her warmth, smell the subtle shift in her scent when our bodies align. Her breathing changes, becomesshallower, and I know she feels it too—this pull between us that grows stronger with every passing hour.
“I feel something,” she whispers. “Like... echoes?”
“Yes.” My voice drops low, intimate. “Now follow the echo back. See who made it.”
Her magic flares gently, storm-touched power reaching out to read the ice memory. The moment her power touches the sigil I created, I feel it—a connection that goes beyond the physical, beyond the magical. Like recognition. Like coming home.
She gasps softly, and I realize she’s seeing me in the ice memory. Seeing how I create the patterns, how my magic works, how my very essence imprints on the frozen water.
“Magnus,” she breathes, and the way she says my name with wonder and heat and something else, nearly breaks what’s left of my control.
I step back abruptly, needing distance before I do something irreversible. “You learn quickly.”
She turns to face me, cheeks flushed with more than cold. “You teach well.”
The moment stretches between us, heavy with possibility. Then she asks, “Have you ever been tempted to settle for less?”
“What?”
“With mate bonds. You said Mountain Cats wait for perfect certainty. But what if certainty never comes? What if you find someone who’s almost right, nearly perfect, close enough?”
The question lands like a physical blow. “No.”
“Just... no?”
“Mountain Cat bonds are sacred precisely because they’re rare and absolute. To choose wrong would dishonor both parties. It would trap two people in a connection that falls short of what it should be.” I meet her eyes, letting her see my conviction. “Better to remain unbonded than to bond poorly.”
“But doesn’t that mean most Mountain Cats spend their entire lives alone?” Her voice carries something I can’t quite identify—sadness? Understanding?
“Yes. That’s the price of our standards.”
“That’s a cold way to live,” she says softly.
“We’re Mountain Cats. We’re built for cold.” But even as I say it, I’m achingly aware of how warm she makes me feel, how my carefully maintained isolation cracks a little more with every smile, every question, every moment she looks at me like I’m something worth knowing.
She studies me for a long moment, then says, “I think you’re lonelier than you let yourself admit.”
Before I can respond, she turns and continues along the trail, leaving me standing there with truths I don’t want to examine.
