Page 97 of Crucible
It’s hopeless.
I’ve been going in circles, and I can’t entirely blame the low visibility for it. I’ve been wandering aimlessly because my heart can’t decide on a direction—home or…home.
Pathetically, I leave myself lying face down in the snow so I can just die already. I know I probably shouldn’t sleep when I’m one step from death’s door, but my lids, ladened with frost and snow, are growing heavy, and I can’t walk another step.
All I need is a few minutes.
Ironically, it’s the same thing I said when I climbed into Khalil’s bed that first day at the cabin and look where it had gotten me.
Whatever.
This is long overdue. It’s not fair that I got to live when so many good people died—Cassie, Harrison, Tyler…If I wasn’t convinced that I’m a terrible person, I sure as hell know it now. Dying cold and alone, face down in the snow, seems just.
It feels like my eyes have only just closed when I hear something that makes them pop back open. My head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds when I lift it and peer through cracked eyes.
I must be dead already. There’s no one there.
“Aurelia!”
Satan, is that you?
“Aurelia!”
I’m coming, evil hell Daddy.
“AURELIA!”
Okay, don’t get pushy.
It figures I’d traded three growly, demanding alphaholes for another.
“Aurelia!”
I groan when my heart jumps in my chest, and I realize I’m not dead. That voice…I know it. I never thought I’d hear it again, but there’s no mistaking it. I’d know it anywhere.
“Aurelia!”
So, not evil hell Daddy, then.
Just one determined and loyal bodyguard. Tyler.
I gasp when I hear his voice again, leaving no room for doubt. How had he survived the avalanche? How had he found me?
“Aurelia, answer me!” He sounds further away now as if he’s turned to head a different way.
“Come back,” I croak out as Rose did inTitanicafter the ship sank and shelet Jack die. It feels like I’m floating alone on a door in the middle of the cold, dark sea. Only, in this version, Jack isn’t dead. He made it somehow, and he came back for me. “Tyler, I’m here!”
My voice isn’t loud enough to rise above the wind, much less reach him wherever he is.
He must be close.
That knowledge is enough to make me stand, though it takes me a full minute to climb to my feet.
“Tyler!” I scream a little louder this time. “Tyler, wait! Ty—”
My shout is cut off, and I stop when I see something large and fast dart from the left up ahead. At first, I wonder if I’m hallucinating it until I see it again, closer now and heading in the opposite direction.
“What the…”
