Alaska's Snowy Fate (Winter Rescue Bears Book 1) Read online

  Alaska’s Snowy Fate

  By April Zyon

  © 2017

  Cover by Jess Buffett

  Blurb:

  Christmas is looking rather bleak for recent divorcee, Alaska. Spending her vacation with her family will truly test the limits of her sanity, but she’s determined to push through and get some killer slope time in the snowy mountains.

  Drake is looking forward to spending the holiday season hunkered down with his polar bear clan, rest and recouping from his constant training for the Olympics. When he and his clan-mates are called out on a dangerous search and rescue mission he never dreamed he’d come face to face with his fated mate.

  Saving Alaska from her car was only the beginning, and the pair find themselves in a dangerous cat and mouse game with someone determined to kill her. Is it Alaska’s Snowy Fate to find Drake and fall in love, only to die in the process?

  Chapter 1

  Christmas with the family was not something that Alaska looked forward too, especially not this year. This year was going to suck some serious monkey balls. This year she was going as a divorcee. She had already been hearing about the divorce non-stop for the last six months. Her mom couldn’t understand that it wasn’t her fault that Skip’s penis just accidently fell into her best friend’s vagina, over and over again, on their marriage bed. No, she wouldn’t hear of it. According to her mom, men would be men, and she just needed to roll with it.

  Alaska had had enough of cheaters and losers. She was done with the males of the world who thought that they were the be-all-end-all of everything, so she had filed for the divorce the second she came home and found Skip and Melissa fucking on her bed. Nope. She’d decided at that moment that she was ready to be alone for the rest of her life at the age of thirty-three. She was done with men.

  Tapping her fingers on the wheel of the vehicle she shook her head. Good god, why the hell was she even thinking of that idiot right now? She needed to focus on the drive to the cabin. It was in some backwoods town in the middle of nowhere that was supposed to have snow for days and days, which—according to her mother—would be excellent for skiing.

  She squinted into the darkness and turned her wipers up. She tried talking to herself, until she realized it was fogging up the windows even more. That was a bad sign. That meant that the temperature was dropping. When she glanced at the navigation console, she realized that while she had been reliving the worst week of her life; the temperature gauge had dropped ten degrees.

  “What the heck?”

  How could it possibly do that? A native Floridian, she was used to people who considered it cold if it reached forty degrees. Her body couldn’t stand this negative temperature crap.

  Of course she knew the irony of the place she was going, the state she was named after and she had made her peace with the snide remarks her sister would be making the whole vacation. “Alaska, home of the Northern Lights and freaky cold weather.” But her mom had said it also had amazing views and the best skiing that there ever was, and that was one thing she couldn’t and wouldn’t ever be able to turn down. Even though she was from a very sunny and hot climate, Alaska loved all things that had to do with skiing and snow sports. She was a huge Winter Olympics fan, and she loved the men and women who pushed the boundaries and seemed to defy gravity in the snow.

  “Fucking hell.” She missed her turn because she had been thinking of the Winter Olympics. In truth, she’d been thinking of Drake Tillman, her current obsession, and the world’s biggest diva when it came to those games. He was a God on the snow. It was almost as if the man owned it. But according to his profiles, he was more than just that. He was a Search and Rescue team leader somewhere in snow country. No one really knew where. Heck, now that she thought about it, no one really knew a lot about him.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” She muttered as she felt her car start to swerve. Even with the chains that the helpful young man at Enterprise Rental Car put on the wheels for her, Alaska knew she was so totally screwed it wasn’t even funny. She tried to remember everything she’d been taught in her defensive driving classes on controlling the spin of a car and it all seemed to evaporate, just like the freaking road.

  All she could do at that moment was to scream as she careened off the side of the steep cliff.

  Chapter 2

  “We have a call,” Drake shouted to his teammates who were all lounging around the S&R house in various states of dress. “OnStar just called us in. Evidently, they have a car that crashed and the driver is non-responsive.”

  “Fucking idiot for driving out in a blizzard.” Blaze grumbled as he pulled on a ratty pair of jeans. “I swear humans are all as moronic now as they were when they crawled out of the ocean millions of years ago. Fucking useless.”

  “Then why do you do the job?” Oliverasked and turned another page before marking the massive tome he was reading with an elegant silk bookmark. “Search and Rescue is just that. We search, and we rescue.”

  “Because we are a clan, and we stick together. This was Drake’s call, and since he’s our Alpha, I follow.”

  Drake growled at Blaze, “Then keep your hotheaded comments to your fucking self. Humans might not be as evolved as shifters, but you know as well as I do that one of them will be the missing piece of your soul. The Universe brought us here for a reason. I think that reason is for mating, and while my heart might be as frozen as the fucking tundra we live on I know that Fate doesn’t make mistakes. Be patient.”

  “You’ve been telling us that for a long fucking time, Drake. At least you have the snow games.”

  “And you have racing, Blaze. Oliverhas his books, we all have our things. But right now I need you suited up. OnStar pinged the SUV on Hangers Curve, but the satellite shows nothing and my gut is telling me it’s on the side of the mountain. Bring all our climbing equipment as well. This one is human. From the rental agency we are looking at a woman, early thirties.”

  That perked Blaze up, Drake noticed. “Maybe she’s it. Maybe that’s why my bear is huffing and puffing. Come on, let’s go.”

  Drake snorted. “Just get your shit. We need to be gone five minutes ago.”

  Drake couldn’t stay any longer. He walked out of the lodge to the sounds of his men preparing. He got the sleds ready as well as the large snow cat that he would have Oliver drive. Thankfully Adam was already in the air and headed toward the mountain.

  When Blaze and Oliver walked out Drake was on one of the sleds. “Oliver, take the snow cat. Blaze, take the other ski sled. Let’s get going. We’re losing light as we stand here. OnStar’s reporting moans, but they still haven’t received a response otherwise. Adam is in the air and will let us know as soon as he has eyes on.”

  “You sent him out in without me?” Blaze asked, stopping dead in his tracks.

  “The fuck? Do you think I’m stupid? Of course, I did.” Drake grumbled and smacked the back of Blaze’s head as they all got started with their heavy winter gear on. None of them needed it, it was for the benefit of the people they were saving of course. They couldn’t just show up in everyday wear, people might actually question that shit. Blaze was an adrenaline junkie and Drake had to send Adam in without Blaze because otherwise Blaze would jump out of the helicopter and there would be danger two-fold for whoever they were going to try to save.

  He watched his men as they all began to move. He was happy to see that they were actually doing what he had ordered and weren’t giving each other a hard time as they normally would. These men were the best men that he knew, ones that he would always have at his back and was thankful for that.

  Chapter 3

  Severe pain explo
ded inside of Alaska’s chest when the airbag exploded when she lost control and hit the guardrail, flying over the embankment into a wall of pure white nothingness.

  When she woke, all she could do was moan. The pain was constant, especially when she started to cough. There seemed to be some sort of powder floating through the air. She was assuming that it was from all of the air bags exploding when she crashed. She moaned again and then heard a strange creaking sound, and a woman’s voice.

  “Ma’am, this is Michelle with OnStar. We’ve detected a crash. A Search and Rescue team is on its way to you now. Please, ma’am, we need for you to respond so that we can update them on your status. Can you tell us your name?

  “Here.” She coughed again, trying to clear her lungs around the searing pain. “My name is Alaska Macon.”

  “Oh thank goodness. Help is close. You have the best on the way to you. The Blue and White will help you. I need you to stay as still and calm as you possibly can.”

  “No problem.” She wanted to say more, but she hurt so badly that she could barely think. And she couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. Add to it that she was upside down and she wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Keep talking to me.” The woman from OnStar stated. “Can you tell us what happened?”

  “No idea, I just remember spinning off the road.” She closed her eyes once more. Just a small nap, if only she could nap the pain would leave her.

  The next thing she knew, there was a tap-tap-tapping at the window that scared the holy shit out of her. She jerked against her seatbelt which had her crying out once more and blacking out again, giving in to the darkness and blessed absolution from the pain.

  ****

  Drake couldn’t believe it. The moment that he reached the SUV and had gotten past the scent of the exploded airbags he knew. It was her. Her scent hit him like an F5 Tornado hurling a billboard at him full force in the face. His bear was growling when he saw the state that his mate was in. He heard Blaze calling his name once more and looked up at his crew.

  Drake’s bear was growling to break free, and he had to fight it for several long moments, before reaching for the mic at the base of his neck. Finally, he spoke to his men on the topside. They were holding him up and the only things keeping his mate’s car from slipping further down the incline.

  “She’s here. I startled her when I tapped at the window. She’s bleeding, but it's mostly clotted. Her color doesn’t look good. She’s mine.” He stated bluntly.

  He heard the nothing but silence from his men and then it was surprisingly Oliver who said, “Well holy shit, who would have known that Drake would have found his mate hanging upside down off the side of deadman's curve. Come on boss, let’s get her up and out of there.”

  “I would rather you didn’t mention just how precarious of a position that my mate is in right now. Asshat.” Drake growled once more. He was fighting his bear. Fighting everything inside of him to keep from shifting to rip the door of the SUV off to get to his mate faster, because the man inside knew that would only endanger her more.

  “Lower me down the rescue basket so that I can pull her out. Once I have her, you can let the SUV go. She’s all that matters.” Drake added and looked at his mate once more.

  He wasn’t surprised when Oliver slid down at his side. “Okay boss. You need more than just your hands, so use us. Blaze and James have the wenches locked and are good. Trent is on his way down the other side to help bolster the vehicle until we are able to get her free. Trust us boss.”

  Drake nodded. He had to trust them, they were his clan. He had trusted them with his life time and time again, but this was his mate, and he was having a hard time. She was special, and she didn’t even know it yet. “Okay, let’s get the neck brace on her and then the backboard. We will do everything by the book. OnStar says that the doors are unlocked but with the way that she went down I’m going to go on the assumption that they are jammed so this is going to be a smash and grab, boys. Are we all ready?”

  When his teammates, his brothers in arms both nodded yes, he got started releasing his mate from the death trap she was encased in.

  Chapter 4

  None of them had ever seen Drake shaken before. No one had ever seen him anything but in total and complete control. Oliver looked over at Trent and nodded, he could see that Trent was just as shocked that their Alpha was in the shape that he was in. Drake was literally shaking, his bear so close to the surface that it was visible from time to time.

  “Boss you really need to dial back the bear, or you are going to scare her shitless when she wakes up.” Oliver didn’t generally talk a great deal, words just got in the way, but in this case, he knew that Drake needed someone to talk to him, to talk him and his bear both down.

  “Right, yes, you are right. Thanks, Oliver.”

  Oliver watched Drake struggle to wrangle his bear but then the man took control of the bear and the situation. The woman was in danger, they all knew that. It was more than the possibility of the vehicle sliding more it was the blood loss and the cold that had obviously been vicious to her if her pale coloring had any indications. Add to it the brewing storm, they would be damn lucky if they were able to get her strapped onto the helo before it hit. Period.

  As a unit the three bears worked together, Trent ensuring that the SUV was braced even more while he and Drake worked to pull the young woman out of the vehicle carefully. Oliver slid the neck brace onto the woman and heard Drake’s bear growling.

  “Knock it off, Drake. You know I need to do my job. I’m your mates best chance at survival right now so back off.” Drake was their Alpha and Oliver typically never talked shit to him, but he needed it at that moment because otherwise, he would be dealing with a pissed off a polar bear on top of a semi-conscious human woman.

  Oliver looked down into the pale and nearly white face of his Alpha’s mate and knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was in grave danger. He was hanging upside down by a rope that his crew was holding for him as he checked her over. Her pupils weren’t reacting correctly, that much was clear from the small flash of his light in her eyes, and her face was swollen. The airbag had apparently deployed directly in her face, and the added pressure of her hanging upside down didn’t help her at all. He was worried about brain swelling, but there was no way in hell he was going to voice that to his Alpha.

  “Okay, let’s get her strapped in the sled, get her up to the top and then we will have Adam lower the basket for her. I will ride up with her. She’s bad boss, but you know the helicopter won’t hold both of us and her.” Oliver didn’t want to say it, and he saw the shock in Trent’s face that he had even voiced it aloud, but it was a simple truth. “You can meet us at the hospital, but we need to get her up and moving now.”

  Again Drake was growling, that’s when the woman moaned once more. She gasped in pain, and that seemed to solidify Drake’s resolve. “Okay. But you take good god damn care of her.”

  “I will. Trent, grab her bag if you can before the SUV goes down further. I’m sure she has a family, and she likely has a cell phone in her purse. I will work on seeing if I can free her luggage after we have her topside.” Once more Oliver was in awe of his Alpha, Drake took control again and was proud of him.

  Oliver watched Trent, who was now dangling upside down, reach into the SUV and grab the woman’s purse and a hot pink cell phone, of all things.

  “Okay, she’s ready to be pulled up. Blaze, start her up slowly. We need to get her to the Trauma Center in Anchorage.” It was the closest center that would be able to treat her the way she needed, and it would be a long assed ninety-minute flight. He figured it would be an even longer drive for this woman’s family when they got the call, and even more so for his Alpha. They all knew that this was going to be a stressful time for their alpha and all of them.

  All of them worked together to get the woman out of the danger zone quickly and efficiently. Once she was topside, Blaze began covering her up with blankets, and they str
apped into the basket that Adam had lowered down. They stepped back for a moment to allow Drake to touch his mate, none of them would deny him that second in time, but Oliver had to get them moving. He lashed himself above the basket so that he could keep the woman as steady as possible and waited for Adam to get them winched into the helicopter. Adam would push his baby, aka his helicopter, and get this woman to the hospital as fast as possible.

  “Hey, boss, a name and any information you could find on the woman would be good,” Oliver called through their microphone connection so he could start to fill out paperwork once he was in the helicopter with the young lady.

  “According to OnStar, her name is Alaska Macon. We will look for any medical information in her purse and bags. Seems the boys are having fun trying to learn new and fun ways of outdoing each other.” Drake growled. “We have her luggage, but there is nothing medically related in there. I’m about to give her ICE contacts a call.” Oliver adjusted the IV line he placed on the woman’s arm as he listened to his boss. ICE, the “IN CASE of EMERGENCY” contacts, it was great that the woman had set that up, too many people forgot about it when getting new phones.

  “Good. Call them and be gentle. I’m sure that they are already worried.” Oliver didn’t know why he was telling Drake that. If anyone was the epitome of calm, it was his Alpha, but then again the woman that was riding in the basket below him was his Alpha’s mate so yeah it bore repeating.

  “Just take care of her, Oliver and stop your fucking mother-henning. I know what you’re doing.” Drake growled in Oliver’s headphones. Oliver just chuckled and began to slowly warm the woman while he treated all of the smaller wounds that he could.

  Chapter 5