By morning, the blizzard had eased, but the tension he felt hadn’t.
Mallory stirred and stretched, warm and cocooned up against him. She yawned and freed her arms to stretch again. Her hand came in contact with his face and she froze. Her fingers grazed lightly over his eyes and nose before she jerked upright and turned to look at him.
“Oh…” she muttered as realization of how she had slept became apparent.
Jakob watched her with thinly veiled humor. “Sleep well?”
“I…did I…I am so sorry.” She rubbed her reddened cheeks. “I am so embarrassed.”
He had woken up with many different women. But never had he felt the rush of warmth in his chest as he did at that moment. He gave her a slight smile.
“No harm. Come on. We need to get moving before the next band of snow heads this way.”
She scrambled to get ready to leave, and Jakob tried to convince himself it was to get away from him.
“Are we heading back to the resort?” she asked.
“Do you want to? We’ll be safe to keep going to the place I wanted to show you.”
She stared at him as if pondering the decision. “You’re the guide. I’m here for the adventure, so I say we carry on.”
He nodded and opened the door.
The world looked scrubbed raw by the night. Snow was piled high and untouched along the trail, pine boughs bowed beneath fresh white weight, and the air was sharp enough tosting Jakob’s lungs. He welcomed the cold. It helped him keep his distance from her. Helped him keep control.
Jakob walked beside Mallory in silence, boots crunching softly through the snow. She hummed under her breath, a tune he couldn’t quite identify, as though she tried to reassure herself that everything was normal again.
Nothing was normal.
He was too aware of her presence and too aware of how close he’d come to losing himself the night before. The memory clung to him like a bad dream. How she’d trusted him without question was the nightmare part.
If she knew what he really was, she would have run screaming into the storm.
He adjusted his pack. “The trail gets steeper up ahead. Are you still good?”
Mallory looked up at him, her smile quick and bright despite the fatigue in her eyes. “I didn’t come all this way to turn back now.”
That smile hit him harder than any blow. Brave. Open. And completely unaware of the danger that stared straight at her.
“Just… stay close,” he said gruffly.
She laughed softly. “You’ve said that about five times.”
“And I’ll say it five more.”
She studied him for a moment as they walked. “You’re different today.”
His spine tightened. “Different how?”
“Quieter.” She hesitated. “Did I do something? Are you angry at me for invading your private sleeping space? I really had no idea that I did that.”
“No.” Too fast. He slowed his tone. “No. Just thinking.”
About how the dragon stirred beneath his skin with every step uphill. About how the higher they climbed, the closer he came to sacred ground and the territory bound to his kind long before humans ever learned to name mountains.
The trail narrowed as they ascended the ridge. Trees thinned and gave way to jagged stone decorated with spears of ice. Wind swept across the open slope and carried the clean scent of snow and sky. Jakob’s senses sharpened automatically and he could hear Mallory’s heartbeat when she stumbled and smell the faint sweetness of her shampoo when the wind shifted.
Control, he reminded himself. Always control.
