The rest of the day went like that, with leaps forward as they flew, and then dropping back to a comparative snail's pace when they started walking again, but at least Jo didn't get so cold. They both got single bars of service twice, but neither could connect a call or even send a text, the latter of which left Jo swearing as she marched along in the chimera's wake. "I thought the wholepointof texting was it didn't take as much bandwidth."
That wasn't really true, but it was a worthwhile complaint, and muttering about it took her up to near dark, when Colton sighed and shifted to human with a helpless shrug. "I think we'll have to camp here. Not many trees to hide under, but did you say there were caves around here?"
She waved at the distance. "There were caves backthere. Nobody's ever found any around here, not that I know about, but we've got a few minutes before dark if you want to fly up and take a look around."
"Just in case." Colton shifted and sprang upward, wings flaring, and Jo watched with a goofy smile. It was just socool. She wouldn't have cared if hewasn'ta shifter, because she hadn't even known about them three days ago, but the fact that he was gorgeous, kind, smart, funny,anda shifter just made Jofeel like she'd somehow hit the jackpot in a lottery she didn't even know she was eligible for. He flew out of sight for a few minutes, and she kept plugging forward just to give herself something to do. At least the weather had held: it wasn't clear, but a few early stars were trying to put in a showing through the clouds, while the western sky glowed pink and orange with the last bits of sunset behind the mountains.
They'd probably pushed it a little late, Jo realized. They should have made camp an hour ago, but she knew thatshe, at least, had been holding out hope that they might somehow make it back to the rest of the world before nightfall.
The fact that she'd have to put Colton on a plane back East as soon as they did get back to civilization struck her, and she sighed as she worked through the snow. He had a job, and some brave kids depending on him. From that perspective, Jo didn't evenwantto keep him in Montana.
From every other perspective, though, she did. Boy, did she ever. Never mind replacing the plane or the endangered ranch: everything just seemed so much more possible, and easier, with the idea of Colton at her side. Even if they'd only known each other for a few days, she felt secure with him in a way she couldn't remember ever experiencing.
That was the mate bond, she supposed. Fate. Love at first sight. All those words made her grin into her scarf. They sounded ridiculous but wonderful, and Jo was happy to embrace them forever.
She was also, at the moment, ready to embrace the idea of moving to a tropical island and never seeing snow again. It was thigh-deep and heavy out here, with the ground frozen solid beneath it. She'd spent a whole lifetime dealing with that, and didn'tmind, exactly. Unless, it turned out, she'd been trying to work her way through it for three days on the way back homeafter a plane wreck. Then she minded it quite a lot, and thought a beach and the ocean would be better forever.
A shape in the distance made her think of the bison scattered across their ranch, and she laughed out loud, a small sound in the growing dark, but a happy one. Bison and a beach didn't seem like a happy combination. She guessed it would have to be one or the other, and ultimately she was pretty sure she'd choose the bison.
On that cheerful thought, the ground beneath her feet disappeared and she fell into the earth, screaming.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Colton heard two things as he winged his way back to Jo in the growing dark: first her laughter, and then, almost immediately afterward, her scream. His chimera gave a wordless yell of panic and put on a burst of speed that brought them down low over the snowy earth. On his first pass, he couldn't find her at all: on his second, he saw the path they'd been stomping down, and followed it to…
…nothingness. It simply stopped in darkness.
Colton landed hard, shifted to human, and also let out a yell as the ground beneath him collapsed. Snow and earth and ice rained down with him as he fell—slid—for what felt like an incredibly long distance, then hit open air for a heartbeat before crashing to a surface again.
It was absolutely and phenomenally dark, but Jo's voice came out of that darkness: "Colton?"
"Jo! Are you all right?" He jolted to his feet like he could see, but of course, he couldn't. "Jo?"
"I'm here. Don't move." She sounded close by and supernaturally calm. "Colton, do you see better in the dark than regular humans do?"
"A little bit, but—I mean, yes. As a chimera, yes. Quite a lot better."
"I need you to stay still, and shift," she said, still very, very calmly. "I don't know if we're in a permafrost hole, or a cave system, or…what…but if it's a cave system there could be pits anywhere and I would prefer not to fall into one. This," she added still in that surreally calm voice, "has been alotof adventure. I'm ready to go home and have zero adventure for, like…ever."
"Me too," Colton said with feeling. "I'll shift, but…are you okay?"
"I think every single part of me is bruised," she said steadily. "But nothing's broken. I slid a long way and ran into a rock, which is currently my best friend. By which I mean, I'm not letting go of it until either you can tell me if there are any pits, or until the sun rises and sheds just the smallest bit of light on the subject down here. Areyouokay?"
"I think so. Bruised," he agreed. "I free-fell for a second there. You might have taken the sliding material with you. Okay, I'm going to shift. Give me a minute or two and then wave? My eyes will pick up the motion better than stillness."
"You betcha," Jo said with that same eerie calm.
Colton's chimera whispered,Our mate isso brave, in genuine awe, and Colton nodded, although he hoped Jo was being brave and calm and not in shock. "I'm shifting. Let me have a look around."
Even in chimera form, it took long seconds for his eyes to adjust enough to pick up any light at all. What there was came from behind them, down the hole they'd both fallen through, but it was the space between himself and Jo that Colton was most worried about right now. Finally, slowly, he began to pick out details: a sloped rocky floor, and the hint of a shadowed ceiling above him. Then something moved, drawing all his attention,and he realized it was Jo, lying ten or twelve feet away across the sloped floor.
To the best of his ability to tell, there were no holes between him and her. The fact that she was there, and not at the bottom of a different hole, suggested he was right. Relief made him nearly dizzy and he shifted back to human. "I can see you. Ten, maybe fifteen feet away. No pits that I can see. I'm going to shift back to my chimera form and lie on my belly and creep toward you, all right? And then if I can see enough beyond you to turn around, I'll do that right next to you and have a look around from that direction."
"Okay. I can almost see you, I think. Like a shadow against the shadows."
"Yeah." Warmth filled his voice, because that sounded so accurate. "That's how I see you, too. Okay, here goes." He did as he'd said, inching forward on his belly, testing the floor with big paws until he'd crept all the way past Jo into absolute blackness. The floor extended at least that far, though, so he scooted backward, testing to both sides with his lashing tail, and finally turned to lie right next to her and shift back to human. "No pits," he whispered, and Jo let go of her rock to grab onto him and hold on, shaking.
Colton wrapped his arms around her and held on just as hard, finally mumbling, "You're absolutely right. Zero adventure going forward. Most boring lives ever, here we come."
