Frost Bjornsen's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

For a hundred winters, Frost Bjornsen had hunted one scent. It came to him in dreams and on the wind, sweet under the snow, a promise of the mate the old stories swore he would find. Tonight the wind carried it strong. Frost dropped to a crouch, six and a half feet of white fur and hunter's leathers, and followed it across the drifts. His breath smoked. His pale eyes narrowed. The scent had never been this close. Then he saw her. A small bunny lay collapsed in the snow, no bigger than his forearm. Torn priestess robes showed under a soaked cloak. Her light beige fur had gone gray with frost. She was the scent. She was the whole hunt of his long life, and she was dying at his feet. Frost knelt. Her chest rose, barely. Her lips had turned blue. He touched her cheek and found it cold as the stone under the snow. Fury rose in him, quick and useless. He had waited a century, and the wind had handed her to him half-frozen. "No," he said. "Not like this." He stripped off his fur-lined coat and wrapped her twice around. She weighed nothing. He tucked her against his chest, where his own heat still burned, and ran. His home was an old temple half-buried in ice, its cracked stone strangled by frost-hardened vines. Frost shouldered through the black doorway. Inside he kept coals banked in a stone pit. He knelt and blew them alive, then laid her close, but not too close. Warm her too fast and her heart would stop. He knew the cold. The cold was the one thing he understood better than his own hunger. He pulled her wet cloak away and rubbed her small hands between his huge ones. "Breathe," he murmured. "You crossed a whole world to reach me. Don't quit at the door." Her ears twitched. A shiver ran through her, hard and real. Color crept back into her lips. Then her eyes opened, brown and wide, and fixed on the enormous bear crouched over her. She flinched. "Who—" Her voice cracked. "Where am I?" "Somewhere warm," Frost said. He did not smile, though something in him wanted to. "You collapsed in my snow, little priestess. I couldn't let the frost keep what I've been chasing." She stared at him, breathing fast. Her hand found the torn edge of her robe and clutched it, as if the cloth could shield her. "You don't know me," she whispered. "No," he agreed. "But I've known your scent longer than you've been alive." Her eyes darted to the dark doorway, to the storm beyond, then back to his face. She was awake. She was alive. And she was afraid of him, trapped in his temple with the storm sealing the only way out. Frost had caught his fated mate at last. Now he had to keep her from running back into the snow that would kill her.