"I bet I won't. How many of you are there really?"
"Ten. Eleven including me. And several married couples and kids."
"Sorry, I'm still back on 'ten.' What? You havetensiblings?"
"Only eight," Colton said, entirely aware that that didn't really improve things. "I was including my parents."
"There are only two of us! Four if you count me and my parents!Eightsiblings?"
"Chimeras are rare," Colton mumbled. "My parents?—"
"Wanted to make sure they were less rare, I guess! Just for the record, I'm not that enthusiastic!"
Colton laughed aloud again. "God, me either. I mean, if we're talking about the big stuff, I'd like kids, but it's not a deal-breaker."
"Me too! But not nine of them! Two! Two is a nice number! Oh." Jo rolled back again so she could see him. "Will they be chimeras?"
"Two is a very nice number. And yes, probably. Shifters almost always breed true."
"Wow. Wow, okay. All right, that's enough ofthatconversation for now. I need to adjust. And," she said reluctantly, "I need to pee. I don't want to get out of the sleeping bag. It's going to be so cold out there."
"I can get out and give you your clothes so they warm up."
"Then you'll freeze!"
"Yes, but I'll be very brave and masculine about it."
Jo giggled. "If you can reach our clothes we can put themallin here and warm them up at least a little before either of us has to get dressed."
"There is absolutely no way either of uscanget dressed if we both stay in here. I think we've done great things with the room we have?—"
Jo's answering grin suggested she thought so too, but she let Colton continue. "—but there's just not enough room in this thing for two people to get dressed. I'm goin' out." He scrambled out of the bag, gasping at the much-colder air outside of its cozy closeness, and pulled his clothes on in record time. "Oh myGodthose are cold! No, stay in there, you definitely need to let yours warm up." He gave Jo her clothes, which were cold enough that she shrieked just having them in the bag, and then, since he was out and dressed, he made a break for the great outdoors to relieve his own bladder.
Jo was squirming around in the sleeping bag when he returned, presumably getting dressed. Colton, teeth chattering, zipped the tent back up. "The good news is that compared to outdoors the tent is a tropical island."
"You know, hanging my naked butt over a snowbank was never the way I wanted to gauge temperatures," Jo's muffled voice said from within the sleeping bag. She emerged a minute later, made a break for the outdoors herself, and came back as fast as humanly possible. They both finished bundling up in as many layers as they could, sharing energy bars and cold bottles of water, until Jo finally exhaled and said, "How far did we make it yesterday?"
"We're more or less out of the Hacksaws," Colton promised. "And we're not flying anywhere today. Or ever again, in these temperatures."
"Yeah, no," she said with a sigh. "I should have thought about wind chill. But if we're out of the mountains, hopefully it's a straight shot to civilization now. Maybe not a fast one, but a straight one. Have you checked your phone?"
"It's currently frozen solid." That was a slight exaggeration, but not much. Colton had turned his off after the wreck, so the battery might still have some life to it, but at the moment, it had spent the night outside of the sleeping bag, and wascold. "I'll try it after it's leeched some of my body heat."
"I can't believe you have any left after warming me up last night. You saved me, you know," Jo added quietly. "Thank you, Colton."
He wanted to again protest that her health had been riskedbecauseof him, but she was right: neither of them had thought of the wind chill. So he nodded, taking her hand to press his mouth against it, and said, "I'm glad you're all right," which had to be the biggest understatement ever spoken.
"Me too," she whispered back, then shook herself and put on a back-to-business voice. "Okay, so we're out of the Hacksaws. That's great. It was grey but not snowing just now when I went out, so that's also good. What was the ground situation like last night?"
"Deep." Colton raised his eyes to give her a tiny smile. "Of course, the ground is always deep…"
She snorted, amused as she was supposed to be. "You meant the snow."
"Yeah, I did. It is deep, though. I'll probably have to break it, or—you could ride me, so you don't have to walk along behind. We might make better time."
"I think I should walk at least some of the time. Keep the blood flowing. You know, we…" She trailed off, then shook her head.
"We what?"
