The Virgin Bride Arrived With Fear in Her Eyes Mountain Men Said “Darlin, I Don’t Bite Unless”

Chapter 6

The first week was the hardest of Evelyn’s life.

She woke each morning before dawn, roused by the cold that seeped through the walls no matter how high she built the fire the night before. The loft, where she had assumed Elias slept, was empty. He had taken to sleeping on a bedroll near the fireplace, giving her the privacy she had not asked for but desperately needed.

Each day brought new challenges, new humiliations, new reminders that she was utterly unprepared for this life.

On the first morning, Elias handed her an axe. “Wood needs splitting. I will show you once, then you do it.”

Evelyn had never held an axe in her life. The weight of it pulled at her shoulders, and when she swung it at the log on the chopping block, she missed completely and nearly took off her own foot.

Elias did not laugh. He did not mock her or make her feel foolish. He simply stepped up behind her, adjusted her grip, showed her where to aim.

“Again,” he said.

She swung again. This time, she hit the log, but the axe bounced off without making a dent.

“Angle is wrong. Here.”

He guided her arms, adjusted her stance. His hands were large enough to wrap completely around hers, but his touch was careful, deliberate, always giving her space to pull away if she needed.

By the end of the first day, her hands were raw and bleeding. She had managed to split three logs. Elias could have done thirty in the same time. He did not criticize her. He did not tell her she was doing it wrong. He simply bandaged her hands that night, his rough fingers surprisingly gentle, and said, “Better tomorrow.”

The cooking was worse. Evelyn had never cooked a meal in her life. In Boston, there had always been servants. Even in the boarding houses where she had hidden during her escape, meals had been provided.

Elias showed her the basics. How to start a fire in the stove. How to boil water. How to prepare the simple foods that sustained life on the mountain. Dried meat. Root vegetables from the cellar. Flour for bread.

She burned everything.

The first meal she attempted was a simple porridge. It turned into a solid black mass at the bottom of the pot. The second was worse. The third, she somehow managed to start an actual fire in the stove, and Elias had to dump snow on it to put it out.

“You will learn,” he said, scraping the ruined food into a bucket for the pigs.

“What if I do not?”

“Then we starve.”

She stared at him. “Was that a joke?”

He turned back to the stove, and she caught just the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. It was a joke. Maybe.

The days blurred together. Evelyn learned to fetch water from the well without getting frostbite. She learned to feed the chickens that lived in a small coop behind the cabin. She learned to recognize the sound of the wind changing, the smell of snow on the air — the thousand small signs that Elias read as easily as she had once read books.

Her hands grew calloused. Her arms grew stronger. The bruise near her temple faded and finally disappeared.

And through it all, there was Wraith.

The wolf wanted nothing to do with her. Every time she entered a room, he growled low in his throat. Every time she approached Elias, he positioned himself between them, his yellow eyes never leaving her face.

“He does not trust you yet,” Elias said on the fifth day.

“Give him time.”

“How long?”

“As long as it takes.”

That night, Evelyn could not sleep. The fire in her room had burned low, and rather than building it up again, she decided to sit in the main room where the larger fireplace still glowed with warmth. She did not expect to find Wraith there, lying on the rug before the hearth.

The wolf lifted his head when she entered, and for a long moment, they simply looked at each other.

“I know you do not like me,” Evelyn said softly. “But I am not leaving.”

Wraith did not respond. Of course he did not. He was a wolf. But something in his eyes seemed to shift. Something seemed to consider.

Evelyn sat down in one of the wooden chairs, keeping her distance. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and stared into the flames.

“I do not know why I am here,” she said, more to herself than to the animal. “I do not know if this was the right choice. I do not know if I can survive this life.”

She thought of Boston. Of her father’s cold eyes when he told her she would marry Julian Croft. Of Croft himself, the way he had looked at her like she was something to be consumed.

“But I know I could not survive that life either,” she continued. “So I suppose this is better, even if it kills me.”

She did not know how long she sat there, talking to a wolf who probably did not understand a word she said. She talked about her mother, who had died too young. About her father, who had become a stranger after the funeral. About the years of being invisible in her own home, of being dressed and displayed and paraded before suitors who saw her as nothing more than a pretty face and a respectable name.

She talked until her voice grew hoarse and her eyes grew heavy.

When she woke the next morning, she was still in the chair by the fire. Someone had draped a blanket over her. And Wraith was lying at her feet.

The wolf opened his eyes when she stirred, and for the first time, there was no growl. No warning. Just a steady yellow gaze that seemed to say, I am watching you. But I am not afraid.

Evelyn smiled. It was the first real smile she had managed since leaving Boston.