"Mmmm." His voice rumbled against me, vibrating through my body. "We should go. The wind is still. Flying will be easy tonight."
But neither of us moved. His arms tightened around me, and I leaned back into him, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breathing, savoring these last moments of peace.
"We should," I agreed, still staring out at the moonlit snow, memorizing the way the light played across the drifts.
Another long silence stretched between us. The fire popped, settling into embers that cast dancing shadows across the walls.
"I don't want to," he finally said, his voice barely audible, raw with an honesty that made my chest ache.
I turned in his arms then, the blanket slipping from my shoulders. His eyes were dark in the dim light, searching my face for something—permission, maybe, or absolution. I reached up and touched his jaw, feeling the muscle jump beneath my fingertips.
"Neither do I."
His mouth found mine before I could say anything else, desperate and hungry, as if he could stop time by kissing me hard enough. I melted into him, my fingers threading through his hair, pulling him closer, trying to pour everything I felt into this single moment. The blanket pooled at our feet, forgotten.
He lifted me easily, my legs wrapping around his waist as he carried me back to bed. The quilts were still warm from our bodies, still held the scent of us—sweat and sex and something uniquely ours. He lay me down gently, his weight settling over me like a promise, and I arched up to meet him, wanting to feel every inch of him against me.
This time was slower, more precious. Each touch deliberate, each kiss measured, as if we were both trying to memorize every sensation, to imprint the moment so deeply into our minds that no distance or time could erase it. His hands mapped my body like he was committing it to memory, calloused palms sliding over curves and valleys, and I did the same, tracing the muscles of his back, the scars I'd discovered over these past days, the places that made him gasp and shudder beneath my touch.
When we finally came together, I kept my eyes open, locked on his. I wanted to see him, to remember this. The way his breath hitched. The way his jaw clenched. The way he looked at me, like I was the only thing that mattered in this world or any other. Like I was his anchor, his salvation, his everything.
Afterward, we lay tangled together, neither of us speaking, simply listening to each other's heartbeats. His fingers drew lazy patterns on my shoulder, and I traced the edge of his wings, trying to hold onto this perfect stillness. But eventually, the reality of what awaited us outside crept back in like cold air under a door. Duty. Responsibility. The knowledge that we couldn't hide here forever, no matter how desperately we wanted to.
Rickon stirred first, pressing a kiss to my forehead that felt like goodbye. "We should pack."
We dressed in silence, the easy intimacy of the past days now tinged with something bittersweet that sat heavy in my chest. I folded the quilts carefully, smoothing out every wrinkle, while Rickon restocked the firewood from the covered pile outside. He checked that the shutters were secure, that everything was in its place, moving with the careful precision of someone trying to delay the inevitable.
I found a scrap of paper and a stub of pencil in a drawer and left a note for whoever owned this place, my handwritingshaky.Thank you. You will never know how this place saved us, in more ways than one.
Rickon banked the fire, making sure no embers remained that could catch and burn. We did a final sweep together, checking every corner, washing the dishes we'd used, straightening the chairs, anything to prolong these last moments.
"Ready?" he asked, standing by the door, the duffel already tied at his waist. But his eyes told me he wasn't ready at all.
I took one last look around the small cabin that had been our sanctuary, our world, our refuge from everything waiting outside. The place where we'd been just Ellie and Rickon, not President and alien, not fugitives or warriors or anything else. Then I nodded, not trusting my voice, and stepped out into the cold night air.
The cold hit differently this time. Sharp, yes, biting against my exposed skin, but without the violence of the storm. No wind tried to tear us from the sky. No sleet drove needles into our skin. This was just winter, clean, still, and almost peaceful. We climbed into the clear night sky, the moon so bright it cast our shadow on the snow below, one dark winged shape moving across an endless white canvas.
Rickon banked north. Below us, the landscape had been erased, rewritten in white. Roads were barely distinguishable from fields. Towns were clusters of lights, distant and small, like stars fallen to earth.
After a couple of hours flying through the vast emptiness, I tapped on his shoulder, drawing his attention. I gestured downward, and he understood immediately, gradually dropping altitude as the wind rushed past us.
The world came into focus. Individual trees emerged from the blanket of snow, their branches heavy and bowed.Farmhouses with smoke curling from chimneys, signs of life in this frozen world. And finally, the highway, a dark ribbon cutting through the white, occasionally marked by the distant headlights of a lone vehicle.
I motioned for Rickon to fly lower, close enough for me to read the road signs on a deserted stretch of road. Everything below was white—endless, featureless white. The rivers could have been fields. The lakes could have been meadows. Every landmark I might have used to orient myself had been swallowed by the snow.
"Holy shit!" I barked, stunned by the first sign we came across, the green reflective surface catching the moonlight. "We've already crossed into Montana." The sign for Butte Creek indicated it was only sixty miles west.
"This is good, yes?" Rickon chuckled, his breath warm on my cheek, and I heard relief in his voice.
"Very good," I called back, excitement bubbling up despite everything. "Cullen's cabin is southwest of Butte Creek. We can hide there, and he'll help us get a message to the Prime."
"You know where it is?"
I hesitated, suddenly aware of how thin my information really was. "Not exactly. I've never actually been there. It's the only house for miles. Out past the creek, up in the hills. Dalton told me I can't miss it because there's nothing else out there."
Rickon was quiet for a moment, and I could practically hear him thinking, weighing our options. "That's not much to go on."
"It's all we've got," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. "Unless you want to land on the highway and start asking for directions."
