Page 47 of Run Wild Omega

It’s a heartbeat, but it’s too loud to be mine.

It’s strong. Steady. It presses against my ear, vibrating through the bone of my skull.

A scent follows the sound.

Woodsmoke. Amber. Pine. Rain.

It anchors me. It pulls me back from the white, dragging me down into the freezing dark.

I gasp, air rushing into my lungs in a jagged inhale.

White explodes into stars.

Then, darkness.

The sensation of waking up isn’t a gentle drift from sleep to consciousness but rather a violent and jarring transition from the comforting void of nothingness back into a body that feels like it has been put through an industrial shredder.

The first thing that registers is the pain, which isn’t a dull throb or an ache but a screaming fire that originates from my left leg and radiates upward through my hip and down into my toes with a ferocity that makes me gasp.

My eyes fly open to stare at a ceiling that is not my own, made of rough-hewn timber beams and plaster that has been painted a soft, calming cream color that is completely unfamiliar to me.

My mind is racing to catch up with where I am and why I hurt so badly, the images of the avalanche and the white void flashing behind my eyelids like a strobe light.

I try to move and instantly regret it as a fresh wave of agony washes over me, forcing a cry from my throat that sounds broken and pathetic to my own ears.

My hand instinctively reaches down to clutch at my leg only to find it immobilized, encased in a hard fiberglass shell that’s strapped tightly to my leg.

My fingers brush against cool metal buckles that hold it in place, the foreign sensation of the splint sending a fresh wave of panic through my chest. I feel trapped, and my breathing hitches in shallow, desperate gasps that do nothing to alleviate the throbbing in my bones.

“Hey, take it easy, you’re going to rip the stitches if you thrash around like that.”

The voice comes from a chair positioned in the corner of the room, a deep baritone that is calm and measured.

I twist my head against the pillow—which smells intensely of leather and pine and woodsmoke, a complex scent that makes the hurt not seem quite as bad as I think it should—to see Miles Graham sitting there with a book open on his lap. His glasses are perched on the end of his nose and a steaming mug of tea rests on a small side table, the steam curling up in a lazy ribbon that catches the light from the lamp beside him.

I know him. He stops by the café sometimes, usually with Wyatt or Dylan, always polite enough to say hello but keeping to himself, watching the room with those intelligent eyes that seem to miss nothing.

Seeing him here, in this strange bedroom, is disorienting. My brain is struggling to piece together how I went from a frozen hole in the mountain to this warm, quiet room that feels so incredibly safe despite the confusion clawing at the back of my mind.

The contrast between the howling wind I remember and the silence of this room is jarring, making my head spin as I try to focus on his face.

“Miles?” My voice is a rusty croak, my throat feeling like I’ve swallowed a handful of sand. The words scrape their way past my swollen tongue, sounding foreign and distant to my own ears.

I lick my lips, tasting the metallic tang of dried blood, and the reality of my situation crashes down on me with the weight of an avalanche.

“You gave us quite a scare, Tess,” he says, closing his book and standing up. He walks over to the side of the bed.

He checks a monitor that is clipped to my finger, his eyes scanning the data with an efficiency that is comforting rather than clinical.

“You’re at the Pack House. It’s the converted garage apartment attached to the SAR station. Dylan brought you in after the evacuation.”

“Evacuation?” The word is a trigger, and suddenly it all comes back in a violent rush—the snow, the wind, the falling, the blinding white terror of the avalanche, and then the feeling of being lifted.

I remember being carried down the mountain in arms that felt like iron bands around my body, the scent of warm amber filling my nose even then, grounding me even as I slipped in and out of consciousness.

The memory of the cold is so vivid I shiver, the blankets tucked around me feeling inadequate against the phantom chill of the storm.

“Wyatt?” I whisper, the name tearing at my heart because I remember him holding me; I remember the desperation in his voice as he shouted over the wind. The image of his face, young and terrified superimposed over the grown man I know, flashes in my mind, confusing me further.