Page 49 of What a Wolf's Heart Decides

Cold air kissed her back.

Something hit her shoulder blades, shoving her forward.

Her feet left the ground.

Blackness.

9

Bard flung himself from the Tahoe without bothering to put it in park. It didn’t matter, anyway. The SUV wasn’t going anywhere with a wall of snow in front of it.

He limped to the edge of what looked like a white sea and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Rupert!”

A dark brown head popped up about twenty feet away. “Here! Over here!” Rupert waved an arm around, his red jacket like a splash of blood against the white.

Bard swore under his breath. Twenty feet. Twenty feet through packed snow as high as his waist.

There was no time to think about the consequences.

Haley needed him.

Gritting his teeth, he plunged into the powder. Immediately, cold enveloped his lower half. He lifted his right leg as high as he could get it, then pushed himself up. If he could walk on top of the snow—

—The white collapsed under his weight, and he dropped like a rock tossed in water. His left leg took the brunt of the impact. Fiery pain sizzled up his thigh to his hip. Snow clumped around his ribs, burying him from the waist to his toes.

“Fuck.”

“Bard?” Rupert’s tone was frantic.

Bard raised his voice. “Coming. Keep digging.”

“Hurry!” Rupert’s voice was even more urgent than it had been over the phone, when Bard had taken his call from the main desk at work.

That had been less than ten minutes ago. It was a miracle Bard had gotten up the mountain that fast.

But maybe not fast enough . . .

He shoved that thought from his mind. At the same time, he drew on every bit of strength he possessed, then leaned into the snow, kicking out his good leg as he went. If he was too heavy to go over the damn stuff, he’d just have to go through it.

Snow crunched as he fell into a pattern: heave right leg out, then pull left leg forward, heave right leg out, then pull left leg forward. On and on it went, his progress painfully slow. Minutes seemed to tick by, each one seeming to weight him down, pushing him deeper into the remains of the avalanche.

Icy fingers clawed at his hips and thighs, but he kept going, using his gloved hands to sweep away as much snow as he could. Rupert’s grunts and panting breaths grew louder as Bard approached. Snow flew through the air as if it was shot out of a snowblower—which meant Rupert was drawing on his Gift.

He couldn’t keep it up forever, though. Gifts weren’t inexhaustible. Sweat droplets flung from Rupert’s temples, and his chest rose and fell as he worked.

Bard reached his side. Without saying a word, he ripped off his gloves and dug. The snow was heavy and uneven—most of it formed into icy chunks that had spent months being compressed on the mountainside. Its tumble down the mountain had broken it into pieces the size of small boulders. Bard seized these in both hands, twisted, and tossed them behind him.

Rupert did the same, only his pace was twice as fast, and he grabbed even larger chunks like they were no heavier than marbles.

They dug like a couple of terriers going after a bone, the hole in the ground as deep as a grave.

Alarm shot through Bard. This was not going to be a grave. Not on his watch.

Not with her in it.

His wolf roared to the surface, and he dug faster, scooping the snow until his hands went numb. Dammit, he had things to say to her. Like how he was sorry for grabbing her at the airfield . . . and for the sad, haunted look in her eyes as she left his study.

He wanted to know what he’d said to put it there—and why he had a feeling he wasn’t the first one to make it appear.

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