Page 27 of Snowed in with the Vampire Prince

On cue, the other wolves—in their human forms—stepped out of the trees. There had been five others with the Alpha last night. Now I saw that there were at least a dozen of them. Most of them were men, but there were two women as well. All the men were shirtless. A few wore jeans like the Alpha, but most wore athletic pants. Both the women wore jean cutoffs and itty-bitty T-shirts that seemed like they had been selected to reveal as much mid-drift as possible.

But what they lacked in clothing, they made up for in weapons. Several of the men were holding swords. A few held wooden stakes. And, like the Alpha, both women held crossbows in their hands, notched and aimed at Pierce’s chest, ready to fire at him the moment they were permitted to do so.

And behind all the rest of them, there was a dark-haired man in his mid-twenties, bundled up in winter gear. He stared right at Pierce and chanted something under his breath. He had to be the warlock the Alpha had mentioned. He was the one holding Pierce in place with his spell.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that I was outnumbered, outgunned, and outclassed. Even if these had been regular humans, I still would have been done for.

And if I didn’t cooperate, I did not doubt that the Alpha would order the other wolves to kill Pierce right in front of me. The thought filled me with mind-numbing, soul-crushing terror. It was unlike how I had felt earlier when I had been trying to leave the cabin on principle. Now, it was a conviction seared deeply into my soul that I would go to any lengths to protect Pierce. Even if it took suffering through another one of those agonizing wolf bites, that’s what I would do.

“Don’t hurt him,” I said, staring the Alpha down with as much rage as I could muster. “I’ll come with you. But if you hurt him, I’ll kill you. I swear it.”

No, no, no, no, no!

Pierce practically screamed it into my brain, but I ignored him, even though it broke my heart in two.

The Alpha smiled. “So much courage and loyalty for a human. I can’t wait to see what kind of wolf you’re going to be. The vampire is right. You’re something special.”

He gestured to the rest of his pack. With the weapons still in their hands, they streamed forward, surrounding me so I couldn’t run. They smelled like pine trees and freshly cut grass. The heat they produced enveloped me as though I had stepped into a slightly too-warm room.

“James, no!” Pierce cried out loud, banging on the spell that held him in place. “Let him go! James, run!”

Though it broke my heart into tiny, jagged pieces, I went with the wolves without putting up a struggle as they began to march me through the forest, leading me down the mountain. Though tears burned in my eyes, I refused to let them fall. I could do this one thing to ensure that Pierce lived. That was all I wanted now. Pierce called after me for a long time, his voice echoing through the trees behind me. I could feel the frantic edge of his thoughts as he tried to reach out to me, but I didn’t open my mind to him again. I didn’t want my resolve to waver. I told myself that I wasn’t abandoning him, and I tried very, very hard to make myself believe it.

The entire time we walked, I pretended that I couldn’t feel my lover’s agony at all.

Chapter 13

Pierce

Rage unlike anything I’ve ever felt before tore through me. It wasn’t until James left with the wolves that I realized there were no limits as to what I’d do for him. My eternity no longer belonged to me. It belonged to him and him alone.

But coursing underneath my rage was my grief. How could I have believed—even for a moment—that I could survive the rest of my immortality without James? How could I have allowed him to think such a thing?

He had transformed everything that I was in the blink of an eye. I had never understood how anyone could ever just look at someone and know that they were the one. Now, it made perfect sense with an awful and adamantine clarity. I hadn’t known I was doing it at the time, but I had waited one hundred years for him.

Love wasn’t romance. Love was seeing someone else and recognizing that you would fight for them. That you would risk anything for them. And somehow, inexplicably, James had become that person for me. There would be no others. James’ mind was utterly unlike my own, yet the bond between us was like coming home. It was the safe harbor I had never had—never allowed myself to have.

My insides felt like molten glass. Like my rage, fear, and grief had all superheated and melded together into one thing. And if I allowed the storm of emotions within me to cool, I knew I might shatter all over again.

I beat on the barrier that contained me until my hands felt raw, searching for a weakness in the warlock’s magic, but it was useless. Brute strength wasn’t going to cut it.

The spell was impenetrable. It was, in fact, too strong. And the warlock hadn’t stayed behind to maintain the barrier. He’d gone with the rest of the pack. Add those together, and it meant that the warlock had tied his spell to something. Witches and warlocks can do that—tether a spell to a natural phenomenon, usually a celestial event—to make their spells stronger. The most common natural phenomenon for a spellcaster to use was the cycle of the moon, which wouldn’t rise tonight until just after sunset. That probably meant that he’d used the cycle of day and night itself, always another popular choice. Odds were, once the sun set, the warlock’s spell would fall.

In fact, I was sure of it.

Of course, by then, I would have only minutes to get to James before the wolves could transform under the light of the moon and give James the bite that would rob him of his humanity forever.

Even if he became a wolf, I knew I would still want him. I would always want him. But I would never—never—allow anyone to take his choice from him.

If they hurt him, I would kill every last one of them.

Why had he gone with them? He hadn’t even tried to fight.

But then, I already knew the answer to that. I had felt the depths of his fear when the wolves threatened to kill me. I had felt his immediate and wholehearted willingness to trade away his humanity for my life.

Right after, he had all but said he didn’t want to spend eternity by my side.

But that didn’t matter right then. What mattered was that he was safe. That he was okay. That he remained himself.

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