Wilder (The Wild Ones 3)

Chapter 1

PIPER

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“You have no idea the hell I had to go through just to get out to this cabin. I’ve already faced death three times more than I have in my entire life,” I tell the deer as I throw the rope I found randomly lying outside my late grandmother’s cabin.

The rope lands right beside the struggling deer, who is trying to climb out of the hole in the ice, water splashing as the deer makes pitiful sounds of distress. I whimper when I realize the deer isn’t smart enough to bite down on the rope and let me pull it out.

“I’m only doing this because of Bambi. That damn movie broke my heart, and I’ve been pro-deer ever since,” I say on a whimper as I ease out onto the ice, already slipping and dancing around to keep my balance.

I try to stay away from the softer patches that don’t appear as frozen, as I quickly fashion a noose. I know it’s morbid, but it’s the only rope-tying trick I know that will be of any help. Thank my medieval-obsessed father.

This may be the one time I ever use this knowledge for…anything at all.

It takes a few tries, but I finally manage to loop the deer’s neck, and I pull quickly. After some really panicked struggling, I manage to free the small fawn from the water.

It’s too still, and I hurriedly—but very carefully—slide across the ice on my hands and knees to undo the noose before I accidentally kill it while trying to save the damn thing.

It’s just limp as I make haste freeing its neck, and my breaths fog in front of my face as I bend over to listen for a heartbeat.

Just as my hair touches its stomach, the wild thing leaps up with a battle cry that scares the shit out of me, and I yelp as I crash backwards.

My eyes widen as the deer runs off, just as the ice beneath me cracks with one split-second warning before I’m plunged into icy water.

Everything happens so terrifyingly fast. My life doesn’t even have time to flash before my eyes this time like it has the other three times today.

A bloodcurdling scream is shut off when I’m suddenly sucking painfully cold water into my lungs. My body feels like it’s on fire and freezing at once, as I scramble to push myself back to the surface. Fortunately, I pop up in the same huge hole I’ve made, instead of getting stuck under the ice—a freshly realized fear of mine.

Just as my hands grip the edge of the burning cold ice, something firm grabs my wrist. In the next instant, I’m completely yanked out of the water and dragged over the edge.

My entire body is shaking so hard, and my vision is dimming as something loud chatters. I think it’s my teeth. I’m not really sure what’s going on—everything and nothing and something else too.

I feel myself moving, but I’m too disoriented to take in exactly what’s happening.

“Wake up!” someone shouts near my ear just as a motor revs to life somewhere around us.

I’m asleep? No, that person isn’t talking to me. Who’s talking? Is someone talking?

“What’d Dr. Harvey say that one time about icicle people?”

“What?!” someone else snaps.

“How do we warm her up?” I hear the other one asking.

Two male voices are talking around me, but their words are muffled and my eyelids are too heavy to see anything. I’m not sure how this day went to hell so quickly. No good deed goes unpunished.

I feel like I’m moving, but I’m freezing too hardcore to care about anything else. Everything burns. Everything hurts. I’m almost worried my eyelids are frozen shut, because I can’t seem to open my eyes.

“Fucking wake up, you stupid fucking girl!” someone shouts close to my ear again.

Three voices. It’s three voices instead of two. The appropriate fear is absent, since I’m positive I’m about to die anyway.

I open my mouth, trying to form words, unsure what really comes out.

“Did she just say something about Bambi?” someone asks.

I feel jostled when we come to an abrupt stop, and my eyelids crack open just barely, seeing blurry, tall men as someone presumably carries me.

“He said to strip her out of her wet clothes and that skin-to-skin heat would be helpful.”

“Not it,” two guys say real damn fast, but I’m still stuck on the skin-to-skin thing.

“You can’t strip naked and spoon with her, you morons,” a girl’s voice cuts in, and I shudder—either because I’m still literally freezing to death…or because I’m traumatized and terrified.

“You do it. You’re a girl. She won’t freak out so bad,” the guy carrying me says as we’re suddenly inside a warm house of some sort, but everything is still too blurry to make out.

I blink for a few seconds too long, and when I come too, a man’s face is hovering over mine as he barks at me to wake the hell up.