He wanted another bar.
“How long do you expect we’ll be here?”
She turned back to him. “Until it stops snowing.”
“What?”
“Search and Rescue won’t move until the storm has blown over, unless they know exactly where you are. It’s just not safe to go wandering. The storm could kick back up. It’ll probably blow over by tomorrow.”
He grabbed another bar.
He knew it was hunger making them taste so good, but he’d take it.
Several low-level alarms were slowly turning off. Even last night, when she was tucked up in bed, he couldn’t distract himself from the fact that he was cold, hungry, thirsty, and hurting. Now he was slowly warming; his blood sugar was rising, and he could smell her again and not chai tea gone wrong. The desperate edge of survival bled away.
His fear was made worse by the fact that he didn’t know how to survive. He was completely dependent on her. He wouldn’t have ever found the wood, nor the ax to chop the wood. He would’ve probably pulled branches off the trees and stuffed them in the stove. Hell, he never would have found the stove.
He probably would have survived. He would have shifted if she hadn’t come and ridden out the storm that way. Then he remembered how cold it had gotten. Even fur was no defense from a howling blizzard, especially when he was injured and already exhausted.
But that didn’t happen. He had her instead. Watching her cook him breakfast roused something primal in him that was notpolite or politically correct, and he realized he had a whole new hunger he had to control.
6
She was annoyed by her fear of the wolf. She’d just spent all night in bed with him, and she could still barely breathe. They’d been wrapped in blankets and trying not to die of exposure, but he still felt like the bigger threat. Logically, she was just about convinced he would not eat her or hurt her, but a primitive part of her brain wouldn’t lower her heart rate. She was careful of him, and worse, she knew he knew it. She wasn’t aware of the finer points of shifter relations, but it felt rude to act like you were about to get eaten.
Her hands closed on something soft in the pile of food they had available. So far, she had found oatmeal, rice, and a bunch of dried beans. They were only ingredients. There was not a granola bar or box of crackers to be seen.
She pulled out a bag of marshmallows with a shriek of triumph and started digging beneath them. “S’mores!”
She held them up for the wolf.
He frowned. “You want marshmallows for breakfast?”
She looked between the oatmeal and the marshmallows.
“Oh, hell yeah. Come on.”
“Oh, you need my help?”
He jumped up like an eager puppy, and she bit her lip. “I mean, it’s not a help thing? You have to roast your own marshmallow. It’s the rules.”
“The rules of what?”
“You’ve never had a s’more?” she asked, frozen halfway to the stove.
He snorted. “Yeah, no, they did not want to ruin their fancy fireplace at coding camp.”
“Well then, you’re going to have to eat a ton to find your perfect level of burnt.”
“There is a perfect level of, um, burnt?” He looked dubious.
“The perfect level is almost black,” she informed him.
“Right.”
He kneeled with her in front of the stove, and she opened the lid, relieved to find the fire growing. Even wrapped around a wolf, she had gotten so cold last night.
She looked around for skewers but didn’t find any, so she brought over a couple of forks, which was not the safest idea, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
