Leif’s fingers continued to caress the curve of my cheek, the pads cool and rough on my skin. His gaze seemed to darken with intensity. “Nikolina,” he whispered again.
I shivered at the way he said my name. It sounded so…intense. Emotional. “Can I show you something?” I asked him.
He nodded.
Even though it pained me to pull away from his gentle touch, I stood and moved to my tent, digging out the small wooden carving I’d brought with me. I sat back down next to him and held it out.
It was a small wooden carving of a female bear with a tutu on her waist, balancing on a ball.
He took it from me, and wonder flashed across his face. A smile broke out. “I remember this.”
My breath caught. “You do?”
“I do…” He thought for a long moment, and then looked at me. “I remember a girl with pigtails and a pink tutu. She was pouting because her cousins could shift into bear form and she couldn’t yet.”
I swallowed hard, my heart aching at the memory. “And you carved this figurine and gave it to me because you wanted me to feel better.”
“I remember,” he said with a nod. He glanced over at me, and his hand went to my hair, twisted into two long braids at the sides of my face. “It’s almost the same color as before.”
“Almost,” I said, smiling. “My family is born blonde and stays blonde.”
His long fingers moved across my face, and brushed at the gold ring in my nostril. “I don’t remember this, though.”
I laughed. “I went through a rebellious phase.”
“Why?”
I hesitated at that soft, blunt question, and then decided to answer it honestly. “My fiancée, Ramsey, was cast out of the bear clans until he apologized. He was fifteen. It didn’t look like he’d ever come back to marry me, so I decided I’d do what I wanted. I pierced my nose and dyed my hair black.”
He studied me for a moment longer, and his fingers continued to caress my face. “But your hair’s not black anymore.”
“It’s not,” I agreed. “It looked awful. But I liked the nose ring, so I kept it.”
“How long did it take for Ramsey to come back for you?”
The question hurt more than I thought it would. “He…he didn’t come back.” Tears pricked at my eyes, the ache of rejection still as painful now as it had been on the first day. “He mated a wolf-shifter.”
“Then he’s a fool,” Leif said simply. His fingers brushed at the tears that threatened to freeze to my lashes. “And he’s not worth your pain.”
“I know,” I told him. “But it’s a hard thing to forget.”
A wry smile curved his mouth. “I seem to be good at forgetting.”
I almost agreed with him, but held back. It seemed impolite to point out just how much he’d forgotten. I wanted to ask him what he remembered of why he’d run away, but it seemed he didn’t want to bring it up, and I was reluctant to be the one to approach the topic. “How are you feeling today?”
His hand dropped, and he picked up his mug again. Drank. Thought. Then he looked at me. “I’m troubled.”
“Troubled?”
He nodded. “I figure something bad must have happened for me to come so far away and hide.”
Oh. “It did,” I said softly.
“What was it?”
“You sure you want me to tell you?”
“I’m not sure at all,” he said. “But I also wonder why you’re here, after sixteen years.”
I’m going into heat and I need a were-bear mate and you’re the only one left that’s not sixty or related. But the words lodged in my throat. “You can’t guess why I’ve come?”
He shook his head, his tangled hair flying. He looked like a wild man in that moment, so feral that I again questioned my sense in coming here. “I should know, though, shouldn’t I?” He tipped the thermos up and finished it, then offered it back to me. “Don’t tell me anything, actually. I want to see what comes back on its own.”
I nodded. “And if it doesn’t come back?”
“Then it might be a blessing,” Leif said. He stretched and got to his feet, and then gave me a shy smile before turning to leave once more.
I let him go, my thoughts muddy and confused. Part of me wanted to hold on to him, to have him stick around so we could keep talking…but Leif knew there was a problem. He knew me being here wasn’t normal, and needed to figure it out.
Because if he didn’t remember Katja’s death, it was going to come as a shock to him all over again….and I didn’t want to be the one to blurt it out.
I didn’t know what to do.
So I watched him go and said nothing.
He didn’t return that day, but the next morning, when I awoke, I found that a blocky, crude bear had been sculpted into the snow on one of the ridges near my camp.
Upon seeing it, I laughed and clapped my hands. So there was hope after all.
Chapter Three
Every day for the next week, Leif stopped by for breakfast. I sweetened his coffee with all of my chocolate and shared my protein bars with him. If I ran out of supplies, well, I’d just go home that much earlier. Each day that Leif showed up, he was a little more coherent, a little more alert, and stayed a little longer. I took out my sewing kit and let out the seams in some of my clothes, cobbling a few shirts together to give him a piecemeal top and a pair of (admittedly) ugly pants to wear. I made him a pair of booties out of pieces of my sleeping bag. I was tearing through my supplies, but that was okay, too. I felt like progress was being had, and anything I could do to turn Leif a bit more human, I was all for it.
Having him around camp was far more enjoyable than I’d expected. There was a shyness to Leif, but also an alpha rawness to his mannerisms. It was like he was deliberately being careful around me, conscious of the fact that he’d hurt me while mindless. Now, he seemed just as determined to treat me with kid gloves. Every morning, I’d wake up and find a new sculpture left in a snow drift nearby - a penguin, a reindeer, a mermaid…and the mermaid had looked like me, right down to my braids and nose-piercing. I’d laughed with delight at the sight of it. Leif was finding his artistry again, and in doing so, seemed to be finding himself.
It had been several days since I’d had the opportunity to bathe, though, and I was feeling grimy. I’d noticed little rings of dirt under Leif’s nail beds as well, and decided that both of us could use a bit of a cleaning. Of course, being that it was the Antarctic, it was difficult to get the urge to bathe when it was so chilly outside.
Still, I could do with a quick sponge bath, and I suspected that Leif would, too, if I threw it out there.
So the next morning, I woke up earlier than normal. I heated water on my fire and rushed it back to my tent, and then stripped down. I scrubbed myself with a wet cloth and a bar of soap, and then undid my braids, wet my hair, and washed it as well. It wasn’t the best bath I’d ever had, but I felt cleaner - and smelled cleaner - than I had in days. By the time Leif arrived for his morning coffee, I was re-braiding my wet hair.
He shifted before coming into camp, and as he did, I laid out his clothes that I’d made for him. We’d fallen into a bit of a pattern. I made coffee, Leif showed up, dressed, and we chatted for a bit before he left again.
As he dressed, I watched his nostrils flare, and he looked over at me, eyes narrowing. “What’s that smell?”