Run With Me

Chapter Nineteen

Kirk barely grabbed Nolan's ruff with his teeth as the other wolf almost tumbled over the cliff. In the summer, this was probably a magnificent place to come and play and a brilliant vista to look out over, but in the winter, it was a death trap. He repeated the mantra in his head that she wasn't dead as he pushed Nolan back towards Zoe, snapping a warning at him to be careful.

John moved silently in his own wolf form, a dark grey streaked with black and white. His parents had always joked that he was part zebra, especially since Jonathan hated, absolutely, HATED, getting his paws cold and wet in the snow. Normally, Kirk would have laughed about it, but they were more concerned with finding Terri. He was more considered with finding Terri, and he was beyond grateful that his pack was there to help support him in his search.

Moving back a few feet from the edge, the four of them ran along side it, moving back every time the edge got too close, following the slope of the cliff as it curved down. Not for the first time, Kirk questioned how the tiny Collin planned to get down the cliff since they were some distance from where he had scented Terri last and from where he had found Collin. The blizzard was still as relentless as it was when it had started, and the snow was still proceeding to accumulate in dangerous volumes. What he wasn't expecting was the cliff to run as short as it did. Moments after Nolan almost went over, the slop ended, revealing what was likely a large fielded area in the warmer months.

For now, however, Kirk turned sharply and started running full out again. He was an alpha, he had the stamina for it. Sensing his pack members falling behind, he urged his body forward, leaning into the wind and keeping the cliff face within his line of sight. At this speed, he would find the point Terri went over in a fraction of the time, provided the snow drifts didn't get any deeper. Unfortunately, that silent prayer to Fate fell on deaf ears as the others swiftly caught back up to him. He was all but swimming through the snow right now, fighting nature to find his mate. After what felt like swimming the English channel but through snow, Kirk finally caught a hint of Terri's scent. His abrupt stop had Zoe and John barrelling into him, causing all three to crash into another snowdrift. And something hard. Digging through the snow, Kirk came across a stronger scent. With several violent shoves, his paws buried down, connecting with a mangled piece of metal. Terri's prosthesis.

Gripping the cold metal in his jaw, Kirk let out a growl and started looking around. The others saw the item even in the dark and started carefully sniffing the area around. It was Zoe, a small ginger and brown wolf, who let out several excited barks, indicating she had found something. Kirk strode over to her, smelling the trail Terri had left behind. And she had left a trail. On a jagged piece of rock just overhead, was a smear of blood. Kirk dropped the foot and let out a howl. Zoe, on the other hand, had her front paws up on the rock face looking at the smear and sniffing closely. Kirk was beyond reason, sniffing around the rocks, looking for Terri's body. She must have bounced off a rock and was laying in the snow, injured. He didn't register when Zoe shift, standing naked in a blizzard.

"Shit balls!" She exclaimed, wrapping her arms around herself, "Kirk, you moron, there's a ledge or something!" John and Nolan were pushing their bodies against Zoe, trying to protect her naked flesh with little success. Reaching up, Zoe grabbed the rock with the blood and pulled herself up. "There's another one! Kirk, get your furry ass up here!" Her voice was starting to shake from the cold as John and Nolan started pulling at Kirk to get out of the snow drift he had buried himself in and up the mountain. Zoe was insane for shifting out of her form, but there was sense to it because Kirk all but crushed the spines of the other two using them to push himself up to where Zoe had disappeared.

There was a trail, a very clear one, all in Terri's blood leading up to a tiny opening. Kirk saw Zoe's bare ass disappear into the opening and proceeded to following, cutting his paws on the same rocks that had been painted with Terri's blood. It took him several minutes to get to the opening, and he more than once wished wolves had opposable thumbs, but he made it into the cave, his heart stopping when he saw Terri blue and cold, passed out on some moldy rug with Zoe, back in wolf form, pressed up against Terri's frozen body. Kirk didn't even realized he had shifted until his hands reached for her neck, feeling for a pulse. He found one, it was faint, barely a flutter, but it was there.

Looking around, Kirk saw several blankets and pillows neatly stacked on a natural shelf, along with several old books. Looking at Zoe, he threw the pillows onto the rug and started pulling at Terri's jacket.

"Go help the others get in here and then you need to head back and get help," instructions poured out of his mouth as he started peeling the cold wet clothes off of Terri. He had to get her warm. "Not Darren or Kayla. Or anyone from that fate damned pack," he bit off, taking a second to look at the tears in Terri's pant legs, "Michael. Or an alpha from another pack." Zoe whined in response, head tilting as Kirk tossed all the blankets over Terri and then climbed under them next to her, pulling her frozen body into his. "Get those two in here first and then run like the devil is chasing you." He looked at the young she wolf. She was in her early twenties, smart, savvy. Zoe would make a fine mate if she could find one that could match her sass. At times, her mouth and her attitude bordered on insubordination, but if John wasn't his beta, he would have her as his second in a heart beat.

Zoe yipped once and then headed back into the storm. Kirk placed his nose against Terri's cold neck, breathing in her scent and taking a moment calm himself. She was alive. She was breathing. And once the others got here, he would get her warmed up. He knew that if they were mated he could give her the warmth and energy she needed to survive, but there was no way he was marking her while she was unconscious. Any other wolf probably would if it meant saving their mate's life, but for Terri, that would be a violation of all the trust he had spent weeks trying to earn. The fact that he was naked and holding her would probably get her spitting mad, but in the grand scheme of survival, this was the only thing he could think of to help her survive.

Growing up in the Canadian school system, cold weather survival was a basic part of human education. It was something Kirk thought, at the time, he would never need, being that shifters had exceptional healing abilities and a natural fur coat against the elements. But he wanted to track down Mr. Kellog and thank him all these years later, because those survival lessons were going to save his mate's life. Pulling a blanket up over their heads, Kirk rolled Terri so that her nose was against his chest. These meager blankets were old and threadbare, but were more than enough for the moment to start warming them up. He could hear the growls, whines, and occasional yip of pain as John and Nolan tried to scramble their way into the cave.

"Please," Kirk whispered into Terri's hair, his breath causing the icicles to start melting, "Please wake up and yell at me. I don't care if you keep rejecting me, I just want you to wake up and look at me," he choked back his tears, "I'll build you your own workshop and give you all the r&d funding you could ever dream of. Just please stay with me." He stopped speaking for fear of his emotions taking over. He just lay there, listening to her shallow breathing, rubbing his hands over her back to warm her up. He took that moment to look her over. Her hands were dirty, tiny flecks of dirt and rock in the jagged cuts on both hands. He would have to ask her if she had done it on purpose or if it was a result of the circumstances that caused her to hurt herself. It must have been difficult making that climb with only one foot. Kirk growled, thinking about how he would make the people who hurt her pay. Not just Anna her petty little friends, but Darren and the rest of the pack for treating her any less than the marvelous woman she was. Several more minutes passed in quiet seething before John and Nolan tumbled into the cave.

"Don't shift," Kirk ordered from under the blankets, "shake off as much as you can and then box us in. She's frozen and we need to warm her up. You two are my new heating pads." He heard a snort of disgust, probably from John, as he listened to to violent flapping of ears and fur being shaken out as far from them as they could safely manage. "John, you lay against Terri's back, Nolan, your on my side." He gave the instructions, pulling Terri closer, feeling the weight of both wolves settling in around them. Kirk could feel the warmth of their bodies pressing into them, the howl of the storm outside muffled from the fur and the blankets. Kirk just focused on pressing as much skin against Terri as possible, warming her with his own.Other parts of his body were starting to get ideas as her heartbeat became louder and her breathing steadier and even. Kirk started mentally dismantalling a power inverter to keep his mind off of Terri's slight body next to his when he heard her groan. Kirk looked down at her scrunched up face, he could feel John and Nolan's heads shift to look at the pile as she started to move.

"W-wh-at..." Terri opened her eyes in confusion, looking up at Kirk. He could watch as her brain tried to catch up with reality. And he knew the second that she realized that they were both naked and pressed tight to each other, because her green eyes shifted to blue and she started to growl.