Natural-Born Protector / Saved by the Monarch

by Carla Cassidy

  He had, when he’d been a teenager. But his mother and father had always been shining examples of monarchs who loved their people and did their duty and whatever else they could to better the common man’s life. And at one point, he’d come to understand the challenge and beauty of that.

  “Lazlo is the rebel prince,” he said. “You’d like him.”

  “And what are you?” she snapped. “Mother Theresa, dedicating your life to the masses?”

  If she knew the thoughts he’d had while holding her in his arms, she wouldn’t have confused him with a saint. He let his gaze rake over her. Heat gathered between them slowly, tension that had nothing to do with their disagreement on the duties of a prince.

  The banked fire inside him burned despite the freezing cold around them. It would have taken little to burst into an open flame. Disconcerting to say the least. A prince was, at all times, in full command of his basic needs and emotions. When it came to ladies, a prince courted, he did not ravish. A prince was not overtaken by out-of-control desires.

  So he cooled the heat that had gathered inside him and loosened his arms around her. “Lazlo is the rebel of the family.” He tried to pick up their conversation but didn’t know what to say beyond this. He had to look away from her, so he looked toward the opening of the cave.

  Seconds passed, endless, one after the other.

  “Will I meet him?”

  He knew what she was asking. Will we survive? He had no business making impossible promises, but he did anyway. “You will.”

  His thoughts darkened as he wondered how his family fared. Maltmore Castle was somewhere below them.

  “But why do your enemies want to harm Arpad? If anything happens to him, you would just take his place, right? Technically, there are five back-up princes. Hurting Prince Arpad wouldn’t end the monarchy.” She frowned as she tried to make sense of it.

  “The Queen is very ill.” From the way her eyes widened, he knew that she understood what he meant. “Arpad could be taking the crown soon. His death would cause a disruption. Chaos, even if it’s temporary, would play into the hands of our enemies. All they need is a crack in the wall of tradition, to make people wonder if the monarchy really is necessary. Arpad is the charismatic one. People have been preparing for him to be king for a long time now.”

  “They might not swear allegiance to you as readily?” She rubbed her hands together. Their gloves were wet, so they had both taken them off.

  “No. If civil war broke out…they might not accept me as their new king.”

  And, God help him, he did not want to be king. He was happy as a soldier, happy to be protecting his country and his family without having to be involved in politics. But if the unthinkable happened, he would do what was expected of him.

  “I haven’t spent nearly as much time in the public eye. I spend most of my time on the base. I’m a through-and-through military man.” Since it looked like she could barely bend her fingers, he took her hands between his own to warm them.

  She didn’t protest. Which meant she had to be about freezing to death. Her comments in their conversation were coming increasingly slowly. He knew what that meant, along with her eyelids that were beginning to droop. Hypothermia wasn’t that far off. He held her close and prayed for the end of the storm so he could get her off the mountain.

  She leaned forward, presumably to rest her head on her drawn-up knees, but it didn’t prove comfortable, he supposed, because she ended up leaning against his chest. Her hair slid aside and revealed the graceful arch of her neck.

  He could feel a shiver go through her, and couldn’t help thinking that she wouldn’t be here if not for him. She would be at the Ramada, sipping cocktails at the bar with handsome men hitting on her by now. He erased that last part from his mind when he found that it prickled. Then he dipped his head and let his lips touch her neck.

  “Hey, you said no more kissing.” She turned slowly with an accusing glare that was a faint shadow of her regular fiery self.

  “Just checking your temperature.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t look like she had the energy to argue with him. “I’m freezing.”

  He held her tighter. “Try to think about something else. Like the dragon video game that you’re making. I didn’t know girls were into video games.”

  “I’m not a girl. I’m a grown woman.” She shot him some weak indignation.

  “Certainly so. Would never make that mistake. Heard you roar and all that.”

  A moment of silence passed. She had to be in worse shape than he’d thought. She wasn’t even rising to the bait.

  “You could put a prince in. You could pattern him after me. Handsome and valorous.”

  She gave a muffled groan and, after a moment, said, “She has a dragon.”

  “A pet dragon?” He considered the possibilities.

  “A dragon friend.”

  “She could do things with a prince that she can’t do with the dragon.”

  She shot him a dark look, but the corner of her mouth twitched up. “It’s not an X-rated game. It’s for elementary school kids.”

  “A shame,” he said, and was aware that they had moved even closer to each other for heat.

  Her lips were inches from his.

  The air thickened around them. Her gaze flew to his, filled with alarm and something else. It was the something else he wanted to investigate.

  But a deep rumble sounded above them before he had a chance to do anything.

  Her look changed to one of panic, and she burrowed her face into his neck as the cave shook around them. “What is that?”

  The rumbling got louder. Right on top of them.

  “Avalanche,” he said, powerless to do anything but watch as snow slid over the opening of the cave from above and buried them, sealing them inside.

  HER BODY SHOOK ALONG with the side of the mountain as Judi clung to the relative safety of Miklos’s arms. He sat motionless, holding on to her. She could no longer see him, all their light was cut off. But she could feel snow pushing against her, snow that the force of the avalanche had shoved inside their small cave.

  “Grab your gloves,” he said, letting her go.

  She immediately missed his heat, the sense of safety and comfort he had provided. She searched the snow around them, found one glove, but not the other, panicked a little. “I lost one.”

  “Here.” He touched her.

  She took the glove by feel and put it on. The rumble quieted as quickly as it started. She could hear snow squishing and Miklos grunting.

  “Dig,” he said. “On top. As high as you can.”

  Words could not describe the sense of terror she felt. Her muscles clenched with it. But she made herself move and set to the task gingerly, not wanting to disturb some balance and send more snow tumbling into the cave, which happened anyway.

  Her fingers, which had warmed in his hands, felt frozen again once back in the wet gloves. Her fingertips were aching with cold within minutes.

  Dig.

  Breathe.

  Blood pounded in her ears from the effort. Darkness and fear seemed to swallow her up.

  “Faster,” he said after a while.

  She was pretty sure she was going to lose fingers over this. Or more. She was well aware that the odds of them getting out were not good. Maybe if she had a moment to catch her breath, she would regain back some strength. “Can’t we rest?”

  His voice was tight when he responded. “We’re not going to have enough air.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. The fresh panic gave her a shot of newfound energy.

  Dig.

  Scratch.

  Push.

  Move. Move. Move.

  Her lungs constricted. She gasped for air. Oh, God. She wasn’t ready to die.

  “Relax.” His voice, soothing, wrapped around her in the darkness.

  “I think.” She gasped in a lungful of air. “We.” She gasped again. “Running out of oxygen.”

&n
bsp; She was beginning to feel dizzy. She could not see the cave walls in the dark, but felt certain that they were closing in. Her movements grew frenzied.

  “You’re panicking.” He sounded calm and sure.

  She prickled at that.

  “Breathe in slowly. Count to four. Breathe out.”

  What good did counting do when they had no air? She wanted to shout at him, but when she did slow her breathing, she found that he’d been right. She was breathing easier.

  If she weren’t frozen senseless, it probably would have irritated her that she was proving herself to be a total wimp by freaking out. Especially since she was going for the whole independent, capable woman sort of image. For the prince’s benefit. So he would finally get the picture that she wasn’t the type who could be coerced into an arranged marriage.

  She cleared her throat and controlled her digging, changed her efforts from frantic to effective. “How much snow do you think is above us?” She held herself together as much as she possibly could.

  “Dig up and out. Right next to my tunnel. We need room to push the snow back.” He reached back and adjusted her hands. “Could be one foot, could be a hundred.”

  She so did not need to hear that. But she was glad he was leveling with her. He obviously thought that she was capable of handling the situation. She prayed that he was right about her. In any case, his trust in her made her want to try harder.

  She threw herself into the work, but her fingers were numb, her body stiff from cold. She was losing focus fast, she realized when she found herself spacing out just a minute or two later. Most of her thoughts were now circling around how she could get warm again, instinct pushing her to stop all movement that ate up her remaining energy. All she wanted was to curl up in a ball.

  She’d been half-frozen sitting in the cave. Being surrounded by snow on all sides now was bringing her body temperature down rapidly.

  She forced herself to keep working alongside him. “Has this ever happened to you?”

  She badly needed to hear that an avalanche was survivable. She lived in D.C. What did she know about avalanches? An image of a big, hairy dog with a small barrel of brandy tied around his neck, sniffing snow, came to mind from some old TV show. She didn’t think any of those would be coming around. Nobody knew that they were up here.

  “Can’t say that it has,” he said.

  She felt like crying—it wasn’t as if he would have seen her in the dark—but she didn’t want any tears to freeze to her cheeks. She kept on digging.

  The kidnapping had been a shock to her system and utterly surreal, but a quick bullet seemed preferable now to the slow suffocation that she faced here. She could hear Miklos breathing heavily next to her. He was clearing enormous amounts of snow. She knew this because she could feel more and more room ahead that she could keep moving into. Her efforts seemed pitiful compared to his.

  They were out of the cave now, in a snow tunnel, going up. He moved in front of her, pushed snow back, and she did her best to shove it down next to her toward the cave, kick it along with her feet. But after a while, the snow behind her piled up, closing them in from that end.

  Leaving them with even less breathing space.

  Don’t stop moving.

  Breathe slow and even. She’d read someplace that breathing rapidly used up more oxygen.

  She suspected that if it weren’t for the air trapped in the snow around them, they would have already suffocated. Air that wasn’t going to last long anyway.

  They weren’t going to make it. The avalanche was too deep. The realization was becoming harder and harder to ignore, her dark premonitions impossible to shake. This was it.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked without stopping when she went still from fear and exhaustion for a second.

  “Starting to feel claustrophobic.” She set to work again, as much as she could. Too slow. Her fingers no longer moved, so she just pushed her hands around from the wrist like small shovels.

  Snow surrounded them.

  For a moment she couldn’t tell which way was up. She felt a flash of panic again. Then drew a deep breath and calmed herself, listened to the sound of the prince’s digging.

  Miklos. Right. He was supposed to be above her.

  As her mind clicked back on, she realized that she was entering hypothermia. First the brain slows, then the body, then comes death.

  “I think we’re nearing the surface,” he said after another minute.

  Her ears were buzzing. “How do you know?” Pushing the words out was an effort.

  She could no longer do anything with the snow that he pushed back, just roll against it awkwardly and compact it to the sides of their tunnel, which made the space even tighter. She felt like she was trapped in a coffin made of ice. She spaced out for a moment.

  “The snow doesn’t feel as packed here.” His voice brought her back.

  Too late, she thought as a wave of dizziness washed over her a hundred times stronger than before. She was going to pass out. She didn’t have the strength to tell him. She didn’t think she’d be telling anyone anything ever again. In hindsight, she should have let him kiss her one last time.

  She fully expected to die. She was too cold to stay alive.

  But after another minute she could see a faint light somewhere up ahead, filtering through snow and ice. She blinked, pretty much the only movement she was capable of at this stage. Her lungs burned. She held her head still to combat the dizziness.

  Then his hands broke through, and fresh air rushed into their small tunnel. She coughed and watched as he climbed forward, careful enough not to kick snow into her face. She registered that he’d made it out, but didn’t have the strength to go after him. Then he was back, head first, digging madly again, and her hands were enfolded in his strong grip at last as he pulled her to the surface.

  Air.

  Her lungs hurt and made squeaky noises as she breathed in. Her body was one solid block of ice.

  The sun was blinding with the clouds gone, its brilliant rays reflecting off the snow. They hadn’t had sun goggles in the first place; there’d been none on the pegs with the ski suits.

  She couldn’t keep her eyes open.

  “Breathe.” Miklos was holding her face between his ungloved hands, rubbing her cheeks. His palms were the only warm things in a world of frozen snow. “Breathe.”

  She did her best.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after her wheezing quieted. He didn’t let her go. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be here.”

  She wanted to tell him that he didn’t order the kidnapping, nor did he cause the avalanche, but her lungs still felt too tight to speak. He grabbed for her hand, and she winced when his touch brought more pain.

  He was opening his ski suit the next moment, then pulled her gloves off, took her hands gently and pulled them under his clothes, pressing them against his bare skin.

  Her body and senses were mostly numb. All she could feel was the warmth of his chest and the steady, reassuring beat of his heart. Thump, thump, thump. It gave her something to focus on other than the strange sleepiness that wrapped her brain in cotton.

  Minutes passed before feeling returned to her hands.

  “Can you walk?” he asked after a while.

  She wanted more rest, to sleep for just a few seconds, but knew that way lay trouble. So she sat up, let him help her to her feet but immediately sunk to midcalf in the loose snow, like he had. And she realized that their skis were somewhere in the cave below.

  Along with the gun, their only protection from whoever would be following. She didn’t think the men who had kidnapped them were just going to let them go. And they were out in the open.

  They scrambled off the top of the fresh snow, onto a path that was frozen solid, supporting their weight and making progress easier. He was there to prop her up every time she slipped.

  Her mind still wasn’t functioning all that clearly, so it took her a while to notice that instead of the d
irection they’d been following earlier, they were now headed straight down the mountain.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the village,” he said.

  She blinked. The village he’d talked about earlier? Where, according to him, all kinds of danger awaited?

  WHEN SHE COULD NO LONGER WALK, Miklos lifted her onto his back. She weighed next to nothing.

  She didn’t blame him once for being in this situation, didn’t once complain. She just hung on to his shoulders with grim determination—after that initial, embarrassed protest. The day was nearly over. They’d marched miles without food or water. She had wanted to eat snow, but he hadn’t let her. That brought down a person’s core temperature faster than anything.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  She didn’t respond. She hadn’t responded to anything he’d asked in the last hour or so. She was completely still, no longer even shivering.

  He figured the village to be about a mile ahead.

  She needed serious medical help without delay. He pushed himself to the limit, knowing that every second counted.

  When he heard voices from around a boulder, he slowly lowered Judi into the snow, noting her colorless face and barely blinking eyes, and dropped to his stomach next to her.

  People were talking ahead. Friend or foe? was the topmost question in his mind.

  Then the men came into view, wearing snowshoes, walking by at a distance of ten or fifteen meters, not yet noticing them. Their rifles threw long shadows in the twilight.

  Chapter Five

  The two men had guns. Miklos was alone, exhausted and unarmed. But as a soldier, he was prepared to take on odds like that or worse.

  “Don’t move. I’ll be back.” He barely breathed the words into Judi’s ear, then rolled away from her and stole closer to the men on the uneven ground, moving between snow drifts. He hoped to catch what they were talking about, but by the time he got close enough, they seemed to be discussing nothing more interesting than the weather.

  “Avalanche warning’s out.”

  “Good reason not to be on the damn mountain.” The man stomped his feet. “Hope we won’t be stuck up here long. Hate this damn cold.” He stomped again.