The Call on Vail Pass
Chapter 1
The Call on Vail Pass
POV:
Tessa
Snow.
That was the first thing I saw when the ambulance bay doors opened.
Not the soft kind that made Denver look clean for a few hours before tires turned it gray. Not the pretty kind tourists photographed from heated sidewalks while holding seven-dollar coffee.
This snow came sideways.
Hard. Bitter. Mean.
It blew under the hospital awning and slapped against my face like the mountain had reached all the way down I-70 just to remind me it was still waiting.
My phone buzzed in the pocket of my scrub top.
Once.
Twice.
Then the search-and-rescue alert tone cut through the noise of the ER behind me.
I closed my eyes.
“No,” I whispered.
The phone buzzed again.
I pulled it out anyway because that was what I did. I answered calls. I stopped bleeding. I pushed air into lungs that had forgotten how to breathe. I ran toward wreckage, storms, broken bones, and people who thought the mountains cared whether they were sorry.
They did not.
VAIL PASS.
MISSING TOURIST.
WHITEOUT CONDITIONS.
LAST SEEN NEAR CLOSED TRAIL ACCESS.
VOLUNTEER MEDICAL NEEDED.
My stomach dropped.
Not because of the storm.
Because of the pass.
Because of the words missing and whiteout and volunteer medical.
Because three years ago, Officer Mateo Cruz had answered a call too.
And he had not come home.
“Tessa?”
I looked up.
Nora from triage stood near the nurses’ station, her dark brows drawn together. “Please tell me that is not rescue.”
“It is rescue.”
“You just worked twelve hours.”
“Fourteen.”
“That does not make it better.”
“No,” I said, already reaching for my coat. “It makes me efficient.”
She stepped in front of me before I could get past her. “You are exhausted.”
“I am functional.”
“You are pale.”
“I am always pale under hospital lights.”
“You have not eaten since noon.”
“That is a personal attack.”
“Tessa.”
The way she said my name made me pause.
Not because she was wrong.
Because she was kind.
Kindness was harder to step around than orders.
I looked past her toward the ER. Monitors beeped. A child cried behind curtain three. Someone cursed in trauma two while Dr. Singh told him, very calmly, that if he wanted to keep all his fingers, he should stop trying to leave.
Normal chaos.
Human chaos.
The kind I understood.
Outside, the wind slammed snow against the glass doors again.
Mountain chaos.
The kind that took people and did not apologize.
Nora lowered her voice. “You do not have to go every time.”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
Her expression softened in a way I hated.
“Tess.”
I shoved my phone into my pocket. “Do not.”
“I wasn’t going to say his name.”
“You were thinking it.”
“So were you.”
Mateo.
The name moved through me like cold water under ice.
Officer Mateo Cruz. Denver Police. Search-and-rescue volunteer. Wolf. Friend. Idiot who brought extra gloves because I always forgot mine. Man who laughed at blizzards until the mountain swallowed the sound.
Dead because he went back for one more person.
Dead because I was not fast enough.
Dead because sometimes the mountain chose who got to come down.
My fingers tightened around my coat.
“I am going,” I said.
Nora stared at me for one long second.
Then she stepped aside.
“Take the radio from the charge desk,” she said. “And if you collapse on that mountain, I am telling everyone you were dramatic.”
“I am never dramatic.”
“You are a werewolf ER nurse with no wolf who volunteers for mountain rescue in blizzards.”
I smiled without meaning to.
It did not reach anywhere soft.
“Exactly,” I said. “Practical.”
Her face changed the way people’s faces always changed when they remembered the part everyone knew and no one liked to say out loud.
Werewolf.
No wolf.
A body born for a second soul that had never answered.
No voice in my head. No paws beneath moonlight. No shift tearing through my bones. No other heartbeat waiting behind mine.
Just silence.
Always silence.
I pushed through the ambulance bay doors before Nora could apologize with her eyes.
The cold hit hard enough to steal my breath.
For one second, I stood under the hospital awning while snow whipped across the parking lot and sirens screamed somewhere far down Colfax.
Then my phone buzzed again.
TEAM STAGING AT EXIT 190.
ROAD CONDITIONS WORSENING.
POSSIBLE SECOND VICTIM.
I was moving before I finished reading.
Because that was what Mateo would have done.
Because that was what I had done every day since he died.
Because if I stopped moving, I might have to admit that part of me had never come down from that mountain either.
─────── ✦ ───────
By the time I reached Vail Pass, the world had narrowed to headlights, snow, and the red pulse of emergency strobes bleeding through the dark.
Wind shoved against my SUV hard enough to make the tires twitch.
“Come on,” I muttered, gripping the wheel. “Do not do this tonight.”
The mountain did not care.
It never did.
I pulled into the staging area behind two rescue trucks, one sheriff’s vehicle, and a black SUV that looked too clean, too expensive, and too arrogant to belong anywhere near a rescue scene.
I stared at it for half a second.
Then dismissed it.
Rich people loved mountains until the mountains became inconvenient.
I parked, grabbed my medical pack, and stepped into the storm.
Snow swallowed sound. Boots crunched. Radios cracked. Someone shouted my name, but the wind tore it apart before I could answer.
A figure moved toward me through the white.
“Tessa Arden?”
“Depends who is asking.”
“Deputy Lane.” He lifted a gloved hand, his face half-hidden beneath his hood. “We have one missing male, late twenties, guest from the West resort property. Friend says he left the marked trail for pictures before the storm shifted.”
Of course he did.
“Time missing?”
“Almost two hours.”
I swore under my breath.
Lane nodded like he agreed with every word. “Search grid is moving north toward the old service road. We need medical with team three.”
“I am team three?”
“You are now.”
“Wonderful.”
I adjusted the strap across my shoulder and looked up the slope.
Dark pines leaned beneath snow. Beyond them, the mountain rose black and white into the storm, its ridgeline hidden by cloud. Somewhere out there, a man was lost, freezing, and probably discovering that expensive boots did not make him immortal.
My chest tightened.
Not now.
I breathed through it.
In. Out.
Not Mateo’s call.
Not Mateo’s storm.
Not Mateo’s body under the snow.
A howl rose through the dark.
Every person in the staging area froze.
It came from high above the road, long and low, threading through the wind like a blade drawn slowly from a sheath.
Wolf.
My pulse kicked once.
Hard.
Deputy Lane looked toward the trees. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes.”
“Thought wolves stayed clear of all this.”
“They usually do.”
Unless they were not only wolves.
The thought came and went before I could decide whether it scared me.
I was werewolf-born. I knew packs existed. I knew territory lines, Alpha politics, scent laws, moon rites, all of it. I had grown up around people who shifted like breathing.
I had simply never been one of them.
The howl came again.
Closer.
My hands went cold inside my gloves.
Not from the storm.
Because something inside me moved.
Not much.
A pressure beneath my ribs.
A breath where there should have been silence.
I went still.
No.
The pressure sharpened.
The mountain disappeared for one impossible heartbeat. The rescue trucks. The radios. The snow. The old grief sitting behind my lungs.
All of it faded beneath a voice I had never heard before.
Female.
Low.
Mine and not mine.
Run.
My knees almost buckled.
Deputy Lane caught my elbow. “Arden?”
I jerked away from him.
“What?”
“You okay?”
No.
No, I was not okay.
Because for twenty-nine years, every doctor, Alpha, healer, and moon-blessed elder who had ever tested me had said the same thing.
Dormant.
Empty.
Wolf-less.
A genetic mistake wrapped in werewolf blood.
But the voice came again, colder now.
Not afraid.
Commanding.
Run, Tessa.
The trees above us cracked.
Someone screamed through the radio.
Then the mountain answered with another howl.
And this time, I knew it was calling my name.
