Page 9 of An Avalanche Hero Christmas

She had to avoid that, no matter what. She would not die here.

A desperate plea forced its way to her lips. “Please. I need to get off this mountain and get back home. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I can get some help at the bottom.”

Was it her imagination, or did she register a flicker of irritation in his eyes? “I already lost all of my fish trying to save your life. Besides, Frost Mountain has no bottom.”

Mallory blinked at him. “What?”

“You heard me. There’s no getting off this mountain.” This time, it was pity that crossed the man’s handsome features. He gave a sigh, his gaze drifting from her toward the nearby river. “Where do you think you are?”

Mallory didn’t respond, not because she’d never even heard of a place called Frost Mountain, but because the cold was seeping into her bones.

The man’s brows furrowed. Suddenly, he pulled off his coat, wrung it in his large hands, and draped it around her shoulders. It did little to keep her warm, but the size of the coat filled her with a slight sense of security. She flashed him a nod of gratitude, nearly doing a double take at the sight of him. His shirt, still very wet, was plastered against his torso, outlining his rather muscular body. Mallory couldn’t help thinking he looked like he belonged on the cover of one of those romance novels lonely housewives read while their husbands are away on business trips, a complete fantasy that easily tickled one’s wanton desires.

“I…” She struggled for words. “I have no idea. I was on a plane—”

“And you crashed on this mountain all of a sudden.”

“Yes. Did you see it? Did you see anyone else from the plane?”

He shook his head. “Yours won’t be the first plane to crash on Frost Mountain. Now and then, more of you come from your world into this dimension.”

At this point, he had to be playing games with her. “Dimension? What are you talking about?”

“The reason you have no idea where you are is because Frost Mountain doesn’t exist, at least not in your world. Your planemust have breached a portal leading into this dimension; that’s why you crashed here.”

“None of this makes any sense. How is that even possible?”

In response, he simply lifted an eyebrow, and the answer came to her in a second.

Magic.

“Oh,” she muttered. “W-well, that’s just convenient. I’m in some magical fantasy land. How do I get out?”

The man hesitated for a second. “You can’t. No one leaves this dimension. It’s designed to imprison its occupants. There are many ways in and no ways out. No bottom. Just this mountain.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mallory said, even though her instincts told her he was dead serious.

“Welcome to Frost Mountain.” He spread his arms wide. “It’s been around for centuries, ever since those witches decided to imprison our ancestors.”

In another situation, she would have referred him to a psychiatrist, but Mallory knew there was some, no,plentyof truth to his words. He wasn’t some random human rambling about things he didn’t know about. With supernaturals, just about anything was possible, which was exactly the problem because the possibilities weren’t all sparkly and rosy like in fairy tales. Sometimes, they included mountains created to imprison and kill you.

Yeah, her sabbatical was going pretty great, thank you very much.

The new details spun around her mind, and the reality of her situation sank in deeper. She wasn’t just marooned on some mountain far from home. She wasnevergetting home. Her chances of ever getting back to Vegas and the Living Grace Hospital were…well, pretty much zero.

And she had something else to worry about.

As if reading her thoughts, the man said, “Boris will be back. You should run while you can.”

The image of those cold, green eyes boring into hers, the Fae Hunter’s blade glowing in the sunset, was seared in her memory.

She gritted her teeth. If this guy wasn’t going to help her, she could help herself.

“Thanks for the advice,” she muttered, pushing herself to her feet.

Her bones ached, and another shiver swept through her, but she needed to keep moving. She considered taking flight again, but she needed the coat, not to mention that her wings were tired from her fall and trying to escape from Boris. She took a couple of steps down the mountain, away from the river, away from the man who had refused to help her.

And then her knees gave way beneath her, and she collapsed in the snow, clutching her MediPack.

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