Warm, rotten air tickled my cheek.

A moist nose passed over my fingertips and exhaled into the parka hood.

The bitter aftertaste in my mouth limited my reaction to opened eyes. The multitude of suns had vanished, replaced by a solid white sky that in turn resolved into creamy fur and black skin. Blood trailed from jaw to chest and into snowshoe-sized paws planted inches from my ears. Finger length claws punched through tufts of sticky fur.

"Shit!" I murmured in a pained gasp.

Arctic polar bears weren't anything like their Coca-Cola cousins. The male whose belly sagged inches above mine wasn't handsome. His eyes weren't jolly. His teeth went unbrushed. Scars arced the blood-spattered bridge of his nose. He was a warlord plucked from ancient times and adorned in the gore of his enemies.

The bear lifted a paw larger than my head and rolled my hip. Rather than struggle, I turned in its desired direction. A stray gust sent my now-freed hood flapping loud against my back. He circled the noisemaker in leaden steps, but wind battered the hood and forced a retreat.

I took a small, thankful breath. Caution and curiosity had tempered his attack instinct.

Instead, black nostrils hovered at my bootlaces. It reached a paw out hesitantly, tapping at my ankle, then took a taste of the rubber sole.

My veins pumped liquid nitrogen, but enough blood rushed through for the muscles in my leg to tense. I considered jamming that foot square into his nose, but he was stronger and faster and better equipped for retaliation. At this point, with a splitting headache and blood on my lips, I wasn't even sure I could stand.

Yellow fangs moved on and up my legs, stopping to nip my left glove. One finger at a time, I eased my hand free. I slipped the exposed hand into a pocket for warmth and remembered Mom's pepper spray—but which pocket?

The bear chewed with a critic's disdain, but shortly rejected the glove to bury his nose in my hair. From a distance his eyes looked black, but I could see now the dark brown focused intently on his prey.

Instinct commanded me to protect my face at all costs, but I resisted the urge to flinch and inched my other hand into the largest pocket, searching, desperately searching for the cold canister.

A smooth leather wallet and puckered apple stem met my fingertips.

"Son of a bitch!" I gasped. Kasper had stolen the spray.

The bear swung his head forward. His chin banged mine backward, exposing my throat, and against the thin pale skin he growled. His yellow teeth pressed on my carotid. My pulse skipped, my vocal chords vibrated. Air rattled from my lungs. The clouds over the slope of his massive shoulder seemed to shiver with me.

My nails punctured the apple's skin as effortlessly as his teeth would crack my skull. With a flick of my wrist the fruit caught a short flight and thumped against the ground.

Pressure lifted off my neck. The great head swung.

The bear pawed at the apple until an enthused swipe wedged the fruit between the backpack's straps and a rock.

With the bear distracted, I covered my face with my arms. Feeble protection against such a mammoth, but it beat racing a bear who clocked in excess of fifteen mph on a bad day (according to Mom's guidebook).

Through the gaps in my coat sleeves I observed him. We'd glossed over polar bears in the one Animal Behavior class Pentworth offered. They were patient apex predators, not frolicsome kittens.

The bear must've remembered that too, because in seconds he'd retrieved the apple, carried it beside me and crunched. Sticky bits exploded across my coat. His tongue lolled out and he smacked his lips the way a teething Ellebelle had after she discovered that the chair legs had been coated in bitter spray.

Dark eyes met mine. Another shiver whipped through my body. A nervous giggle died in my throat.

Snorting, the animal tugged my pack between its bloody legs. Six inch claws shredded the top. Out came ziplocked fruits. Out came the diary. Out came the equipment and my clothes and, wrapped in my favorite new sweater, a slab of frozen meat with the speckled gray skin of a harbor seal still attached.

Last night before bed I packed that bag twice. Meat wasn't on the supplies list, and I'd never have sacrificed a navy and white striped cardigan for packaging.

The bear devoured the seal then carried his lip-licking muzzle back my way. Spit, blood, and bits of unmentionables dripped onto my arms in a thick saliva. One piece fell in the break between sleeves and melted on my upper lip. A strong gag tightened my throat.

The bear's dark tongue lapped the obvious mess before burrowing after the fallen piece. Rank breath and a rough tongue left my mouth struggling to contain vomit. He grabbed my arm with a hard bite. Instinctively I punched its nose with my free hand, earned a second bite and so much pressure on my chest I passed out for a couple seconds. A warm trickle spread along my inner sleeve; pain flooded my arm and I struggled not to scream. The bear headed for my temple next, bracing a heavy paw on my shoulder, and started to lick.

Raw pain erupted at the tongue's abrasive touch, running back and forth, back and forth along my temple, smooth as sandpaper. I couldn't take much more. Fear was mounting and my body longed to thrash and screech.

But the tongue disappeared. The bear shuffled into a mist rolling in off the lake.

Braced for obsidian claws to tear into my chest, an unexpected sigh of relief whistled from my chapped lips.

For a long time I lay stiff, terrified. Wind thinned the air and outlined the pale shadow of a fox skirting boulders. I willed myself upright, then waited for my world to stop spinning. Once the nauseated feeling passed and I'd examined my bitten coat sleeve, I pulled a stone into my palm.

The fox slunk closer, ears swiveled, head bobbing.

"Go!" I hissed, chucking the rock at its head.

The fox yawned and bent backward to scratch an ear. An agile leap dodged the second stone. The third pinged off an invisible rock, but forced a sharp bark from its maw. It padded closer.

Rocking, I pressed my palms into my knees. "Leave me alone."

Conscious of me but uncaring, the fox sprawled across my cardigan, charcoal nose pressed into a colorful sleeve. Resigned, I flicked a meaty scrap off my parka and into its waiting mouth. Headlines flashed through my mind, segmented by various reporters discussing the merit of an American girl tragically mauled in Spitsbergen.

A breeze shifted my attention to the diary. Torn pages fluttered loose. One memory at a time, my life paraded past. The page where I'd taped the picture of Niklas with Queen Joronn and Annelise skipped across a congealed puddle. If a prince couldn't outrun his past, what hope had I ever had? I'd never pegged myself as one of those girls ruinously enamored, but here I sat on an arctic island reeking of seal meat and desperation. I pinned the photo with my boot.

"You didn't call." The picture tore in half with a delightful rip. "You didn't text." The second tear sounded just as good, so I didn't stop until a pile of bloody confetti filled my lap.

The fox turned its head sharply, rose on tiny feet and disappeared. A chill that wasn't the wind frosted my lungs.

The bear wanted dessert.

Hugging the nearest boulder for support, I scanned the fog for its hulking, telltale shape. A thundery bellow obliterated the quiet. Had that been from my bear, or a hungrier one? Kasper had said hundreds inhabited Spitsbergen and they'd all be more than willing to stalk wounded prey.

Blood trickled between my fingers from the bite on my arm, dappling the cold stone. I stared into the dirt, desperate to pinpoint a single idea in a haystack of terror.

The ensuing roar rattled my bones.

One encounter with the Arctic's king was enough. I picked through my belongings. There were a few salvageable items: a lighter, bungee cord strap, water bottle, and a space blanket. I stuffed this into the parka until its pockets bulged. The soil kit, a clever ruse on Kasper's part, had been flipped and the contents smashed. My cell wasn't anywhere.

For protection I grabbed the spade. The handle was solid oak and the obtuse blade comforting.

Then I waited, listened, strained for sound.

A low rumble smashed through the pin-drop silence. My heart pounded its way into my throat.

"Fear is healthy," I whispered. I needed to be afraid, needed that adrenaline rush carrying me to safety. "Fear is good."

Assuming the fox had no desire to tangle with the heavyweight champion, I chose its escape route and staggered away from the lake in the direction of where I remembered the mountainside to be.

The fog condensed and masked the landscape. Cautious steps through filtered sunlight were my singular reference for up and down. Damp weight pushed against my skin. The earth became a spotlight no larger than the space between my feet, blurring and sharpening with every breath.

My eyes watered. A pungent, acrid scent seeped through the grey.

Pepper spray.

Kasper.

Smeared flesh bent the grass in my shrinking visual range. Bloody tributaries ran along fissures and fed into larger pools. Smudges developed into paw-shaped, sanguine pools. Frost glittered on a pulverized seal skull, but there were no diary pages, no torn backpack straps to suggest I'd walked in a circle. This was a new site, drenched in the tangy, raw scent of a recent struggle.

Ahead, close to the ground, orange flame burned off surrounding fog. I stamped the fire, glowering at the half-smoked Ashford beside it. Embers gasped beneath my heel. "Trail of seal crumbs didn't work out, did it?" I muttered.

Darkness ghosted beyond the fringe of vision.

I lifted my heel to take a quiet step away. The charred end of the cigarette butt dropped off my shoe, as did something longer. Fanning the smoky remnants, I recognized a shriveled, leathery pinky rendered of flesh from the distal phalanx down.

The darkness gained a pale, opaque tint.

Footsteps scraped the ground behind my back.

Stealth forgotten, I ran for the rocky incline, stopping once to listen for my phantom's pursuit. In the lowland fog each swirl was a mighty paw, each stone a dour eye; and every gust of wind brought a cloud of wicked imagination.

With the devil hot on my heels I reached the slopes and didn't slow until my calves burned and cold fire rattled through my lungs. In the sea of fog, pods of boulders surfaced like the backs of whales.

It was the most protected hideout I'd seen.

Nooks and crannies punctuated several stones, but the largest space had formed from three shattered slabs of dark sandstone. Into this I crawled. The interior was dark and cramped, but tucking my knees into my chest provided a two-foot separation between my life and whatever wanted it.

Wind ushered fog past the entrance. Although not freezing, a reprieve from grisly fantasies was welcomed. I flicked the lighter on to jointly open the space blanket and confirm my den's vacancy. Once the blanket was unpacked, I extinguished the light and snuggled up to my chin in its crinkly depths. In the quiet, my body sang crimson.

A chill crept through the entrance to torment my exposed fingers. My calves ached, though rather un-remarkably when compared to the bursts of pain surrounding my ribs and head. I was afraid to touch to my temple and too cold to unbutton the parka and check my chest where I'd been kicked or the wound on my arm. The bleeding there, at least, had stopped, giving my sticky fingers time to turn a ruddy, flaky brown.

When Niklas said goodbye for the last time, I thought my life was destroyed. Now the spade lay in my lap and the only thing I wanted was to survive.