Page 19 of Protected By The Polar Bear

“Where are you at?” Niko asks.

“What happened?” Alec asks next.

“There are hunters up here. We’re on the North Trail by that giant rock. Be careful,” Flint says.

I lean back against the ground, trying to breathe through the pain. I can feel my polar bear working already to heal me, but with the bullet still in my arm, it’s not going to work.

“We need to get the bullet out,” I tell Flint, and he shakes his head.

“I’m going to get you to the doctor. They’ll do that.”

I want to argue with him, but he’s probably right. I can hear two more snowmobiles headed our way and soon enough, Alec and Niko are pulling up next to us.

“Where are the hunters?” Alec asks, and Flint and I nod to the west.

“Shots came from that way,” Flint says.

“They haven’t fired in a while now,” I add.

They nod and take off into the woods while Flint gets me up and onto the back of the snowmobile.

“Good?” He asks, and I nod, gritting my teeth as he climbs on, and we take off down the trail.

We pass by Davis and Gunner as we go, but Flint waves for them to go help Niko and Alec instead. We race towards town, and I grit my teeth and try to stay conscious as the pain hits me in waves. When we pull up to the hospital, I relax.

Then, the whole world goes dark.

TEN

Tessa

When Elle shows up at my apartment, I’m happy to see her.

Then I see the look on her face, and my stomach drops.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her, dragging her into my place.

“It’s Ash,” she says, and panic grips me.

“What happened?” I choke out.

“He was shot.”

“Shot!” I shout.

Out of all of the things that she could have said, Ash being shot wasn’t even on my radar.

“Shot,” I whisper, and the next thing I know, Elle is wrapping her arms around me.

“I think that he’s okay. He’s at the hospital. We have to go,” she tells me gently, and I nod.

I feel like I’m frozen as I stand there, but she tugs me after her, snapping me out of my fog a bit.

“How was he shot? What happened?” I ask her as we climb into her car.

“I don’t know. Niko just called and told me that he was hurt, that he had been shot, and that Flint was taking him to the hospital. He must have been out on a patrol.”

I nod along. My body feels numb, and all I can think about is how stupid I’ve been by pushing him away. All I’m doing is wasting more of our time together. Instead of pushing him away, I need to talk to him, tell him how I feel, and we can work towards fixing things between us.

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