Aqua woke to cold.
Not the gentle kind that made you burrow deeper under the blankets — the sharp, biting kind that seeped straight into bone. Her breath fogged as she exhaled.
“What the—?”
She sat up, shivering. The master bedroom wasn’t chilly.
It was freezing.
She swung her legs out of bed and hissed when her feet hit the icy floorboards. The thermostat blinked a dim red light.
Dead.
Of course.
She wrapped her robe around herself and stepped into the hallway. The rest of the cabin was warmer — not cozy, but nowhere near the arctic tundra she’d just escaped.
Kieran was already awake, filling a mug at the sink. He wore checkered pajama pants and no shirt. Aqua froze, her breath catching at the sight of his bare back — broad, muscled, familiar in a way that made the butterflies in
