Page 42 of Arctic Panda's Secret Mate
“We’ve got a few more days to figure something out,” Haisley reminded him. She didn’t want to take away from Tristan’s appreciation of the place with their dilemma. “Maybe more, if that bank of clouds actually decides torainon us.Rude.”
“Haisley…”
That was the moment that Tristan forgot he was wearing snowshoes and he stepped too close to Haisley, pinning her snowshoe beneath him as he lost his balance and fell into her. They both went tumbling into the snow, shoes tangled together.
Tristan pulled her into a snowy bear hug as they laughed together, struggling to get upright again. They ended up taking their snowshoes off to finally right themselves, and Tristan immediately sank into snow nearly tohis hips. “I didn’t realize how much these were helping,” he said. “It felt like we were sinking a few feet with every step, I had no idea there wasthatmuch snow underneath us.”
Haisley didn’t even try to stand, sort of scooting along the surface of the snow until she could find a downed tree to sit on and get her snowshoes back under her. Tristan waded towards her, looking short beside her when she stood again.
“Do panda bears like snow?” Haisley asked.
“I’m dying to find out,” Tristan confessed. “But that would involve getting undressed.”
“That’s a chalet snowsuit, so I’m not inclined to suggest that you split seams in the name of science,” Haisley quipped. “That is something I had never thought to include in the care directions. No shifting in the snowsuits!”
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TRISTAN
Being a shifter was a little like having a toddler in his head at times.
Please, please, can we shift? I want to roooooooollllll in the snoooooooow!
Tristan felt like there was something important in what Haisley had said, but he was too busy trying to talk his bear out of stripping naked in below-freezing temperatures to pay perfect attention. Part of the problem was that he was kind of desperate to try it himself.
Haisley was not oblivious to his internal turmoil. “You reallydowant to shift, don’t you? I can carry your snowsuit and shoes back, you wouldn’t have to be naked very long, would you? We could probably tie them into a pack and you could carry them. Oh my gosh, could you carryme?!”
“I’m not sure,” Tristan said doubtfully. He was larger and stronger than the average panda bear, but still a far cry from one of the big bear shifters. He was dying to try it, though. “I might regret this,” he said, taking off his glasses.
Haisley tucked them carefully into a coat pocket andtook his scarf and hat. His mittens went into the hat, and then Tristan was bravely unzipping his snowsuit. Haisley whistled in appreciation, but Tristan didn’t pause to turn it into a show. The cold air on his bare skin was shocking and he’d never felt so alive. He shucked out of all of his clothing and the snowsuit at once, thrust it at Haisley, and then shifted and dove into the nearest snowbank.
Haisley shrieked in joy as Tristan bellowed and rolled, shaking his big head and throwing snow everywhere.
“You’re like a land killer whale!” Haisley exclaimed, laughing as Tristan plunged into the snow and swam through it.
He wasn’t the slightest bit cold as a bear. The air was still chilly in his nose, but the rest of him was plush and protected by thick fur. There was nothing but fun and frivolity as he romped. Haisley threw snowballs at him that dissolved mid-air, and she danced and laughed and spun around and fell into the snow on top of him.
Our mate! Our mate!Tristan’s bear chorused, wrapping paws around her and cuddling her close.
Unfortunately, Haisley’s confidence that she could carry Tristan’s things back to the chalet proved overly ambitious. His snowsuit, his clothing, his boots, and his snowshoes were more than an armful, and Haisley didn’t get more than a few steps before she had dropped something. Tristan was no help, floundering the trail into a mess as a bear, and it wasn’t long before he accepted that he was going to have to shift back to a man to make it back.
He huffed in a big breath, shifted, and sank into the snow completely naked as Haisley fell over backwards in surprise, holding all of his clothing.
“I didn’t know you were going to do that!” she protested, struggling upright again. “You’ll get hypothermia! Here, put this all on!”
Tristan managed to get one cold leg into his snowsuit, and then another, pulled it up over his arms and body, and could no longer feel either of his feet. His socks were wet, and he almost left them off, but Haisley insisted. “No, put those on, you’ll warm them up in your boots once we get going. I got myself a hot shifter boyfriend and took him out in the wilderness and tried to kill him! I’ll never live this down!” She dumped the snow out of his boots and handed them to him one at a time, but getting them on was harder than it looked and Tristan knew how inelegant he must look as he writhed on his back getting dressed. Snow got in at his neck, and his wrists, and filled his boots.
His toes were tingling back to life by the time Haisley got his snowshoes strapped on again, and then they were heading back down the trail. The sun was going down over the hills, and the sky was turning pink and peach as the gray clouds started to roll in.
Fortunately, with the clouds, it grew noticeably warmer, and the effort of snow shoeing kept his temperature up. Tristan didn’t even notice his damp feet by the time they had returned to the ski trail.
They dropped the snow shoes on the front porch and staggered in. The sunset was so slow and gradual that Tristan didn’t notice how dark it had gotten until they were stumbling into the brightly lit lodge and Chef was pressing hot cider onto him.
“That was definitely something you can’t do at Shifting Sands,” he said, once he had breath and had peeled out of the snowsuit and wet socks to prop his feet in front of the roaring fire.
They recounted the adventure to the others, and Tristan found himself lingering over how it felt to frolic in the snow and the view over the mountains. “I’ve never seen anything so gorgeous,” he said. But he was looking atHaisley as he said so, remembering how her face was lit up in the shimmering golden light.
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