Kiss of Frost (Mythos Academy #2)(34)
Author: Jennifer Estep

I was going to find out.

I picked up my feet and raced across the snow, running as fast as I could through the powder and heading straight for the tree line. The roar of the avalanche grew louder and louder until it drowned out everything else, even my own desperate, panicked breaths and the erratic thump-thump-thump of my heart. The air felt dense and heavy with snow, and I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs, but I kept running. I knew that if I stopped, even for a second, the avalanche would catch me and carry me away.

And then there was the wolf. It paced back and forth inside the thicket of trees, looking at me and then up at the snow that was probably going to bury us both.

I didn’t have time to tiptoe around the creature or keep it from attacking me, so I threw myself into the trees and scrambled forward, trying to get into the very middle of the thicket. The wolf stayed where it was, watching me with its burning red eyes. They grew brighter and brighter as the snow rushed toward us and the landscape darkened.

I plopped down on my ass in front of the thickest, strongest tree I saw, ripped off my silver ski jacket, wrapped it around my waist, and used the sleeves to tie myself to the trunk. Then I curled my arms and legs around the sturdy trunk, ignoring the sharp, sticky needles that scratched my face and the pinecones that snagged in my hair. I anchored myself to the tree as best I could.

I was two feet away from the Fenrir wolf-wel within kil ing distance. Al it would have to do would be to lean forward and snap its jaws around my neck, and I’d be dead.

Instead of leaping on top of me, the wolf watched me al the while, its pointed ears laid back flat against its enormous head. It had hunkered down in the snow just like I had. The wolf’s mouth was open, and it was probably growling at me, although I couldn’t hear it above the roar of the avalanche.

"This is not my fault, so don’t kil me, okay?" I yel ed to the creature, even though it was useless.

The wolf’s red, narrowed eyes were the last thing I saw before the snow hit me, and the world went white.

Everything was just- violent. Roars and crashes and forces pul ing me every which way, threatening to rip my arms and legs from around the tree trunk, threatening to sweep me away and bury me deep, deep down in the snow where no one would ever, ever find me.

I tightened my grip and held on.

I couldn’t see, and I could barely breathe. There was just noise and pressure and stinging slaps of snow. I don’t know how long I huddled there, my face mashed against the rough bark, my whole body pressed against the trunk, my arms aching from the effort of hanging onto the pine tree.

My lungs burned from trying to suck down enough oxygen to stay conscious, and ice crystals pricked my face like thousands of tiny daggers. Al the while, the snow slammed into me, a cold undertow trying to pul me down, down, down the mountain with it.

And then it stopped.

The roars, crashes, and forces slowed, sputtered, and then slid away al together. It had stopped-the avalanche had final y stopped.

I opened my aching eyes, but the world was stil white.

Why? Why would everything stil be white? My brain just did not want to work, and it took me a second to realize I was buried up to my neck in the snow, my face stil digging into the trunk of the tree I’d tied myself to. For a moment I panicked, wondering how I was going to get out of here-

and how long it would take before I froze to death.

I made myself think of my mom. She’d always told me to stop a second and take some deep breaths whenever I was panicked, scared, or upset. Yeah, I was definitely al of those things right now. But Mom had always said that no matter how bad things got, no matter how much trouble I was in, the worst thing to do was to panic on top of it. So I made myself focus on my memories of her and fixed the image of her face in my mind.

Long, brown hair; warm violet eyes; a beautiful, wise smile. Mom.

I kept on breathing and thinking about her. The panic didn’t completely fade away, since I was in some pretty serious trouble here, but it wasn’t overwhelming me now either. I could manage it now. Slowly, reluctantly, I let go of my mom’s image and let her face fade from my mind, feeling the sharp ache of her loss once more. Then I opened my eyes and started to move my arms and legs.

Everything was stil attached, even though I felt bruised, battered, and sore from head to toe.

The jacket I’d used to tie myself to the tree was long gone, ripped away by the snow. So were my cel phone and the gloves that I’d put in my pockets. I don’t know how I’d held on to the trunk for as long as I had. Maybe because I’d known I simply had to in order to survive.

I clawed and pushed and heaved and pul ed my way out of the snowbank, wriggling away from the tree that had saved my life. It was twisted and bent now, the needles long gone and the branches sheared off into broken, spearlike pieces. Al the other pines in the thicket looked the same, like they’d al been scalped.

Once I was free, I lay there in the snow, panting, just grateful I was stil alive….

A soft, almost whimpering sound whispered through the crushed trees.

The wolf!

I’d completely forgotten about it in the roaring confusion of the avalanche. My head snapped around, looking for the creature, waiting for it to leap out of a snowbank and claw me to death.

I spotted it lying on its side about ten feet away from me

-with blood on the snow al around it. I looked closer and realized that a long, jagged branch stuck out of one of the wolf’s legs, like an arrow. The force of the avalanche must have thrown the monster against a tree and shoved the branch through its leg, although I didn’t know how the snow hadn’t carried the wolf away completely. I supposed that was just a monster for you-surviving no matter what.

The wolf saw me staring at it and let out another low, pitiful, pain-fil ed whimper. It looked at me with its red, red eyes and twitched its injured leg in my direction, almost like it wanted me to somehow … help it.

I bit my lip, wondering if this was some sort of trick.

Despite Metis’s lecture in myth-history class, I didn’t know much about Fenrir wolves. Wel , okay, I knew this particular wolf would have kil ed me if the avalanche hadn’t caught us both. That it had been ordered to kil me by its Reaper master.

The smart thing to do would have been to crawl away from it as quick as I could, to get to my feet, stumble out of the crushed thicket, and hope there was someone on the way to rescue me. But I couldn’t just leave the wolf here like that. Not al wounded, bloody, broken-looking, and crying like a puppy who’d just lost its mother. My mom would have tried to help it, even if it was a monster, even if it had been sent to kil her. That was just the kind of person she’d been

-and it was the kind of person I wanted to be, too.