Alpha's Fire

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Tabitha, age 18

The chilly air nips my skin, bared by my tank top. An hour into my hike, I’ve already shed my jacket—I’m a strange combination of cold and sweaty. Weird, but it feels good.

There’s snow on the peaks towering ahead of me. It’s spring here, but snow still lingers in the long shadows of the thickly clustered pines.

This early in the morning, my breath puffs as I trek across a frozen field where a few yellow wildflowers poke their heads up over the matted grass. I’m the only tourist crazy enough to be hiking so early in the season. I haven’t seen anyone on the trail.

The mountains of northern Italy are technically the Alps, but the locals call them I Dolomiti. The hike I chose isn’t as challenging as the ones that would carry me up the tallest peak, but my thighs burn from the steady incline. It’s still better than swaying down a catwalk in five-inch heels and a weird poofy dress that left most of my back and butt uncovered. When I was a model, I’d do anything for fashion but no longer. This model has officially quit the circuit.

“I don't understand,” my mother wailed when I called to tell her. “You were doing so well. You were making such great contacts.” In mom-speak, that meant I was meeting men. Rich men who’d love to have a model on their arm. The sort of man my mom hoped would sweep me off my feet and give me a diamond ring and marriage proposal or at least a diamond watch and an extended stay in his private penthouse. Maybe even a car and a few trips to the Riviera or Seychelles.

The type of man my mother always chased after.

I didn’t tell her that it was my date with exactly that kind of man that broke me. I was at another boring after-party on the arm of a short stock broker named Paul. Perfectly nice guy, but just because I'm a model and his head barely clears my shoulder doesn't mean that he has the right to put his hand on my ass.

I’ve stomped across the meadow and up the trail that’s disappearing between the blue-gray pines before I realize I’m muttering under my breath. A bird trills on an evergreen branch above my head, and my rage disappears.

I take a moment to clear my lungs. The air is fresh and better than any expensive cologne. The water flowing from a mountain stream is pure snowmelt and probably tastes like heaven. Tiny purple flowers peek up from the cracks in the gray rocks, and the bird above my head warbles like his s*x life depends on it.

I’m far from the fashion circuit in Milan. No more crowded events that overwhelm my senses. No more clashing auras or toxic energies leaving me with a headache, desperate to get away.

No more handsy businessmen who treat me like a cigar–a possession, an indulgence, a prop. No more sharing an apartment with six other half-starved young people whose daily food intake adds up to barely half a sandwich. The first thing I did after I told my agent I quit was eat a giant bowl of cheesy pasta.

Right now, my backpack is full of the best provisions: good cheese, a local red wine, and several packs of biscotti.

I may have disappointed my mother, but I feel better than I have in a year. Like a weight lifted off my chest.

It’s been almost three months since I quit and started wandering like a vagabond. I spent a little of my fashion week earnings on a pair of hiking boots and a backpack. The rest of my nest egg has gone to reserving the little mountain huts called rifugios and a nice rental near Lake Como where I stayed while waiting for the snow to melt.

The plan is to hike Alta Via 1 and beyond. Spend the summer in the mountains. And after that, who knows? I’m eighteen, and I can do anything. This spring is the start of my new life.

Fifteen minutes of climbing, and my thighs are shaking, but it’s all worth it when I round the corner and come across a magical mountain lake. The water is a brilliant teal, an ethereal color as bright and shocking as a Lilly Pullitzer jumper.

I can’t resist going to the edge and dipping my hand in, but instead of bracing cold, the water is warm as a freshly drawn bath. In the middle of the lake, steam’s rising off the surface.

Is this a hot spring? If so, my guidebook didn’t mention it.

I drop my jacket and my pack. Facing the clear pool, I feel extra grimy. I’m so tempted to strip everything off and jump in.

But I'm not alone.

There's a man in the pool. His dark head is even with a rocky outcropping, which is why I didn't see him before.

Once I see him, I can’t look away. He’s not swimming, but walking in the shallows. Water streams off his sculpted shoulders, lapping lovingly at his massive pectoral muscles.

A few more steps towards the shore, and water flows away from his diamond-hard abs, cut and sculpted with the precision of a jeweler. He’s got the height and frame of a bodybuilder, but something about the hollows under his high cheekbones and the lean sinew of his arms and chest tells me he is thirty to forty pounds underweight.

My God. I've been in Milan around some of the hottest male models in the world, and they look like Play-Doh figurines next to this guy. Dark brows. Long, silky lashes, thick black hair. His wild beard is a little out of control, but I don't mind. How would it feel between my legs?

The man turns, and the sunlight catches his eyes. They’re a stunning amber color. Then they fall on me and heat to molten gold.

“Oh excuse me,” I step back. “I didn't mean to intrude.”

The man stares at me and makes a noise between a grumble and a growl, and the earth moves in an answering rumble. I lurch as the ground shakes.

Are we having an earthquake? Or did the earth move when our eyes met? Goosebumps break out over my body. The man is still staring at me, and I can't look away.

He's coming up out of the pool. Water streams off his perfect body, running in rivulets down his Adonis belt–the cut muscles making a V pointing straight to his groin. If he comes out of the water a little bit further, I'll be able to see his…

Oh yes, there it is. And damn if he's a shower, not a grower.

Except actually... He is a grower. Because the longer I stare at his c**k, the bigger it gets.

“Holy hell,” I mutter. This wild man in the wilderness with a beard like John the Baptist is making me hotter and wetter between my legs than I've ever been. Maybe I’m just in a dry spell. In Milan, I was never tempted. The male models were beautiful, but they were also coke-headed man whores. This guy could outshine them all–and he’s lighting my fire in a way that I never expected.

The man opens his mouth and says something in a thick accent my brain tries and fails to decipher.

“Che cosa?” What? I ask in Italian. I frantically try to remember my meager French or Spanish, or any language really. The musical sound is nothing like the Italian I learned in the city. Maybe it’s a local dialect?

The man speaks again, another long string of beautiful syllables rolling from his mouth like poetry. His voice is deep and rich.

Golden light flashes around his head and disappears. I blink. This guy doesn’t have an aura. Usually I see auras like a subtle glow around a person and sometimes even the stuff they own. I pick up on their emotional energy too–at the fashion shows the cacophony of feelings could make me nauseous.

But this stranger’s energy is not intrusive. His aura is clear–or hiding. His emotional presence is a void or so subtle it blends seamlessly with my energy. I’ve never felt anything like it.

It makes him strangely enticing. Too bad everything else about him screams Psycho!

Around him, the lake bubbles, steam rising in a curtain between us.

Is the water boiling around him?

The ground moves and rumbles again. It must be an earthquake.

I step back and lick my lips so I can speak. “I probably should be going…”

The man stalks forward. He's speaking the same phrase over and over again.

I back away. Not because I'm getting full-on psychopath vibes, not because he looks like he’s going to murder me and leave my body on the side of the mountain, but because he's looking at me like he's a dying man, and I'm his savior.

He holds out a large, bronzed hand. Even from a distance, I sense the heat coming off his palm as if he has hot coals under his skin.

But that’s crazy.

The earth shakes, and I almost lose my balance. My pack and jacket are a few feet away, but I’ve already backed up to the tree line. Overhead, the trunks and branches creak.

On the peak above the lake, the limestone cracks. Rocks the size of my backpack tumble down in dusty streams. Some sort of avalanche is happening, and I should be running for my life.

Instead, I stare back at the gorgeous bronze god stepping out of the pool. His tone has changed, his voice becoming less musical and more guttural. A growl that echoes around the lake and seems to trigger more falling rocks.

A tree branch whips my face and breaks our eye contact, and it’s like weights have fallen off my feet. I turn and scramble down the trail.

A primordial roar shakes the trees and almost knocks me off my feet. I fly down the trail, my legs pumping and my arms flailing, my body half falling and out of control. My heart careens around my chest, bursting with painful adrenaline. I can’t get the man’s eyes out of my head. It feels like he’s right behind me, about to catch up.

A great blast of wind gusts over me and sends me careening into a brace of mugo pine. I grab the trunks and hold on. Rocks bounce over the dirt. The earth is shaking like gravity’s about to throw me off.

The taller trees’ branches thrash the air like a great hurricane has blown up. A giant wind, an earthquake and a tornado all rolled into one. The air high above ripples, and another roar blasts the trees and sends more rocks crashing down from their heights.

I hug the earth and crawl until I make it to a thick cluster of Norway pines. The earthquake has stopped, but great gusts of wind roll through the forest, tearing at the trees and flattening the flowers and long grasses in the meadows. A great shadow appears, gliding over me, blocking out the sun and disappearing as fast as it came.

I don’t know how I make it down the mountain. When I get to the village, I’m still shaking. I’ve lost my backpack and my jacket. When I try to explain in broken Italian what happened, the locals look at me like I’m crazy. No one else experienced an earthquake or a hurricane.

I don’t mention the man to anyone. His presence remains my secret.

I give up on my plans to hike the Dolomites, and head south to Tuscany instead. After two weeks of looking over my shoulder, I’ve convinced myself the event never happened. It was a dream. Some sort of vision, my psychic powers going berserk. I stepped on a funny mushroom, inhaled some psychedelic spores, and bam! Hallucinated a crazy sexy man and a weird weather event.

But, over the years, some nights I wake with a start, my chest flushed and my core throbbing from the recurring dream. He comes to me in my sleep, the man I’ve tried to forget. Wild hair, amber eyes, speaking a beautiful cascade of poetry in a language only my heart understands.

And every time, I wake with the strangest sense that he’s the only thing that's real, and the rest of my life is the dream.