“Is that what happened in your case?” he asked, prompting her when she fell silent.
She nodded, remembering how that day at the mountain had started, how bitterly cold it had been when the call came in.
“They dropped off a group of four college kids on one of the tamer backcountry slopes at sunrise. It should have taken them about four hours to get down the slope to the pickup location, but they didn’t make it back. Before we lost radio contact, dispatch was able to confirm they’d left the planned route looking for adventure and gotten lost. By the time we pinned down the general area they ended up in, the sun was going down, temperature was dropping, and wet, heavy snow was falling.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It isn’t,” she replied. “Heavy snow on a steep slope is a recipe for an avalanche, especially if there’s already a lot of snow there to begin with. Some of the slopes in the area they ventured into had as much as fifteen feet of buildup, which is about as bad a situation as you could come up with.”
He didn’t say anything, this time waiting patiently for her to continue. It was hard to explain—or understand why—but it was easier talking to him about this than anyone else in the world.
“They dropped six of us into the area with survival gear and satellite phones, hoping we could find the skiers before it got too cold. It was so windy the snow was coming down sideways and I could barely see a few feet in front of me.” She took a deep breath. “By the time I stumbled across them, they’d been trying to ski down the slope in the dark and two of them had crashed out, lost their equipment, and twisted themselves up pretty good. The group was trying to walk down the slope while all four of them were in the first stages of hypothermia. I was calling in the rescue helicopter when a deep rumbling sound from higher up the slope told me I’d run out of time. I couldn’t see a damn thing, but I knew what was coming.”
Harley opened her mouth to tell him the rest but paused as she realized he’d tightened his grip on her hands, almost like he was in pain. His breathing was faster than normal and his heart was beating so hard she could actually hear it.
“Um,” she began, trying to focus on what she was saying instead of the obvious effect her words were having on Sawyer. “I knew we didn’t have a lot of time, so I shoved the four of them toward the first outcropping of rocks I saw, praying there’d be a crevice for us to hide in. I found one, but unfortunately, it was only big enough for the four of them. I tried to make myself fit in there with them, but it wasn’t enough.”
“Shit,” Sawyer said, his voice so low she could barely make out the word. “The avalanche hit you?”
“Like a freight train.” She swallowed hard. “I tried to stay on the top of the flow like they teach you in the survival classes, but it was impossible. I got scooped up and tossed around like a rag doll, hitting every rock and tree on the mountain on the way down the slope. I never imagined there could be so much pain. Every time I hit something, another bone broke.”
Glancing down again, she noticed Sawyer’s claws had extended, his fingers flexing like he was fighting to regain control. She remembered how upset she’d been as Sawyer had told her about the trauma he’d gone through. It seemed like the same for him now. Maybe it was a werewolf thing. Maybe werewolves were affected by the trauma and pain another of their kind had experienced when they turned.
“It felt like hours before I stop tumbling,” she whispered. “I was wearing an avalanche airbag pack, but it got ripped off at some point during the fall, so I was trapped there under the snow with no idea how far under I was or even which way was up. Not that it really mattered, since I was too busted up to try to dig my way out. So I laid there in the snow, not sure what would kill me first—the trauma from the impact or the lack of oxygen. I should have been freaking out, but truthfully, I was in too much pain to care.”
“How long were you buried under there?” he asked, though from the expression on his face, it didn’t seem as if he truly wanted to know.
“Five hours,” she said, replaying the few glimpses of that horrible time she remembered. “The rest of the ski patrol arrived minutes after the avalanche stopped, but even with the people I rescued pointing them in the right direction, it took them forever to find me. The debris field was over a thousand feet long and nearly as wide. Later, my friends on the patrol admitted that after the first hour, they thought they were looking for my body because I should have suffocated by then. They couldn’t believe it when they dug me up and found out I was still breathing. They didn’t think I’d even make it to the hospital.”
Sawyer’s breathing was more regular now that they were past the traumatic part of the story. “How long was it before you realized something strange was happening to you?”
Harley considered that. She’d never spent a lot of time thinking about those weeks and months right after the avalanche. In fact, she’d done everything she could to forget it.
“The doctors had me drugged to the gills for a few weeks after the accident on the mountain, assuming I was in pain from all those broken bones,” she said. “Even though my inner werewolf burned through the narcotics as fast as they gave them to me, they kept me loopy enough to miss most of what happened. It wasn’t until eight weeks later, after I was out of the hospital and back at home, that I started having nightmares about what happened. By the time my fangs, claws, and anger management issues showed up, I was sure there was something horribly wrong with me. I thought maybe the pain and trauma of falling down that mountain had driven me insane.”
“Did your family figure out what was happening?”
Harley hesitated. This was the one thing she’d worked the hardest to forget.
“I tried so hard to keep it from them,” she said, not surprised when the words came out as little more than a whisper. “I loved my family more than anything, but I knew this wasn’t something they could handle. If they saw the claws and fangs and glowing eyes, they would have thought I was a monster.” Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them back. “It turned out I was right.”
When she didn’t say anything more, Sawyer moved his chair so close his thighs were touching hers and she could feel his warmth through both of their jeans.
“It started with an argument with my brother,” she said, focusing all her attention on the thumb rubbing little circles on the back of her hand again. “He was nagging at me about showering too long and using all the hot water. Before I knew it, we went from arguing to shouting so loud the whole house heard us. My emotions had been all over the place for the past few days, the pressure building as I tried everything I could to hide the changes from everyone, and for some reason, I lost it.”
“Did you shift?”
She nodded glumly. “Further than I ever had before. When my brother freaked out, my parents and sister all ran upstairs. My dad grabbed me and shoved me away, I slashed him with my claws, tearing open his shoulder. Seeing all that blood pulled me back from the edge, but it didn’t matter by then. My whole family had seen what I was and the look of horror on their faces is something I’ll never forget. The worst was my little sister, Jenna. She’d always idolized me, but seeing her look at me like that crushed me. My mom told me to get out and never come back. I did and haven’t let myself shift that far since.”