Belle knew this wasn’t the time for tears, but they sprang to her eyes anyway. She cursed each one of them for marring her vision that kept her from being the best nurse for the job. She felt for Adam’s heartbeat, but her fingers drew in no sensation from anything, icy as they were. Belle glanced around and saw what she guessed would have to be his car parked up on the shoulder. It was sleek, expensive and probably had a working heater, she reasoned.
She summoned all her gusto to heft him up, but it wasn’t enough. The car was so far away, and Belle’s limbs were starting to freeze over. She didn’t mean to drop him in the snow, but when she fell backward, so did he. Her fear of the wolves was replaced with the very immediate worry of hypothermia, which didn’t take all that long to set in. She knew she had to get him to safety, but her body was starting to give out on her.
“Belle? Get to the car,” Adam instructed her when he roused.
“Can you stand?” she asked, scrambling clumsily and crawling through the snow so he could see her face.
Adam made an attempt, but his left leg was useless. He let out a growl of frustration through clenched teeth. “Go, Belle! Get warm. The wolves might turn around and come back for us. Run!”
A gust of harsh wind whistled through the trees toward them, giving her two entire seconds to throw her body over his, shielding him as best she could from the icy blast. She shuddered as the wind sliced through her thin coat. A bleat of pain escaped her lips at the ache that felt etched deep down in her bones. “I’m not leaving you!” she promised, her brown hair whipping around them to give Adam something to focus on other than the blur of white. “We’ll try again. Use me as a crutch.”
She was too clumsy from the cold as she tried to sit him up. Her body wasn’t stable enough for herself, let alone to support a second person. Still, Belle remained stalwart in her decision to get Adam up the incline to the car.
“I can help,” came a feminine voice behind her.
Belle turned, and in the motion, realized that she was losing mobility in her joints, since her neck was barely able to rotate to take in the stranger. A blur of red caught Belle’s eye, and before she could respond, the woman had hold of Adam’s other arm.
The young woman who couldn’t have been much more than twenty years old wore a long red cape over thick winter gear. Her face was barely visible, surrounded by the brown and gray fur of her black coat’s lining. When she helped Belle heft Adam from the snow, she paid no mind to his howl of agony. The stranger took most of his weight on herself, so Belle could have a better shot at staying upright.
After a few steps, Belle knew she’d been out in the snow five minutes too long. Her legs refused to move, and she toppled forward, her body locked in one elongated shiver.
“Rafe, grab the girl!” the young woman called over her shoulder, continuing the trek to get Adam back to his car.
Belle couldn’t move much, but she found that her heart was still beating when it started to race at the sight of an enormous white wolf approaching her.
Without being told, Belle knew she was coming face-to-face with the alpha. She screamed, eliciting a shout from Adam beckoning her to run to him, but when the wolf made contact, it was a gentle tug on her coat’s collar, rather than a sharp bite through her skin.
Too muddled to ponder the meaning of it all, Belle’s body went limp, trusting the wolf to take her someplace warm. There were a few bumps as the wolf dragged her up the incline, but eventually she found herself next to the open door of Adam’s silver vehicle. The red cape swept out again in her vision as the young woman lifted her up and set her in the driver’s seat.
The car was turned on, and the heat was on full blast, with Adam gritting his teeth through the pain in the passenger’s seat. Despite his cold, he turned the vents onto Belle, bathing her in heat that felt like chocolate melting over her body.
Belle wanted to thank the woman for rescuing them, and give the wolf his due praise as well, but her jaw was locked tight from chattering.
The woman leaned over Belle’s body and grasped Adam’s hand. “Stay strong,” she said by way of a goodbye. “A curse is not the end.”
Adam protested her departure, but the woman merely smiled at him, as if the cold didn’t bother her one bit. In a move Belle didn’t expect, the woman bent down and pressed a kiss to Belle’s temple. “Once you’ve thawed, get home. The roads are terrible, and it’s not likely to let up for weeks, if not longer. Get indoors, and stay there.”
“Thank you,” Belle worked out just before the driver’s side door closed, and the woman disappeared with her wolf into the snowstorm.
For several seconds that stretched into whole minutes, Belle and Adam stared at each other, breathless. Their eyes talked about things that their mouths wouldn’t admit to – that they were scared, and grateful the other one didn’t leave them to die in the snow.
The heat worked its magic while their breathing steadied to a companionable rhythm. Adam finally reached forward and turned up the radio, letting classical music fill the interior with a sad violin that made the snowy death outside seem like a mere playground.
“Adam,” Belle whispered, unsure what she wanted to say. Somehow just uttering his name made her feel slightly better.
“Shh,” he replied quietly. “We’re safe.” Then he reached across the console and coiled his fingers around hers.
The gesture of comfort and camaraderie warmed Belle, but alerted her to the greater danger. “I can’t feel you,” she admitted, her fear growing at the prospect that perhaps the snow had steeped them in damage unfixable.
Adam’s green eyes zeroed in on hers with a determination that everything would somehow be alright. “Then I’ll just have to keep holding you.”
Belle’s lashes swept shut at the sweetness, and she willed her worries not to overwhelm her. She managed a tight nod, and went back to the quietness of the violin, hoping it would soothe all that was wrong in the world.
In those minutes of silence, Adam said things to her with his eyes that he couldn’t admit to aloud. He wanted to hold her, which wasn’t a longing he had entertained all too often during his life. He blamed it on the near-death experience, but still, the desire called to him.
“You should have left me,” he chided her stiff fingers.
“But you didn’t leave me,” she countered. When she spoke again, she allowed her vulnerability to shine through as her eyes opened to focus in on him. “You hurt me when you yelled like that back at home.”
Any softness in Adam’s features clouded over with defiance that hardened the regret that clawed at his insides. “You shouldn’t have been in the West wing.”
Belle winced as if his words had cut her. “When the storm clears up, I’ll leave. But the woman with the red cape was right; we shouldn’t try to go anywhere tonight. The nearest hospital is at least twenty miles away.”
Adam pursed his lips. He didn’t want her to go, but asking her to stay would involve apologizing, which he had never done before. “Just give me a second to tie off my wound, and I can drive us home,” he promised after a few minutes of silence. The car was a sauna, but the two were only just starting to get a little feeling back in their extremities.
“No, no. I’ve got it. I can feel my fingers well enough now.” She slid her hand out of his grip. Though Adam wasn’t ready for her to let go, she turned toward the steering wheel and did her best to acquaint herself with the expensive vehicle. “This thing is like a spaceship. Why do you need so many buttons?”
“They do things like provide heat, so I wouldn’t complain. It’s a reliable little spaceship. Have you ever driven a stick before?”
Belle shook her head, chagrinned. “Talk me through it.”
Adam was surprisingly patient as he explained the basics of shifting in the sleek car. When she put it into gear, there were a few false starts, but eventually she got them turned back around in the direction of the castle. She stalled twice when she shifted incorrectly, so Adam placed his hand atop hers, gently guiding her hand so they could shift together.
Neither of them spoke, but allowed the music to say the things they couldn’t. The violin with all of its might did its best to smooth over the rift between them.