Page 4 of A Secret Crush Valentine's

Chapter One

Present Day

A Day in the Life of a Vegetarian Snow Leopard

Julia Reel’s afternoon was going horribly. And that wasbeforethe dragon showed up.

With another burst of desperation, she took a running start, scattering snow with her paws, and shot off the ground, hurling herself at the tree with claws extended. The result was the same as always: She managed to grab hold of the tree trunk for a second before she slid back down to its base. Frustrated, she snarled at the tree.

The tree did not respond, but she was pretty sure it was laughing at her. Whiskers twitching against the cold, she glanced up at the berries dangling from overhead. The berries were half-frozen, but the sight of them alone made her stomach growl.

This is getting on my last nerve,she thought.

But it didn’t matter how hard or how many times she tried: She couldn’t seem to reach them, which made no sense. The branch was barely 15 feet high. Between her claws and natural agility, she should be able to climb the tree and reach those berries. But the tree trunk was impossible to hold onto.

Since when do snow leopards have trouble climbing trees?

Since they found themselves on strange mountains like this, that’s when.

She’d spent all afternoon and the greater part of her morning hunting for food, but it seemed to be evading her. She was starting to feel like that guy from Greek mythology, the one whose punishment was that he couldn’t eat or drink. Tantalus or something.

Her ears perked up at the sound of a twig snapping nearby. Her eyes scanned the clearing, her whiskers twitching again asthe scent reached her nostrils. There was another animal nearby, a deer, most likely.

Lunch.

No, Julia.She pushed the thought aside before it could settle in her mind.No meat.

No killingwas more like it.

She’d lost count of just how many weeks had passed—six or seven—since she opened her eyes and found herself lying half-buried in the snow. Julia figured she was dead and this was the afterlife, but it had taken her only minutes to rethink that. She wasn’t particularly religious, but she doubted that hell was freezing, like minus 70 degrees. If she’d somehow made it to heaven, she doubted it would be freezing either, which meant she was alive.

How she’d survived the plane crash, she had no idea. Julia remembered plummeting to her death, the mountain rushing up to meet her. But since she survived the crash, she figured she’d head down the mountain and try to find a village and report the accident.

She’d barely been traveling for an hour when she realized she would never make it, not in this cold and not in this body. The clothes she’d been wearing when she’d boarded the flight were chosen with a relaxing vacation in mind, not…this. If she kept traveling in human form, she’d end up a frozen corpse before the day was out.

Shifting had been a brilliant idea. The cold barely bothered snow leopards, not to mention she could travel a lot faster. On the mountain, she was an apex predator or close. Julia hadn’t shifted back to her human form since. But it wasn’t always easy to control the leopard’s instincts, like now.

Hunger gnawed at her insides, a stark reminder of her need to survive, but the mere thought of killing and eating another living thing was enough to make her nauseous. Over the weeks, she’dstuck with berries and nuts and drank from nearby streams. She wasn’t vegan, but no way was she sinking her teeth or claws into an animal, leaving her maw covered with blood. Maybe when hell froze over.

Oh, right. I might as well already be in hell.

Casting a final look at the berries, she turned and continued heading downhill, darting between the trees until the woods about her became a blur. Before long, she was out in the open, staring at the expanse of snow. That was all this mountain was—snow, snow, and more snow. And ice. And snow-covered rocks. Snow-covered trees.

It is a complete nightmare, she decided.

And she was starting to think she was trapped.

A cold wind brushed her flank, which added to her discomfort. Snow leopards were comfortable with the cold and the snow, but Julia was not. She felt like she’d been plunged into a horror movie.

You’re thirty-one years old,she reminded herself.You’re going to have to get over this at some point.

She knew that was true. But in a way, she was still that 15-year-old girl in the 10th grade who’d lost a part of her on that cold afternoon in January.

Laudville High had been a difficult place, more difficult when you didn’t fit in. Julia did not fit in. She’d been the nerd with only two friends who’d published the school’s newsletter, the awkward girl who not many kids noticed, the sort of girl who had crushes on people completely out of her league.

She’d figured from the start that Damon McLaurent would never even glance her way, much less consider his girlfriend. He was a year older than her and a quarterback with the Laudville Lions. Jocks on the high school football team got all the girls they wanted, and theyalwayswanted the prettiest girls, aka the cheerleaders.

What chance could the chief editor of the Laudville Letters newsletter possibly have with someone as popular as Damon?

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