1. MONSTER’S BRIDE
ONE
HANNAH
The path isrocky and I’m fighting for every step up this mountain with my crutches, but I’ve never felt more alive.
I’m seeking a monster who can perform miracles. Because apparently, I’ve decided conventional medicine isn’t dramatic enough for my taste. Sweat pours down my face, but there’s something almost intoxicating about pushing my body past what everyone said was possible.
“How much farther?” I call to Keith, my reluctant guide, who keeps hiking ahead like he’s allergic to my pace. He’s the only person brave—or desperate—enough for money to take me this far into Alaska’s most dangerous wilderness.
Dangerous.The word sends a thrill through me instead of fear. After twenty-five years of being wrapped in bubble wrap by everyone who “cares” about me, danger feels like freedom.
Keith points up the treacherous path where shadows dance between ancient pines. “The cave is about half a mile. But this is where I tap out, lady.”
“But I paid?—”
“You paid for a guide to take you as far assafelypossible.” His eyes dart to the darkening forest like something might be watching us. “This is it. No one comes back from here alive. The stories... they’re not just stories.”
I dig my crutches deeper into the rocky soil, my heart hammering with determination instead of fear. “I’m not turning back.”
Not after everything I’ve been through to get here. Not after breaking my engagement to Drew—perfect, successful Drew who looked at me like a charity case he was graciously saving. Not after using every penny of my savings to chase miracles across three continents while my mother raged about me “ruining everything.”
Keith’s face transforms from annoyed to genuinely concerned. The way people look at someone about to jump off a cliff. “You can’t be serious. You can barely?—”
“Barely what?” Fire flashes through my veins. “Walk? Stand? Exist without everyone’s pity?”
The words hang in the mountain air like a challenge to the universe itself.
“Look, I get it,” Keith says, his voice softer now. “You want to prove something. But this mountain... It’s not a game. Whatever’s up there, it’s not some fairy tale miracle. It’s?—”
“It’s exactly what I came for.”
Because here’s what Keith doesn’t understand: I’ve spent my entire life being told what I can’t do. Can’t run. Can’t dance. Can’t have a normal life. Can’t expect too much. Can’t dream too big.
I’ve had more surgeries before age ten than most people have in a lifetime—spine, feet, sternum carved away so my heart could beat without constraint. I’ve looked death in the eyes so many times, it feels like an old friend now.
But I’ve also spent the last three months traveling across continents, visiting holy sites where others wait for miracles. The basilica in Ireland, where I held vigil for three days. The temple in India with nine eternal flames, where I waited two weeks, watching others who’d been there for years. The church in Mexico, where desperate pilgrims pushed and shoved for a chance at salvation.
None of them healed me. But they taught me something important: I refuse to be one of those people who wait forever for someone else to fix me.
This mountain is my last shot at rewriting my story.
“The sun’s going down,” Keith says, glancing at the darkening sky. “We need to head back before?—”
“Before what? Before I finally do something that scares everyone, including myself?”
When he reaches for my arm—that condescending grip people use when they think they know better than me about my own body—I react on pure instinct. My left crutch swings up, the metal tip hovering near his throat.
“Don’t.” My voice is steady, deadly calm. “Don’t touch me like I’m some helpless thing you need to manage.”
His eyes widen, finally seeing me as something other than a victim. “Whoa, okay, I?—”
“I said I’m not going back, Keith. You can head down if you want, but I’m going up that mountain. With or without you.”
The truth is, I don’t have anything left to go back to. Drew made it clear when I broke our engagement that he was “disappointed” in my choice to chase “fairy tales” instead of accepting his protection. My mother sees me as a burden she’s eager to hand off to someone else—anyone else.
But up there? Up there waits something that supposedly healed a disabled child completely. A boy with scoliosis so severethat he couldn’t walk, who came down from this mountain running.
