Page 29 of Mountain Storm
My knees are still pressed with phantom bruises, thighs trembling with aftershocks. There's a dull ache between my legs, a lingering hum that thrums in time with my pulse. My wrists burn with a rawness that sharpens each movement, and every breath feels heavier, like my lungs haven't caught up to what my body endured. But it isn’t just pain. It’s sensation, sharp and alive, surging through every nerve ending and leaving behind a heat that pulses like a second heartbeat I can't shake. And part of me... part of me wants more. That scares me more thananything. From the hollow ache left behind when his hands leave my skin.
He unties me slowly. Carefully. Like I might break if he moves too fast.
He brushes a finger down the inside of my wrist. A ghost of a touch. Nothing like the force from before.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly.
I nod, but inside, something darker coils tighter. I don’t know what ‘okay’ means anymore—but I know I’m not done.
12
ZEB
Ipull free, reach down and release her hand, buckling my belt back into place, the echo of her surrender still pounding through me. Caryn’s gaze follows me, fierce with fury, edged with something darker she doesn’t want me to see. She’s still on her knees when I step back, wrists free, the fire painting shadows across her face. I can’t let myself soften. Not with Brenner rotting in the woodshed and too many ghosts rattling in my head.
I shrug into my coat and step out into the storm. The snow bites at my skin, but I welcome the sting. It cuts cleaner than the things I carry inside.
The woodshed is colder than the grave, but it suits Brenner just fine. Rope binds his wrists behind his back, the knots sunk deep from my pull. He slumps against the wall, breath frosting in the dim light of the lantern. He doesn’t fight anymore. He knows better. His silence hangs heavy, like he’s already calculating how long he can last out here. He should know the answer by now. Longer than I’ll allow.
I check the Toyo stove—running and fueled—so he won’t freeze.I throw the latch and leave him in the dark. My boots crunch through the ice crusting over the snow as I head backtoward the cabin. The storm has eased for now, but the sky is swollen, ready to split wide open. The mountain doesn’t warn without cause.
Inside, the fire has burned low. Caryn sits curled on the couch, a blanket pulled tight around her shoulders. Her eyes snap to mine the second I enter. There’s no softness there, only the tension of a woman caught between fear and fury. It twists something in me I don’t want to name. I tell myself it’s control I’m after, but the truth edges closer to the surface than I like.
Her stare pulls me under, away from the snow and the fire, away from the cabin and the storm raking at the walls. It drags me to another night, another captive, another silence weighted heavier than words. Afghanistan. Betrayal. A memory that clamps down like iron, refusing to loosen its hold.
I turn away and drag a hand down my face, exhaustion clawing at me though I know sleep will never come. It never does after blood and violence, not when the memories close in like wolves circling a campfire. My past stalks me, a predator pacing the cage of my skull, testing the bars, waiting for a weakness to slip through. Tonight they press harder, heavier, refusing to let me breathe.
Afghanistan. Hindu Kush. A ridge not so different from this one. Snow fell like ash, muting the world, covering the bodies of men I trusted with my life. I remember the chaos. The deafening crack of rifles, the metallic taste of adrenaline thick on my tongue. My team dropped one by one, precision fire cutting them down. We’d been sold out. I knew it the second comms went dead and the extraction bird never came.
We had been ordered into that valley under the promise of good intel, but everything about it stank. The coordinates were too clean, the timing too perfect. When the ambush hit, it was surgical. They knew exactly where we’d be and when. Someone back home traded our lives for something. Power. Money.Maybe both. Our handler kept us believing we were ghosts, untouchable and untraceable. Turns out we were pawns on a board rigged against us.
I remember Brenner’s silhouette in the blizzard, rifle in hand, breath fogging. He didn’t shoot me, but he didn’t save me either. He left me crawling through bodies while the snow filled their mouths and eyes. He muttered, “Orders,” as if that single word absolved him of leaving me to die. Our handler had already cashed out, trading our lives for a payday, and then commanded the team to abandon me like another body for the report. KIA on the record. Forgotten and disposable in reality. The sting of that betrayal cut deeper than the frost, carving a wound no heat could ever close.
The betrayal bit deeper than Brenner’s silence. I saw the handler’s face before the ambush, steady and false when he signed off on the mission. He told me to trust the intel, his words calm in a way that felt rehearsed. Later I recognized it for what it was, a mask stretched over greed and corruption. Word filtered back that contracts had been signed and money had changed hands. The lives of my team bought someone political influence, bought someone advancement. My blood and theirs became nothing more than a calculation, my name penciled into the margins of a ledger and crossed out when the sum was collected.
I should have died that night. Instead, I crawled through that valley half-dead, scavenging ammo from fallen brothers and dragging myself into a ravine littered with echoes of gunfire and blood. I remember staring up at the frozen sky, every breath cutting like glass, and realizing the truth: I had been erased. Not just abandoned. Erased. My file stamped and closed, my existence reduced to a red line in a report, convenient and final. Back home, the man who betrayed uscollected his paycheck, shook hands with officials, and walked away clean while I rotted in silence.
That betrayal never left me. It carved me hollow, stripped me of whatever humanity I had left. The Beast was not born on this mountain. It was made overseas, forged in betrayal and blood. By the time I clawed my way out of that ravine, the man I had been was gone. What rose from that valley was something else entirely.
I tear the memory away before it swallows me whole. The cabin is quiet except for the steady crack of wood in the hearth. Caryn keeps her gaze fixed on me, unblinking, unyielding. There is a question in her eyes, veiled beneath the defiance she wears like armor. She does not trust me, yet she has not run. That truth gnaws at me, an ache that refuses to fade. She does not understand, perhaps she never will, but her presence here cannot be chance. Every instinct tells me it is deliberate, and I feel it deep in my bones.
Someone sent her. Maybe she believes she came chasing a lead, but I cannot accept that as chance. Women don’t show up on this mountain with armed men at their heels by accident, and they don’t wear the face of the one woman burned into my memory. Whether she understands it or not, she is bait, and I walked into the trap with my eyes open.
The thought stalks me, pressing deeper until my body locks tight, every muscle strung taut like a bowstring, braced and waiting for the inevitable strike I know is coming.
My jaw grinds. I cross the room to the desk, rip open the drawer, and grab the folder with her name scrawled across it. I toss it onto the table in front of her, the papers spilling free, photographs and notes sliding across the wood, the record of years spent watching. Her breath snags, but she doesn’t look away.
“Explain,” I demand, my voice a growl scraped from the bottom of my chest, cold and relentless, the sound of a man who has commanded obedience on battlefields and expects it here.
Her chin lifts, stubborn even as her hands clutch the blanket tighter, knuckles white. Her voice lashes out, brittle and defiant, carrying more heat than steadiness. “Explain what?”
“Why you’re here. Why they followed. Why the ghosts I buried overseas clawed their way back into the light the moment you set foot on this mountain. Every shadow I thought was dead rose again when you arrived, and I want to know why.”
She glares. “I told you. I was chasing a story.”
“Bullshit.” My palm slams against the table hard enough to make the lantern rattle and the fire leap high in its stone cage. The sound is violent, final, echoing through the cabin like a shot. I lean in, eyes locked on hers, voice low and dangerous. “You expect me to believe you stumbled up this mountain, walked into a whiteout, with no clue you were walking straight into my world?”
“Yes,” she snaps, voice rising with raw defiance. “Because that’s the truth. You think I’d choose to hurl myself into this nightmare, to walk into the jaws of danger on purpose? You think I’d willingly come here to you, knowing the ruin you would bring? Do you think I want this?”
