CEO'S ROGUE ALPHA

By the time I came into it, I was in the middle of a violent coughing fit, trembling from head to toe, and so cold he barely even felt it. Where.? I forced himself up as the coughing intensified and he gagged. Bile splattered onto the pure white in front of me that contrasted so sharply against my black clothes. They were coated in a white substance. As his coughing ceased, his brain began to function normally.

White, cold, covering my clothes and the ground... Snow. I was in the fucking snow. But that didn’t make sense ― there wasn’t an area where snow collected for at least fifty miles in any direction of Tabular Crystal mountains. The last thing I remembered was landing in the water and then the rocks hit as I blacked out.

I stood up and brushed the snow off of me the best he could with my chill-stiffened joints that seemed even harder to move than they ought to be. How long had he been out here? I raised my eyes to examine the surrounding area, and all at once, my stomach and heart dropped through the earth beneath me.

"Fuck! "I cursed out loud. I had nothing in my clothes. The phone was filled with water and the black screen told me it was dead. The icy expanse before me was completely unfamiliar, empty, and lacking any landmarks that may have allowed him to get his bearings. Dread, a feeling by now not familiar to me as I had grown accustomed to being the one inspiring it in others, knotted his stomach and left a lump in his throat.

I swallowed around the lump in my throat and winced at the dryness. Panic teased at the back of my mind, but I pushed it away and tried to focus. Was this a bad dream? I forced my heavy limbs to respond to me and turned to try, again, to get my bearings and get any track in the snow that would tell me if I was alone or if there was a sign of life around me.

I took a deep breath and gazed at the surroundings once more. There was a mountain in the left direction and woods in the right direction. The woods were the best choice. Plenty of shelters and ways to make shelter if there weren’t any. I decided on the woods as I took a couple of stiff steps in the forest’s direction, pushing through the heaviness in my muscles and the stiffness in my joints. I needed to move and get away from the snow.

When I arrived in the forest, I immediately regretted it. The temperature dropped further beneath the canopy, but there was little to be done for now. I kept on moving until I found somewhere safe to hole up and try to warm myself up.

I kept on walking and when I looked back I couldn’t see the entrance to the forest, hence I knew that I had covered miles and miles. I kept at it for an hour and when the view opened up, I smiled in pain as the old shattered cabin came into view.

It looked like it had taken a hell of a beating, but the walls looked sturdy enough and it didn’t seem to be occupied. The door creaked open the moment I touched it, and I winced at the sound and the implication that it no longer latched.