It wasn’t like he didn’t understand her concern, but, well, he’d survived, hadn’t he?
Though itwasa bit more of a close call than I would’ve liked.
“Well, if you want me to leave you to fall to your doom in future, just let me know,” he said breezily… before feeling a bit ashamed. Shewasobviously upset about it, and with good reason.
“Look,” he said more softly, pushing strands of her wet hair behind her ear and letting the gentle hum of the mate bond soothe them both. “Throwing myself into danger for you is all part of being mates… but I can see why that’s not something you’d want to repeat on a regular basis.”
He smiled. “Let’s try for slightly less exciting adventures in the future. How about that?”
“Watching TV on the couch?” Chloe said, her lip wobbling slightly. “I’d be happy to take on the risk of eating one of those diner burgers once or twice a week, cholesterol be damned.”
“I’ll get Eula to make all her unhealthiest meals and bring them to your door,” Ethan promised. “We won’t go anywhere at all.”
The trembling lip turned into a shaky smile… and then a full-body shiver.
Ethan looked around him, remembering what all of the excitement had made them both forget for a minute – that they were trapped at the bottom of a gorge, in a body of freezing coldwater. Surviving long enough to watch TV on the couch was by no means a given.
At least he was starting to recover from the fall, now. A regular human would have either been killed or gravely injured by the impact that he’d suffered and the subsequent near-drowning, but he could feel himself healing up, his ribs slowly knitting back together, various pains starting to ease.
No – he was more worried about Chloe, despite her apparent lack of injuries. He could survive for at least a while in this cold, but she wouldn’t have long at all. Already her lips were turning blue, her teeth starting to chatter.
His heart sank as he examined the sides of the gorge. The walls down here were much steeper than they had been at the top, and smoother, too. It would be incredibly difficult for him to climb out of here, if not impossible. Even ifhesomehow managed it and went for help, Chloe would freeze to death in the meantime.
And the gorge was definitely too narrow for him to fly out of – it would be impossible for the pegasus to spread its wings. The space was also narrower than the pegasus was long, so he couldn’t even try turning sideways and spreading his wings along the gorge’s length.
“That expression doesn’t bode well,” Chloe said.
Ethan said nothing, which he knew was reply enough. It felt like anything he could say would just make things feel even more hopeless.
There has to be something we can do. Come on.Think,dammit.
“Can we swim down the gorge, and see if there’s a way out?” Chloe asked, though she sounded like she knew it was a lost cause.
Ethan sighed. “I mean, we can try, but I don’t think it’s going to do us much good. You saw how long it was when we were flying up here, right?”
Chloe nodded glumly.
“Still,” Ethan went on, “it may be our only option. I don’t think these walls are climbable.”
“No wonder Kira didn’t want anyone coming down here,” Chloe murmured pensively. “Do you think we can stay alive until it hits six o’clock, and Kira sends out her griffin friend?”
Ethan checked his watch, which had managed to survive the impact. He paused while he tried to think of an answer that was both honest and not soul-crushing.
“I’d like to think that we could,” he said diplomatically.
“That bad, huh?” Chloe sighed, looking despondent, before straightening her shoulders and obviously trying to get herself in a more positive frame of mind.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to get back home, so that I can start my business on Monday. If we can’t think of any other options, then I guess we should start swimming downstream. Maybe we’ll find a path back up somewhere along the way.”
“Maybe so,” Ethan replied, trying to dredge up some positivity of his own.
I’ll find a way to protect Chloe. Ihaveto. Even if it means shifting and turning myself into a pegasus-skin robe for her to wrap herself in.
He hadn’t really had the chance to think about the implications of a human-shifter relationship and the inherent mismatch in terms of what they could each cope with physically, but now that hewasthinking about it, he found that he didn’t like it one bit.
Well,he thought with newfound determination,I’ll just have to make sure that nothing ever harms her. Starting now.
The pegasus snorted its approval, and Ethan knew that it was one hundred percent on board.
