Five hours. Maybe six. Time had lost all meaning. I fell again and didn't get up.
The snow was cold against my cheek, but I barely felt it anymore. Everything was distant, muffled, like I was watching myself from very far away. Like I was already half-gone, one foot in the grave and the other sliding toward it. My body had stopped shivering entirely. There was a strange warmth spreading through my limbs, deceptive and deadly, the final trick hypothermia played on its victims. Making them feel comfortable. Making them want to sleep.
I wanted to sleep. God, I wanted to sleep.
Hypothermia and bond sickness. A double death sentence. I was dying two ways at once, my body shutting down from the cold while the bond tore me apart from the inside.
I'd wanted to prove I could leave. I'd proved it. I was free. Free and frozen and alone and dying.
Was this worth it? Was this what I'd wanted? Lying there in the snow, too weak to move, too cold to feel, I thought about what I was running from.
Caleb's arms around me in the nest, warm and solid, his quiet presence that asked for nothing but my company. The dozensof carvings he'd made me, each one a declaration of love he couldn't put into words. The way he looked at me like I was the most precious thing he'd ever seen, like he couldn't quite believe I was real.
Leo's sharp tongue and sharper mind, the poetry he pretended he didn't write, the softness he hid behind cruelty. The way he saw through all my defenses and loved me anyway, even the ugly parts, even the parts I hated. The way he made me laugh, even when I didn't want to.
Ethan's charts and data, his desperate need to understand, to predict, to keep me safe. The way he tracked my sleep and my meals and my moods because he couldn't bear the thought of me being anything less than perfectly cared for. The way I'd left him without a word, slipping out while he was lost in his research, betraying his trust in the most cowardly way possible.
Mason's piano in the music room, the piece he'd written for me while I was gone, the raw vulnerability in his eyes when he played. The weight of his arms around me, solid and steady, promising to hold me together even when I was falling apart. The love he offered so freely, asking for nothing in return.
The nest that smelled like all of them, like safety and home and belonging. The purring. The peace. The feeling of being exactly where I was meant to be.
I was running from love. I was running from home. Now I was going to die for it. Frozen in a snowbank, miles from anywhere, alone.
"I don't want to die," I whispered to the snow, the words barely audible, my lips numb and clumsy, tears leaking from my eyes and freezing on my cheeks before they could fall. "I want to go back. I want them."
The bond pulsed in my chest, desperate and aching.Yes. Yes. Go back. Alphas. Home. Need them. Love them. Please.
The realization hit me like a blow. I'd had my answer the whole time. The bond knew. My body knew. My heart knew.
I just hadn't wanted to admit it. I didn't want to be free. Not really. Not if freedom meant this — cold and alone and dying. I wanted them, the cabin, the nest, and the four broken Alphas who loved me in their own complicated, messy, overwhelming ways.
I wanted to go home. The word didn't feel like surrender anymore. It felt like truth. I couldn't move. My body had given up completely, too cold and too sick to obey my commands. I could only lie there in the snow, feeling the bond pulse weaker and weaker in my chest, feeling the cold seep deeper into my bones.
I'm sorry,I thought, pushing the feeling through the bond with everything I had left.I'm sorry. I was wrong. I want to come home. Please. Please find me.
I didn't know if they felt it. Didn't know if the bond could carry that kind of message across the miles between us, or if it was just wishful thinking, the desperate hope of a dying woman.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard an engine. My heart stuttered, then raced. The bond in my chest flared, sudden and bright, like a match being struck in darkness.
Then voices. Shouting. My name, over and over, raw with desperation. Then a roar that I felt in my bones, that vibrated through the frozen ground beneath me, that made something inside me sob with relief.
Caleb.
The bond sang in my chest, weak but desperate, reaching for him like a drowning woman reaching for air.Alpha. Alpha is here. Found me. Safe. Home.I tried to move, tried to lift my head, tried to call out to them, but my body wouldn't cooperate. I was too far gone, too cold, too weak. I could only lie thereand listen to the footsteps crunching through the snow, fast and frantic, coming closer.
Then hands were on me. Warm hands, so warm they burned against my frozen skin. Turning me over, cradling my head, and Caleb's face swam into view above me. His pale eyes were wild, terrified, wet with tears that froze on his cheeks in glittering trails. His hands were shaking as they touched my face, my neck, checking for a pulse, for signs of life. Snow clung to his hair, his jacket, his eyelashes.
"Ava," he breathed, his voice cracking on my name, breaking on it like it was too heavy to hold. "Ava, no, no, no?—"
The moment he touched me, something in my chest unclenched. The bond sickness didn't disappear, but it eased. Just slightly. Just enough that I could breathe again, that the screaming need in my chest quieted to a desperate whimper. His hands on my skin were like oxygen, like warmth, like coming home after years away.
"Caleb," I managed, my voice barely a whisper, my frozen lips struggling to form the word.
"I've got you," he said, his voice breaking as he pulled me into his arms, pressing me against his chest, his whole body trembling with relief or fear or both. His body heat seeped into me, and I sobbed, burrowing closer, trying to absorb his warmth. "I've got you, I've got you, you're okay, you're going to be okay?—"
More footsteps. More voices. Ethan's sharp commands, clinical even through his panic. Leo's cursing, vicious and scared, a stream of profanity that would have made me laugh if I could remember how. Mason, his voice rough with something that might have been fury or might have been fear — probably both.
"How is she?" Mason demanded, dropping to his knees beside us, snow soaking through his jeans, his dark eyes wild with fear.
