The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) Read Online Free Page B
Author: May Ellis Daniels
I’ll plummet to the glacier.
I don’t have a rope. I don’t have a climbing partner. The nearest road is more than five hundred miles away, the nearest hospital five times that.
There’s only me, alone with the sun and moon and wind and rock.
My hand slips another half-inch. Desperate now, my heart leaping in my chest, I try and worm my hand deeper in the crack. I tell myself I am Ujurak. Made of stone. But regardless of my name the mountain doesn’t have to accept me.
Maybe this time it won’t.
My hand slides toward the edge. I thrust my hips toward the rock, unweight my slipping hand and for a moment I’m suspended by nothing more than my ten bare toes. Just as I begin falling backwards I jam my arm elbow-deep in the rock.
It holds.
“Anik! You want to die today?” I ask myself out loud.
No. I don’t.
I take a few slow, calming breaths. My heartbeat mellows. The mountain doesn’t care if I live or die. Neither do the sun or moon. The mountain stands without me. The sun shines without me. This is the truth of the world. It can make us strong and humble. Or weak and afraid.
I begin moving again, faster, more confidently, punching my hands into the crack and twisting my toes until they’re raw and bleeding. Fifty feet, a hundred, two hundred and still the summit is so far away it seems an impossible dream. But I’m making progress. One movement at a time. It’s easy to let the mind be overwhelmed by the scale of a challenge. Easy to be tricked into losing hope and standing still.
But that’s death-in-life. Stillness.
The crack grows thinner. More difficult. It narrows to accept only my fingers, then my fingertips, then finally it becomes so tight and shallow I can no longer find purchase.
I’m stuck.
I might be able to down-climb. Retreat.
But I don’t want to.
I look from left to right across the sweeping expanse of grey granite. There, fifteen feet to my right and twenty feet above, another crack system begins. It look climbable.
But between me and the next vertical path is blank, featureless stone.
Impossible.
Or maybe…just not as easy.
I lean out of the crack I’m in and grip an edge no deeper than my first knuckle. It flexes under my weight. But I have to commit. I spot another edge lower, slip my toes out of the crack and onto it.
The wind laughs.
I make a difficult move right to another tiny edge.
The moves are harder than the ones I was doing in the crack. More delicate. Like a well-rehearsed dance. Soon I forget where I am. Forget the air beneath my feet. Forget the consequences of a fall. There’s only my skin pressing into inches of cold stone and the motion, one movement flowing into another. There is no time. There are no roads. No machines. No poverty or wealth. No heartbreak. No Child Services coming to send my little sister Pimniq to a different family in a city far away from our home.
The next crack system is only ten feet above me.
So close.
And now, so close, I lose focus on the moment. I think: I want to be there, in the safety of that crack. Up there.
Where I am not now.
I reach up with my right hand and grip another edge. But I’m rushing. Already thinking of being finished. I commit my weight to the edge without testing its strength.
There’s a terrible cracking sound.
The hold shears from the wall.
For an instant I hang in space. Before gravity takes me.
For an instant I’m flying.
But no. I’m not a bird.
I’m only falling.
***
It takes me falling halfway down Sivanitirutinguak’s sheer granite face before I realize I’m going to die.
I’m facing upward, arms outstretched, Sila the wind, Breath of the World, roaring through my ears. The summit retreats above. Maybe I want it this way. Not seeing the ground approach.
Maybe then I won’t summon him.
If I was alone in the world I would let myself die as a man.
I’m only twenty years old but I’m already
I don’t have a rope. I don’t have a climbing partner. The nearest road is more than five hundred miles away, the nearest hospital five times that.
There’s only me, alone with the sun and moon and wind and rock.
My hand slips another half-inch. Desperate now, my heart leaping in my chest, I try and worm my hand deeper in the crack. I tell myself I am Ujurak. Made of stone. But regardless of my name the mountain doesn’t have to accept me.
Maybe this time it won’t.
My hand slides toward the edge. I thrust my hips toward the rock, unweight my slipping hand and for a moment I’m suspended by nothing more than my ten bare toes. Just as I begin falling backwards I jam my arm elbow-deep in the rock.
It holds.
“Anik! You want to die today?” I ask myself out loud.
No. I don’t.
I take a few slow, calming breaths. My heartbeat mellows. The mountain doesn’t care if I live or die. Neither do the sun or moon. The mountain stands without me. The sun shines without me. This is the truth of the world. It can make us strong and humble. Or weak and afraid.
I begin moving again, faster, more confidently, punching my hands into the crack and twisting my toes until they’re raw and bleeding. Fifty feet, a hundred, two hundred and still the summit is so far away it seems an impossible dream. But I’m making progress. One movement at a time. It’s easy to let the mind be overwhelmed by the scale of a challenge. Easy to be tricked into losing hope and standing still.
But that’s death-in-life. Stillness.
The crack grows thinner. More difficult. It narrows to accept only my fingers, then my fingertips, then finally it becomes so tight and shallow I can no longer find purchase.
I’m stuck.
I might be able to down-climb. Retreat.
But I don’t want to.
I look from left to right across the sweeping expanse of grey granite. There, fifteen feet to my right and twenty feet above, another crack system begins. It look climbable.
But between me and the next vertical path is blank, featureless stone.
Impossible.
Or maybe…just not as easy.
I lean out of the crack I’m in and grip an edge no deeper than my first knuckle. It flexes under my weight. But I have to commit. I spot another edge lower, slip my toes out of the crack and onto it.
The wind laughs.
I make a difficult move right to another tiny edge.
The moves are harder than the ones I was doing in the crack. More delicate. Like a well-rehearsed dance. Soon I forget where I am. Forget the air beneath my feet. Forget the consequences of a fall. There’s only my skin pressing into inches of cold stone and the motion, one movement flowing into another. There is no time. There are no roads. No machines. No poverty or wealth. No heartbreak. No Child Services coming to send my little sister Pimniq to a different family in a city far away from our home.
The next crack system is only ten feet above me.
So close.
And now, so close, I lose focus on the moment. I think: I want to be there, in the safety of that crack. Up there.
Where I am not now.
I reach up with my right hand and grip another edge. But I’m rushing. Already thinking of being finished. I commit my weight to the edge without testing its strength.
There’s a terrible cracking sound.
The hold shears from the wall.
For an instant I hang in space. Before gravity takes me.
For an instant I’m flying.
But no. I’m not a bird.
I’m only falling.
***
It takes me falling halfway down Sivanitirutinguak’s sheer granite face before I realize I’m going to die.
I’m facing upward, arms outstretched, Sila the wind, Breath of the World, roaring through my ears. The summit retreats above. Maybe I want it this way. Not seeing the ground approach.
Maybe then I won’t summon him.
If I was alone in the world I would let myself die as a man.
I’m only twenty years old but I’m already
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