But beneath the fear, something else burned hotter. She’d defied me. Looked me dead in the eyes and still gone with him. Disobeyed what I told her. I could still see that defiant tilt of her chin when she said she wasn’t going. Liar.
She was going to pay for that.
Not now. Not while the air was wrong and the storm was rolling down the mountain. But later, when I had her alone again, when that fire in her eyes turned into something trembling and desperate. I’d remind her exactly who the fuck she belonged to. Who she answered to.
Then movement caught my eye.
A group was coming down the path from the slopes, trudging through snow that looked deeper than before. Faint voices drifted through the air, thin and uncertain, breaking against the wind before they could form into anything real. Urgency in their steps. My pulse kicked hard as I scanned the faces. Aster. Gwen. Zayn. A cluster of others trailing behind, exhausted, shaking snow from their hoods.
But not her.
She wasn’t there.
The realization hit me with the force of a goddamn truck. Everything inside me went still, cold spreading through my chest faster than any winter wind could manage. My legs were moving before I even registered it, the glass doors slamming shut behind me as I tore across the entryway, boots crunching through the ice.
Gwen looked up first. She froze mid-step, her face tight, skin pale beneath the flush of windburn. Zayn reached for her, steadying her, but his eyes avoided mine. And then Aster turned.
Her expression said everything.
Terror.
It wasn’t confusion or guilt, not even the trembling panic that could be reasoned away. This was different—sharp, breath-stealing, the sort of dread that hollowed a person out before a single word was spoken, warning me in the silence that something had gone terribly wrong. My stomach twisted. My pulse started to roar in my ears.
“What the fuck happened?” I demanded, my voice already a growl, rough and low enough to cut through the wind.
No one answered right away. Gwen’s eyes darted to Aster’s. Zayn’s jaw tightened. Aster’s lips parted, but no sound came.
It tore into her face and left tracks of terror, cheeks hollowing, lips trembling, lashes wet as snow, she stumbled forward, boots crunching, eyes unsteady and gone.
“Where the fuck is Miss Carter?” I snapped, voice hard enough to cut, I could not afford to splinter.
“I thought—” I stepped up, cold gnawing through my gloves, “she was with you.”
Zayn opened his mouth and slammed it shut. Aster tried and broke.
“She—she was,” Aster choked, each word a fracture. “The storm hit so fast we couldn’t see, we called, we…she was right behind me and then she—” her voice collapsed into sobs.
“Still out there?” I asked, every syllable wrapped in a thread of ice.
Gwen nodded, face gone hollow. “We searched, some people stayed, some kept going. No signal. We had to come back for help. It’s bad up there.”
Aster moved closer, tears cutting bright lines down her cheeks. “She didn’t want to come, I told her—”
“Shut up,” I cut in, the word slammed down like a fist. The lobby turned; I didn’t notice. Inside, something older and uglier uncoiled, a goddamn animal with one single thought: she was out in that white and I’d let her go.
My hands clenched until my knuckles screamed. If she lay broken in the snow, if she froze, if she screamed and nobody heard, I would torch every trail and rip this mountain apart with my bare hands to get to her. I wasn’t thinking about rules, or optics, or polite goddamn procedure; I was thinking of getting her back and ripping anything between us to pieces.
“Get help,” I barked at Zayn, each word a shove that launched him toward motion, then I swung back to them, fury carving the lines of my face. “Stay inside. Do not move. Do you hear me?”
“I’m coming—” Aster started, voice trembling.
“No,” I snapped. “You’re staying. You stay where it’s warm and alive. You sit your asses down and you do exactly what I tell you.”
Gwen stepped forward, pleading, “Professor, please—”
“You’ve done enough,” I spit, voice low and raw, every word sharpened with threat. “You lost her once, don’t you dare let that be on me again. You stay here. You. Do. Not. Move.”
Gwen flinched, Aster’s mouth opened as if to argue, then shut when her eyes met mine and whatever she read there knocked the words from her throat. I turned without waiting, everymuscle primed, rage burning through me and beneath that fire something darker tightening my chest until I could barely draw air, all of it centered on her, and the awful, bleeding truth that I could not breathe until she was back in front of me, safe or shredded, because if God was watching He’d better be ready to answer for letting her get hurt on His watch.
