Chapter 7 - THE FROZEN FLUME
The icy water of the logging flume slammed into them like a wall of liquid glass.
It was three feet deep, rushing through a half-rotted wooden chute designed to float timber downstream to the rail yards.
The current seized them instantly.
Gideon locked his right arm around Hazel’s waist, using his left forearm to deflect jagged chunks of floating ice and splintered wooden guide rails.
Hazel couldn't breathe.
The freezing water tore the air from her chest in a ragged gasp.
Her clothes became lead weights, dragging her beneath the foam.
"Hold your head up!" Gideon shouted against the roar of the rushing current.
The wooden chute wound down the mountain face for half a mile, twisting through rocky gorges and snowbound pine ridges.
Behind them on the logging trail, snowmobile headlights strobed through the trees, their engines screaming as they raced to cut off the flume’s terminus.
CRACK.
A high-powered hunting rifle fired from the ridge above.
The round blew through the cedar wall of the chute three inches from Hazel’s hip, spraying water and wood splinters.
"They're parallel to us!" she choked out, spitting bitter water.
"Let them try," Gideon snarled.
Ahead, the wooden chute ended abruptly in mid-air above a frozen railway siding.
A forty-foot drop into an open coal car filled with drifts of powdery winter snow.
"Tuck your chin!" Gideon commanded.
They shot off the edge of the flume into empty space.
For two terrifying seconds, gravity vanished.
Then they hit the deep drift inside the steel railway car with a muffled, violent whump.
Snow exploded around them in a white cloud.
The deep powder cushioned the fall, but the cold was absolute, soaking through their waterlogged woolens.
Hazel lay on her back, staring at the gray pre-dawn sky, her teeth chattering so hard they felt like they would shatter.
"Gideon..." she whispered, her lips blue.
Gideon stood up, shaking snow from his dark hair like a massive black wolf emerging from a winter lake.
His eyes swept the train yard.
A long freight train sat on the siding, its heavy diesel engine rumbling softly as it waited for clearance to head west toward the coastal mountain passes.
The boxcar doors were open on Car Fourteen.
Gideon scooped Hazel into his arms.
Her body was shivering violently, her skin cold as river stone.
"Hypothermia," he muttered, his jaw tightening with protective fury.
He vaulted over the edge of the coal car and sprinted across the snowbound tracks.
He leaped into the interior of Car Fourteen.
The boxcar was dry, smelling of cedar shavings and clean hay bales loaded for mountain livestock.
Gideon kicked the heavy steel sliding door shut, plunging the car into dim, dusty amber light filtering through the roof vents.
He dropped the interior safety latch into place.
He set Hazel down gently on a bed of dry golden straw.
"Off," he ordered, his voice brooking no argument.
"What?" she breathed through clicking teeth.
"The wet clothes," Gideon said, already stripping his own soaked winter coat and sodden wool shirt.
"If you stay in wet wool in this boxcar, your heart will stop before we reach the western pass."
Hazel looked down at her trembling hands.
Her fingers were numb, stiff as twigs.
She couldn't work the buttons of her heavy wool sweater.
Gideon knelt before her in the straw.
His broad torso was bare, steam rising from his warm, golden skin in the freezing air of the boxcar.
His eyes were steady, respectful, but burning with an Alpha's absolute determination to keep his mate alive.
"Allow me," he whispered.
His warm, calloused fingers reached out.
He gripped the hem of her sweater and lifted it gently over her head.
He unlaced her frozen boots and pulled them free, tossing them into the corner.
He took two heavy, dry burlap blankets from a livestock crate in the corner and wrapped them tightly around her shoulders.
Then he pulled her directly against his bare chest.
His skin was like an open hearth.
The sheer, radiant heat of his awakened royal wolf poured into her frozen body, chasing away the deadly chill that had begun to settle in her bones.
Hazel let out a long, shuddering sob against his collarbone.
Her arms crept around his neck, holding on to his broad shoulders as if he were the only solid thing in an unraveling world.
"I'm sorry," she wept softly into his skin.
"For what?" he asked, his chin resting against her wet auburn hair.
"If I had stayed in the laundry... if I hadn't bled into your wound..."
"You would be safe."
"You wouldn't have lost your kingdom."
Gideon’s arms tightened around her waist, lifting her slightly higher against his heart.
His heartbeat was a deep, rhythmic thunder beneath her cheek.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"Listen to me, Hazel Brooks," Gideon growled softly.
"I didn't lose a kingdom."
"I found a nest of traitors who were rotting my father's court from the inside out."
"For five years, I ruled with pens, treaties, and false smiles."
"I let them convince me that an Alpha King should be a diplomat."
He lifted her chin with his thumb, forcing her to look into his glowing amber eyes.
"You didn't ruin me, Hazel."
"You woke me up."
"And when this train reaches the western strongholds," Gideon promised, his voice dark with impending vengeance,
"we are going to build an army that will tear Kaelen's southern pack limb from bloody limb."
Beneath them, the freight train jolted forward with a heavy clank of iron couplers.
The diesel engine roared.
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The train began to roll westward into the dark mountain pass.
And then, from the top of the boxcar roof, came the distinct, metallic scrape of steel claws digging into the sheet metal.
