Chapter 66 The Descent
The journey down from the Grove was a different beast entirely. On the way up, the mountain climber had battled gravity with the desperate, roaring urgency of a rescue mission, the engine screaming against the incline. Now, on the way down, gravity was the enemy. The massive, heavy-treaded vehicle had to fight for every inch of friction against the slick, frozen shale, the transmission whining in low gear as it tried to hold back tons of steel from becoming a runaway sled.
Inside the cabin, the atmosphere had shifted from terrified silence to a warm, cautious vigilance. Fennigan had refused the passenger seat again. He sat on the reinforced floor, his long legs sprawled out to brace against the bulkhead, with Tara nestled securely between them, her back resting against his broad chest.
This time, the fear that gripped him wasn't the sharp, cold dread of imminent death or the silence of a coma. It was something softer, but infinitely heavier—the terrifying fragility of having everything he loved within arm's reach.
He looked down at Leela, his chin resting lightly on the top of her head. She was awake, her color returning, but she was fragile—like a piece of fine porcelain that had been glued back together. He watched her chest rise and fall, memorizing the rhythm. Then his gaze shifted to the woven basket secured to the floor mounts where Caspian and Briar slept.
The twins were remarkably, almost suspiciously, content. Despite the lurching of the vehicle and the growl of the engine, they didn't fuss. It was as if they sensed the shift in the atmospheric pressure—their mother was back, her heart was beating in rhythm with theirs, and the "pack" was whole again. They were safe in the magnetic field of their parents, blissfully unaware of the sheer drop just outside the frost-rimmed window.
"You're staring again," Leela murmured, tilting her head back to look at him upside down. Her voice was tired, but the tease was there.
"I'm memorizing," Fennigan corrected softly, tightening his arms around her waist as the climber hit a bump. "I'm making sure this is real. Two days ago, this floor was the loneliest place in the world. Now it's the only place that matters."
Up front, Jax was aging ten years in a single afternoon. His hands were clamped onto the steering yoke so hard his knuckles were stark white, the leather creaking under his grip. Every time the treads slipped even an inch on the ice, his breath hitched in a sharp, audible gasp.
Every time Jax would gasp, Ginny would reach over and lay her hand on his leg which seemed to let him breath easier.
He glanced in the rearview mirror, seeing his brother, his sister-in-law, and the future heirs of the pack all sitting in the impact zone.
"You know Mom is waiting at the tree line, right?" Jax muttered, his voice tight as he navigated a particularly nasty switchback. "She's probably pacing a trench in the snow."
Fennigan chuckled low in his throat. "She's just happy we're coming down, Jax."
"No, you don't understand," Jax said, his eyes widening as the back end of the climber fishtailed slightly. He corrected it with a frantic spin of the wheel. "If I bring them back with so much as a scratch... if I bounce a single hair on Caspian’s head... Mom is going to beat me up. I’m serious, Fen. I’m not scared of the cliff. I’m scared of Mom. She’ll skin me alive and use me as a rug for the nursery if anything happens to those grandbabies."
"She would," Leela agreed weakly from the floor, a small smile playing on her lips. "She's very protective of her investments."
"Not helping, Leela!" Jax shouted, sweating despite the freezing temperatures outside.
The Slide
Then, the fear became reality.
They were navigating a notorious stretch of the trail known as 'The Widow's Drop'—a steep, banking turn that hung out over the valley. The sun had melted the top layer of snow during the day, which had then refrozen into a sheet of invisible black ice as the shadows lengthened.
The climber hit the patch. The treads lost their bite instantly.
"Hold on!" Jax roared, the yoke spinning uselessly in his hands.
The heavy machine didn't just slip; it launched. The back end swung out violently, transforming the all-terrain vehicle into a four-ton hockey puck. They bypassed the switchback entirely, sliding sideways off the trail and onto the steep, open face of the scree slope.
It was a terrifying, frictionless glide. The world outside the window became a blur of white snow and gray rock.
In the back, Fennigan didn't scream. He moved with the fluid, explosive speed of an Alpha protecting his own. In one motion, he unbuckled his safety harness—an act of insanity in a crash, but necessary to shield them. He threw his massive body over Tara and the baby basket, pressing Leela down into the floor mats and curling his spine around the twins' wicker carrier. He braced his heavy boots against the far wall, turning himself into a living roll cage.
"I've got you!" he grunted, his muscles locking rigid as the climber slammed over hidden boulders and ice ridges.
For ten heart-stopping seconds, they plummeted. They covered nearly half the distance of the descent in one uncontrolled, terrifying slide. The metal hull groaned and screamed as it scraped against the mountain, sparks flying past the windows.
The Impact
Then, with a bone-jarring CRUNCH, the climber’s treads finally caught a patch of deep gravel near the lower tree line. The vehicle spun 180 degrees, throwing snow fifty feet into the air, and slammed backward into a high, dense snowbank.
The impact rocked them violently, but the snowbank acted as a cushion. The engine sputtered, coughed once, and died.
Silence descended instantly, heavy and ringing.
"Everyone okay?!" Jax shouted, his voice cracking, his hands shaking so badly he couldn't unclench them from the wheel. "Fen? Leela?"
Fennigan slowly lifted his head, shaking the dizziness away. He checked the basket first. The twins blinked, startled by the sudden stop, but the padding—and their father's body—had kept them perfectly still. They weren't even crying; they just looked annoyed at the interruption.
He looked down at Leela. She was breathless, her eyes wide, clutching his forearm with a bruising grip, but she was unharmed.
"We're good," Fennigan called out, his voice steady despite the adrenaline flooding his system. He kissed Leela’s forehead, letting out a long, shaky breath. "We're good. The babies are good."
Jax slumped back in his seat, dropping his head onto the steering wheel. "Oh, thank the Goddess," he breathed. "Mom isn't going to kill me today."
Fennigan laughed, a harsh, relieved sound. "Remind me to give you a raise when we get back, Jax. That was some... creative parking."