Chapter Four

Welcome to Prison! Want Some Meat?

“Wait… what ?”

The woman blinked at him, her eyes widening like a reindeer before being slaughtered. The sight was so comical that Tristan couldn’t help but chuckle some more. Lyla shot him a cold glare, and he immediately fell silent.

“You heard me,” he told her, adopting her choice of words. “No one leaves Frost Mountain, ever. You’re stuck here.”

Disbelief flickered in her eyes, followed by fear and then more determined doubt. Tristan resisted another snicker. She wouldn’t be the first person he’d come across from the other world who’d found themselves on Frost Mountain. Elorn had grown over the past few decades; it was almost the size of a real town now—a characteristic it owed in part to the influx of newcomers from…what was that world called, again? Earth, the world from which the unfortunate spilled into this dimension.

Tristan studied the woman shackled to him. Lyla was shorter than he was, with a slender build barely hidden underneath her coat. Her curls fluttered gently in the soft wind. If she didn’t seem like she might strike him without warning, he might have thought her looks pleasing.

She was human; that much was clear. A supernatural would have had less trouble fighting him. But that didn’t make her harmless. The dull ache in his groin proved that. The woman was intelligent. Shackling her wrist to his was a move he hadn’t seen coming, and now she’d all but impeded his escape. If she was trying to capture him and take him back to Elorn, to Angus, there was little doubt she would have succeeded.

“You’re lying,” she said.

Tristan wanted anything but to be here right now with this woman. If they weren’t bound together, he would still be running downhill. He glanced around. Where were Angus’s men? They should have reached him by now. Perhaps they had stopped a while back and set up camp for the night. That gave him something of an edge. Or at least it would have if this…this thorn in his side hadn’t crossed his path.

“I do not need to lie to you,” he told her. “I have been nothing but honest ever since you attacked me out of nowhere.”

She ignored his jab. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Tristan,” he said quickly, then changed the subject. “No one who arrived on Frost Mountain has ever left.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

He groaned inwardly, wishing the shackles that bound him were not so durable. A shifter as powerful as him should have little trouble breaking out of their hold, but these were no ordinary binds.

This wasn’t at all how he’d imagined he would be spending the rest of his year. Just days ago, Tristian had been resting in his cabin after a successful hunt, mostly prepared for the approaching festive season. Christmas was one of the few periods when he and his nephew, Lewis, spent time together. He’d been looking forward to it this time.

And then the curse had reared its head.

No, it couldn’t be the curse. It just…couldn’t be. But as much as he tried to deny it, he couldn’t help but wonder whether he was right about that. He was only a wolf shifter, not a bloodthirsty monster. And as much as he’d disliked Benedict and Midas—a sentiment most other villagers openly shared—he would never in his right mind attack the sons of the village chief, much less murder them.

But he hadn’t been in his right mind then, had he? Even now, he still didn’t remember much from that night. Curse or no curse, it was no surprise that fingers were being pointed at him.

Now, he was on the run for a crime he could neither truly claim to be guilty nor innocent of. What was worse? He’d ended up in the clutches of a woman who seemed like she wouldn’t hesitate to turn him over to the men who were after him.

“What do you mean I can’t get off this mountain?” she demanded.

A thought flickered in his mind then: She was just like him in a way—unable to return to her home, hardly sure of what to do next. Like him, she must have been glancing over her shoulder every day since she got here, scanning her surroundings for any signs of danger. Like him, she wanted to survive.

Like him, she was afraid. He could hear the rapid thrum of her heartbeat as she glared up at him. Underneath her irritation lay terror.

“I need to keep moving,” he told her. He started to turn away, then froze when he remembered they were still bound together. The shackles were cold against his skin. He suspected she was even more so. “It won’t be long before Angus Denning and his men find me. I have to get to Ariadne before they get to me. If they do…” He trailed off, swallowing.

By now, he knew Elorn must be in turmoil. The death of not one but both sons of the village chief was enough to plunge the village into chaos. The hairs on the back of Tristan’s neck rose to attention suddenly. What had happened to Lewis? Had Angus had the young man captured, or worse?

He cast the thought to the back of his mind, where other worries sat. For now, he had a single goal. And there was someone in his way.

“You won’t be getting very far tonight, Tristan,” she told him, lifting her gloved hand so he could see the gleaming bracelets on both their wrists. “We’ll have to wait until morning—”

“I don’t have time to waste,” he protested.

“You don’t have much of a choice, either,” Lyla shot back. “We can only move as quickly as the slower person, and I don’t think I’ve got much strength left in me tonight. We’ll have to wait until morning to find a way to shatter the cuffs so we don’t break our fingers by accident or something.”

Tristan scowled. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. His body needed all the rest it could get. If he ran any more, his legs just might give out. While they were bound together, they couldn’t cover much distance tonight.

“We should find someplace to camp for the night, Tristan,” she added.

He wished she would stop talking, and not merely because she was proving to be a pain in his backside. She had a soft, sensual voice, and something about the way she spoke his name made him somewhat less willing to argue. He knew he despised this woman. She was aggressive and no doubt obstinate.

Yet he couldn’t seem to forget how, when he’d had her pinned beneath him, his body had come awake in places that hadn’t been aroused in a long time. For someone so fierce, her body was rather soft and curvy and had fit his perfectly. If he hadn’t been so desperate to get away, things might have turned out differently. He’d been so caught up in his own fears that he hadn’t even realized his reaction to her until he eased himself off her and noticed the tension in his aching groin.

With any luck, she hadn’t noticed it at all. She hadn’t mentioned it.

Not that it mattered. They were only stuck together until morning. After that, he’d head for Ariadne’s and hope he made it to his sister before he was caught.

“Fine,” he snapped, “but we move at first light.”

***

“I still find it hard to believe you’re not messing with me.”

“Everyone thinks the same when they learn about this place. But Frost Mountain is what it is. If you want to survive here, you’ll have to accept that.”

Lyla was silent for a moment. “So this mountain really has no bottom.”

Tristan shook his head, then realized she couldn’t see him. “No. The mountain is all there is. It doesn’t matter how far you travel. You can’t get off this mountain. It’s very powerful…”

“Magic,” they said in unison.

“Of course,” she groaned.

They lay side by side on the rocky ground, gazing up through the darkness at the roof of the small cave they’d found a little less than an hour ago. The faint smell of smoke filtered into Tristan’s nostrils. They’d started a fire earlier for some warmth, but he’d put it out, fearing that his pursuers might spot the flames and locate him. The kindling pyramid lay near the cave entrance, little more than a pile of charcoal and wisps of smoke.

“You must be hungry,” he said into the ensuing silence.

“I’ve got a couple more protein bars left,” came the response.

He had no idea what that meant, so he reached under his coat with his free hand, withdrawing a small parcel from its pocket and handing it to her. “Here. It’s meat. Caught and roasted it yesterday.”

He felt the tension that came over her then, although they were barely touching.

“I’d eat if I were you,” he told her. “If it were poisoned, I wouldn’t be carrying it around with me.”

After another few seconds’ hesitation, she took the parcel from him, and he heard a rustle as she unwrapped it.

“Tell me more about Frost Mountain,” she asked. “It’s clearly not on Earth if my guess is correct.”

“No, Frost Mountain is a separate dimension on its own.”

“A dimension? I mean, of course. This just keeps getting better. How did I even get here? One second, I was flying over Nebraska, and then—”

“You must have seen the portal.”

Another moment of silence. “Portal?”

“There are portals all over your world,” he said. “They lead into this dimension—they have for centuries. You aren’t the first to arrive on Frost Mountain. Humans and supernaturals alike have found themselves here, having slipped or fallen through a portal.”

“So our plane got here through a portal?” The shackles clinked as she raised her other hand. “Wait a minute. If there’s a portal, why can’t we get off this mountain? I mean, all we have to do is…” She trailed off, which he figured meant realization had dawned on her. “The portals only go one way, don’t they?”

He nodded. “Indeed. No one leaves Frost Mountain, no matter what. This dimension is more than a home to the souls unfortunate enough to find themselves here. It is a prison.”

“A what , now?”

Tristan ground his teeth. Was she ever going to stop bombarding him with questions? If he were going to get any rest, it wouldn’t be with her shackled to him and pressuring him to speak. He could practically sense her next to him, lying patiently in anticipation of a response.

“A prison.” He drew a breath. “Frost Mountain is a creation of dark, powerful magic. A band of witches brought it into being. There was…a war. Shifters—many of our ancestors, I mean—against the witches. As you can already guess, our ancestors lost. As punishment, they were exiled to this dimension, doomed to spend the rest of their lives on a freezing mountain with no way out.

“Frost Mountain was designed to hold the shifters at the time prisoner. But over the centuries, entire generations have lived here. Not to mention people pouring in from your world on a daily basis.”

He wondered what thoughts were circling that calculating mind of hers. If he had to guess, she was probably already plotting some kind of escape from Frost Mountain, determined to prove him wrong and get back to her old life. Tristan suppressed a snort. He’d met people like her before—stubborn, defiant, a thorn in his side. Once she was free of him, she’d continue heading down the mountain in hopes of finding a bottom. Within days, she’d be a corpse buried underneath two feet of snow.

“I’m going to assume you don’t welcome many witches around here,” Lyla said after a few seconds of silence.

Tristan flinched at her words. “No.”

He wished a witch would cross his path. He’d never been one for murder, but a part of him knew without doubt that he would not hesitate to take out a witch if he ever saw one. Their kind was responsible for Frost Mountain. That , and his current predicament, if it was the curse that had reared its head the other night.

It wasn’t enough that the shifters had lost the war against the witches all those years ago. No, a few unlucky ones had been left parting gifts—curses that would haunt the shifters for generations to come. Tristan remembered the story his mother told him and Ariadne had been passed down over the years. One of their ancestors, Anton Harrison, had cornered a witch but hesitated to kill her on the spot. In return, the witch had cursed him and his entire bloodline.

The curse had begun to manifest barely a month after the shifters were exiled to Frost Mountain. In the dead of night, while his friends lay asleep, Anton had shifted against his will into a wolf. Only it was no ordinary wolf. Grotesque and bloodthirsty, he’d gone on a rampage. By the time morning came, he lay alone in a clearing, surrounded by crimson snow and the bodies of the friends he had ripped apart.

Over the centuries, the curse had traveled down the Harrison bloodline, manifesting randomly in Anton’s descendants. Often, it was the eldest son or the youngest daughter who suddenly went on a rampage and slew dozens. For decades, the curse had been accompanied by great trepidation rising from the uncertainty as to who would bear it. It wasn’t until his great-grandfather, Elias Harrison, had sought the aid of a healer that the panic died down. Through the help of the healer, the curse was managed and kept from rearing its head in Elias and his descendants.

And then the curse ended.

There was no other way to put it. It had simply stopped manifesting. No more strange wolf attacks. No healers were needed, either. By the time Tristan was born, the curse had been little more than a story to be passed down for generations.

But now it was back. Or so it seemed.

But something didn’t quite make sense. If the curse were to manifest in him, it would have done so decades ago, not now.

“You never did tell me your story.” Lyla’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“What?”

He heard the sound of teeth ripping flesh. As she chewed, she said, “What exactly is your deal? You were running when I first saw you. It looked like you had an entire army of demons in pursuit.”

He hesitated. Should he tell her his problem? For all he knew, she would conclude that he was guilty and try to take him back to Angus for whatever reward the village chief was offering for his capture. What had she called herself again? A bounty hunter. She was just as much of a threat to him as Angus and his men. Worse, this hunter already had her prey in her clutches.

He resolved that he would not go willingly. Some prey, when cornered, put up a fight so deadly that predators and hunters had to flee for their own safety. He was certainly in a corner, even if his hunter had no sense of direction on this mountain.

“I’m headed down the mountain to see Ariadne,” he said. “If I move quickly enough, I should be at her cabin by Christmas.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

He ground his teeth some more.

“Angus’s men are after me,” he replied after another minute of deliberation. “They’ve been hunting me for the past few days, ever since I took off from Elron.”

She took another bite out of her food, chewing slowly, carefully. “Your village.”

“Yes.” She caught on quickly; he had to give her that. As much as he would like to entertain the idea of knocking her unconscious and taking off the first chance he got, he couldn’t deny her intelligence, even though she was a human. This woman was already familiar with the supernatural. By now, she must have somehow figured out what he was. She didn’t seem fazed to learn about the magic that made up Frost Mountain, which meant she must have figured some of it out on her own earlier.

He heard the sound of clothes rustling as she turned toward him. Her thigh brushed against his, and he felt an instant stirring in his groin. Tristan cursed under his breath, trying to fix his mind on something else—anything but the fact that she was pressed against him. He sucked in a deep breath and, to his disappointment—and much worse, excitement—caught a whiff of a faint, sweet scent. Hers, undoubtedly. Despite the cold and the fact that she’d been traveling for days, the scent that greeted his nostrils was nothing short of welcoming.

Either that, or he was losing his damned mind.

“So…what really happened?” she wanted to know. “Why is this Angus person after you?”

“Angus is the chief of my village,” he told her. “And a few nights ago, someone murdered both his sons.”

“Oh.” An awkward silence descended between them. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

“Neither did I. I was drunk the night it happened, wandering through the village.” He sighed and shook his head. “I was not even bothering anyone. I remember…” He bit his lip. “I remember nearly walking into both Benedict and Midas. I remember arguing with them. And then I went on my way, just a drunk, tired man looking to get some rest in his cabin. But I never made it home. I…I passed out,” he admitted half-sheepishly.

“Let me guess,” Lyla said. “You woke up covered in their blood?”

“No. I woke up to screams and dragged myself to the source to see what was happening. Then I saw the corpses. It didn’t take long for people to start pointing fingers. I didn’t know what else to do, so I took off.”

She scoffed, and he felt a twinge of irritation.

“I’m not a murderer,” he said through clenched teeth. He wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince himself or her, but he refused to believe that he would have laid a finger on Angus’s sons. “It wasn’t me who killed Benedict and Midas.”

“If you’re innocent, why did you run?” she shot at him.

The irritation bubbling in his chest expanded into anger. He sat up, then remembered that their wrists were still bound together.

“I ran—” he spat out each word “—because I was already a suspect. No one would have believed I didn’t kill those young men. I’m not the only one who knows the history of my family’s curse. Taking off didn’t won’t make me less guilty to the villagers than if I would have stayed.”

Lyla scoffed again but said nothing.

Reluctantly, he settled back on the ground next to her, glowering into the darkness. It took him a few seconds to realize his fists were clenched at his sides. He’d thought his life had been headed downhill before, but ever since this woman crossed his path and tried to thwart his escape, the hill had gotten even steeper.

He couldn’t wait until morning. Then, they would break these shackles, and he would be free of her and able to move quickly. Then, he would not be so bothered by this irksome woman…or the sensations that filled his groin when she drew near.