PROLOGUE
CARYN
Chugach Mountains, Alaska
Twelve Years Ago
The snow is everywhere. In my ears. My mouth. My lashes. It stings like ice and salt and smoke all at once, and I can’t tell if I’m dreaming or dying.
I stumble, then fall—again. My knees hit the frozen ground. I can’t feel my fingers anymore. My breath rasps, raw and broken. Still, I crawl. My hands are scraped and frozen, my vision narrowing to the narrow path ahead, even as the dark closes in around me.
I was trying to prove I wasn’t afraid.
But I am.
I don’t remember how I got separated from the group. The guide’s voice had faded hours ago, swallowed by the wind. My phone’s battery gave out. And then it was just me. Me and the cold. Me and the mountain. Me and the howling dark.
There’s no sound but the wind screaming through the night. It’s unnatural—too thick, too perfect. It’s not peace. It’s pressure. Like the trees are holding their breath.
Then something moves behind me. Not the wind. Not an animal. Something slower. Heavier. Watching.
I turn too fast and lose my balance. The snow welcomes me back like a lover with sharp teeth.
I don’t see him at first. I feel him. Heavy footsteps crunching slowly, steadily, with the kind of patience that belongs to things that do not rush. A presence too big for the trees. Too wrong to be comforting.
I lift my head, and there he is—dark coat, dark eyes, darker energy. Not a man. A myth. Something shaped like a man but carved from shadow and cold.
He doesn’t speak. Just crouches next to me, silent and still as stone. His gloved fingers brush the ice from my cheek, then tuck something warm beneath me—furs? A coat? My shivering intensifies, but it isn’t just from the cold anymore. It’s him. The way he moves. The quiet, deliberate care that feels more like claiming than kindness.
And then I’m lifted. Arms like steel around me. The world rocks as he carries me deeper into the forest. I should scream. Fight. But I don’t.
Because I remember those eyes. From a dream. From a warning. From a place I thought I imagined. Or maybe tried to forget.
“You found me,” I whisper, though my lips barely move.
His voice is low, like thunder rolled in velvet, and it wraps around me with something dark and undeniable.
"Yeah. I did."
And then everything goes black.
When I wake up, it’s to the steady beep of machines and the harsh glare of hospital lights. My body is wrapped in too-clean sheets. The scent of antiseptic and latex burns in my nose. I blink against the brightness, disoriented, and then the memory comesback in pieces—the snow, the cold, the man with the eyes like night.
I try to tell them. The nurse. The doctor. My parents when they arrive white-faced and frantic. I tell them about the man who saved me, who carried me through the storm, who disappeared like smoke in the trees.
They don’t believe me.
They say I was hallucinating. That I was found by a rescue team hours after the alert went out. That I was hypothermic and disoriented. That I must have imagined him.
But I know better. I remember the strength in his arms. The warmth of his coat. The sound of his voice—low, steady, and inhumanly calm. And sometimes, when the wind cuts just right through the trees, I swear I hear it again. Whispering my name.
They say I imagined him. They're wrong. Ithink he's still out there. I think he's still waiting. And I'm going to find him.
1
CARYN
Hollow Ridge, Alaska
