His heart stopped for one long, agonizing moment.
“Poppy,” he breathed. “Poppy, I’m here. I’m going to get you out. Just hang on. Hang on. I’m here.”
He was babbling as he tore the snow away from her, moving with a pace and ferocity that would have shocked him beforetoday. But he had to get her out of there. Hehadto. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
Part of him whispered that she was still alive. That he would know it deep in his soul if she had di— if she was no longer here.
But he knew that that was the voice of denial talking. He wasn’t a shifter. They didn’t have a mate bond, where he would be able to sense if she was okay. It was just a beautiful delusion that his mind was conjuring up in order to protect him from the most likely outcome. Which was –
“Poppy,” he gasped, as he heaved away the last of the snow, leaving her uncovered.
She was still lying flat where she had been making snow angels, her beret covering her face. Tentatively he reached out to lift it off – and almost recoiled at how pale she was, how blue her lips. How perfectly, perfectly still.
Indecision washed over him, before the same detached fog from earlier fell over his senses and instinct took over.
Scooping her up, he carried her away from the avalanche zone, bringing her to a flatter, safer area and laying her on the ground.
He sank to his knees and pulled off his jacket, wrapping it around her before cradling her in his arms and holding on tight. Her forehead against his cheek was so, so cold, and the panic that had been bubbling away inside of him now threatened to erupt.
“Poppy, please wake up,” he begged. He would have given anything – anything – for her to move even just the tiniest bit. A flutter of eyelashes, a twitch of the mouth. But she was completely still.
Pressing his cold fingers against her throat, he felt for a pulse, the seconds ticking by in agony.
But then –there.
He waited, not sure that he trusted himself not to have hallucinated it. But then there was another beat – weak, but definitely a pulse.
Max could have cried with relief, but he knew that there was still so far to go before Poppy was safe.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said. “Just hang on.”
He fumbled with his phone, struggling to unlock it with his numb fingers. Now that the initial surge of adrenaline was wearing off, it was getting harder and harder to do what he needed to do. But he had to keep going. There was no other choice.
The symbol on the phone indicating the signal strength flickered ominously, wavering back and forth on the border of half a bar and zero… before crashing out entirely.
“Shit!” Max yelled, resisting the urge to hurl the phone into a snow bank.
This cannot be happening.
He staggered to his feet, Poppy a cold weight in his arms.
“Help!” he shouted as loudly as he could. “Can anyone hear me? I need an ambulance!”
The words were as futile as any of the others he had called out, and so he stumbled his way through the deep snow back toward the path, prepared to run faster than he had ever run in his life.
He hadn’t made it more than three steps, however, before a distant sound had him stopping in his tracks, straining his ears.
Is it real? I can’t afford to waste time waiting around to find out.
But then, there it was again: the sound of flapping wings.Enormousflapping wings.
Am I going to have to deal with some sort of gigantic territorial bird?!Max thought in dismay. This was literally a life-or-death situation – he didnothave time for giant birds.
He looked into the distance, and saw the source of the flapping noise… and terror washed over him.
This was worse than a territorial bird. Far,farworse.
The rapidly approaching silhouette was that of a winged lion. And while that would have been a terrifying sight for anyone, Max – as the son of a lion shifter – knew a bit about lion-adjacent shifters. And he was willing to bet that this winged lion also had a tail covered in scales, rather than a regular lion’s tail.
