Page 3 of Snowed in with the Vampire Prince

I’m going to be snowed in, I thought, feeling dismayed by the sudden appearance of the white flakes rapidly falling around me, each about the size of a silver dollar. I had prepared for the cold, but I hadn’t prepared for snow. The weather report hadn’t mentioned anything about snow.

Not that freak snowstorms were unheard of in the mountains, even during the first week of March. I should’ve known better and planned accordingly. Now I had little choice but to hike back down the mountain in the snow, easily a full two miles to get to the parking lot where I’d left my wheezing but still reliable Jeep. It was a relatively flat and well-trod trail for most of the way, but it was so dark I’d be doing it by flashlight. I wasn’t going to have much choice, though. Because if I waited too long, I was going to get snowed in. I didn’t even have chains on my tires because the snow season should have been over. But clearly, mother nature had other ideas.

I glanced around my campsite, feeling dismayed at the prospect of breaking it all down and going home early. I hadn't brought much, only my tiny neon-blue tent and a black nylon hiking pack as big as my torso, which I’d stuffed with only the necessities.

My campfire got smaller by the second and began to hiss and crackle as huge flakes of snow landed on all the wood I’d painstakingly gathered earlier. It was one of those campsites you had to hike miles to get to, and no one else was around.

I had scattered my father’s ashes hours ago, just before twilight. I had done it about a half-mile down from my campsite at Elizabeth Lake. The tiny oval-shaped lake surrounded by thin strips of rocky beach and looming evergreen trees had been our place. It was the place featured in all my best childhood memories.

It was where my father had taught me to fish when I was seven years old. I hadn’t wanted to kill the rainbow trout I’d somehow managed to catch, so he’d told me it was okay, and then we’d tossed it back together.

It was where he’d given me my first sip of beer when I was twelve, on the promise that I didn’t tell my mother—a promise I’ve kept all these years.

It was where I had come out to my father when I was a lost and confused fifteen-year-old, sure my admission was going to destroy everything.

It was where he had surprised me by telling me he’d known since I was three, and it didn’t matter to him in the least. He’d told me that very night that being a man meant I should always be honest and true to myself and those around me.

It was where he had told me, last year, on our annual camping trip, a few weeks after my twenty-fourth birthday, that his cancer had come back, and it was moving way too fast for anything to stop it.

It was where, only a few months ago, when there had still been enough life left in him to make the journey here, he’d looked at me after he had drunk one too many slugs of brandy from his flask, and he’d said, his voice getting all solemn and serious, “Swear to me that you’ll do your best to find someone. Promise me, son. I don’t want you to be alone when I’m gone.”

I hadn’t been able to stop myself from getting teary-eyed right then, which I hated doing more than words could express. And he’d gotten choked up too, which was even worse. But I hadn’t been able to promise him a thing. And that was good because I don’t break promises, ever.

When I was thirteen, my mom got pregnant with another man’s child. My dad tried to work it out with her, but my mom just left. She left him, and she left me, and then she went off to start a whole other life with someone else. My parents had seemed so happy for my entire childhood, but it had all been a lie.

So, no. I don’t believe in love. Not anymore. Everyone leaves.

And now, all I wanted to do was honor his memory, and there was no one else to do it. He’d been all alone except for me, and we’d both known it. So, I came here because this was the only place where I had felt okay to let myself really break down, miles from anyone, on the sandy shore of the lake—our lake. I had given myself over to the wrenching sobs that tore out of my body, one after the other, until they were all gone, and I felt shaky and exhausted.

Oddly enough, when I was done, I felt the prickles of unease on the back of my neck which told me I was being watched. But a scan of the lake had told me there was no one—not even a stray hiker. Nothing moved, and it was eerily silent. Not even the sound of birds singing. Only the perfect stillness of the lake, reflecting the trees and the rocky face of the mountain that looked shockingly close, looming over the lake as it always did. After that, I left quickly, hiking the rest of the way up to my campsite. I had been planning on doing a vigil for my father tonight, staying up until daybreak, remembering the good times, drinking to his memory, all that jazz.

But not with the rapidly falling snow now accumulating on the ground around me. My father would have told me himself to hit the road if he’d been able to. He would have told me putting myself in danger to have a one-man funeral for him was just plain dumb.

I’ll break everything down in a minute, I thought resentfully, praying the snow would miraculously stop in the meantime. I raised the metal flask to my father’s memory and took a swig out of it, swallowing the awful burn of the brandy as it slid down my throat. It had been my dad’s favorite adult beverage for reasons known only to him.

I glared up at the sky, feeling like it had personally betrayed me.

A snowflake landed right in my eye. I blinked furiously.

My vision cleared a moment later, and then I saw the wolves on the other side of my dying campfire.

I blinked again, certain I had to be imagining it. But they were still there. One very large male wolf with a coarse dark coat stood in the front. Five smaller wolves with gray coats stood behind him. All of them, even the smallest, were far larger than regular wolves had any right to be, almost the size of people. Their yellow eyes glinted inhumanly in the dimming firelight as they watched me.

I froze.

I was too surprised to even let out a cry of surprise. Instead, I stared at them in stupid shock, my mouth hanging open. Wolves were exceedingly rare in Washington state. What were the chances an entire pack of them would cross my path?

It was the weirdest thing, but the biggest one, the Alpha, cocked its head. The way it looked at me was almost human. For an instant, the expression on its face was almost like shared grief. Like it somehow understood why I was here and what I was doing, and it shared my feelings exactly.

I forgot to even be afraid as I stared at it.

Then, without warning, it leapt across the campfire and landed on my chest, its paws driving me down to the ground with shocking and sudden weight. I let out a mingled cry of surprise and outrage, too startled to even be scared of what it might do.

It locked gazes with me steadily for a long moment as though trying to tell me something important, as though its pale-yellow eyes were searching mine for something. It lowered its snout to the side of my torso, above my solar plexus.

And then it bit me.

Chapter 3

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