Elle

They emerged from the woods at last, the park opening up before them.

“I can’t believe we made this work!” Ruth exclaimed happily, clapping her gloved hands together repeatedly in excitement.

Elle smiled and nodded. She too was ecstatic. It had taken a lot of planning to get this many of the girls together, but she was glad that they had. Now that they were clear of the woods the eight of them descended upon the park in a swarm. Their objective was rather unusual for the time of day, and that only made her smile even more. It was a Monday morning, the perfect time for their planned activity.

“Hooray, for no babies for a day!” Rachel, another of the friends, cried as she threw both hands up in the air.

All the others cheered right alongside her, including Elle. Like the others, she missed              her baby. Gwenevere was staying with another of the mothers for the day, but she’d be home to her daughter tonight. But being able to relax without a child for the day was so far turning out to be a bigger blessing than she’d ever realized. It gave Elle a chance to focus on herself, to remember who she was, and though it had only been a couple of hours so far, she felt like a brand-new person, refreshed and reinvigorated, full of life once more.

And the day was just getting started!

It was cold out, and in what she was learning was typical early February fashion for the small mountain town of Cloud Lake, it was snowing again. The sun was shining through the clouds enough to help offset the grayness in the air, and it made the flakes seem lighter, and less offensive than they might normally be.

“Well come on Elle, let’s go!” Angela, part of her little trio of best friends said. The three of them, Rachel, Elle, and Angela all hurried to catch up with the others, boots crunching the snow underfoot, compacting the fresh addition into the thick layer that had already been ground down by dozens of others. They all reached their destination at the same time and found seats on the provided benches.

“I haven’t done this since I was a young girl!” one of the others said, her voice bubbling with anticipation.

“It’s been a long time,” Elle concurred as she removed the objects from where she’d been carrying them around her neck. “Maybe not that long for me, but still at least half a dozen years, if not more.”

The others all chimed in their agreement as they removed their snowboots and replaced them with skates. Elle finished lacing hers up, removing the black rubber skateguards that covered the blades when not in use, and started moving along the thick rubber mats that the town had laid down until she got to the edge of the ice.

“Well, here goes nothing,” she said, flashing the others a nervous grin. Being the first in line to do something had rarely fazed her, and she wasn’t going to let it happen now. With a deep breath, and a prayer to her brain in the hopes that it would remind her how to skate, she stepped on to the ice.

And promptly fell flat on her rear. This was accompanied by uproarious laughter from the other women, all of whom had been fearful of doing the same thing, and were glad that someone else had done it for them.

“Well, come on then,” she said, getting to her feet and managing to stay up this time. “I bet you most of you fall flat on your butts too.”

Elle wasn’t mad, though she had a feeling her rear was going to be a little sore the next morning. This was exactly the type of fun she’d expected to have when she’d first proposed the idea to the others. With all that had been going on in Cloud Lake lately, she felt that they needed a day to go and just relax, without stress and fear of…well, anything. Things had calmed down lately ever since Angela’s mate had revealed a spy sent to infiltrate the shifters of Cloud Lake.

She considered that as her skates bit into the outdoor ice rink that was made every winter at the park. Although she herself was still living the perfectly acceptable life of a single mother, something that bothered her not in the least—though it was definitely quite taxing—most of her friends had found love in the form of one of the shifters of the Embassy Guard. The whole concept was still sort of weird to her.

Gaining some confidence with her skates she pushed off, moving with the dozen or so other skaters as they made large, lazy circles around the rink, her mind still on the shifters. Most of the world’s population of shifters lived as far apart from humans as they could, in remote areas that discouraged human visitors. But Cadia, the territory on the other side of the Quicksilver mountain range to the east of Cloud Lake, had actually started to go the opposite. So much so, that they had actually opened up an embassy in Cloud Lake.

It was odd, in many ways, but the ambassador himself was—from all reports—a good man, and the ceremonial protection unit that had also come with him had contained two shifters who had fallen for her best friends. Both Rachel and Angela were head over heels for the men they called their mates.

She hit a rough patch of ice and wobbled, but her balance was returning to her now and she recovered smoothly, allowing herself to slow down for a moment. When she was in her early teens Elle had taken figure skating lessons for two years, and the more she continued to glide across the ice, the more it all came back.

I’d forgotten how much fun it is! I need to do this more often. Making a promise that she’d come out at least twice more before the snow melted, Elle maneuvered herself back over to her group of friends. Most of them were middling to poor skaters, though Carly, like herself, had some experience. The rest of them had bunched up into a pack, helping everyone stay on their feet as they laughed and shrieked their way across the ice, getting into absolutely everyone’s way.

She joined that pack now, letting herself be used as a stabilizer to help the group as a whole.

“Everyone having fun?” she asked, more rhetorically than anything.

“I’m terrible at this!” seemed to be the consensus reply, followed by shrieks of laughter as one of them went down.

“Oh come on!” she cried. “It’s not that hard. Watch!”

She pushed off, spinning around and skating backward after ensuring she had a clear path. “See?”

“Showoff!”

“Rude!”

“Never gonna happen with me!”

“It’s not hard. Anyone can do it,” she said again, right as her foot caught that same patch of ice she’d had troubles with before. “Ack!” was all she managed to say as she went down in a fall that lacked anything remotely resembling grace.

She hit the ice rather hard and slid quickly toward the boards. Elle tried to flip herself over to find some way to stop herself, but the ice was slippery. There was no stopping it, she was going to hit the boards. Hard. A collective gasp went up from her friends, and Elle braced herself for the worst.

But before she could impact her precious cranium into the unfortunately unrelenting wood, a pair of hands slipped under her shoulder blades and lifted her to her feet. She gasped at the ease with which she was brought to her feet, the motion smoothly transferring her momentum into a different direction. The instant her feet were under her she spun. The only thing that greeted her view was a broad white expanse.

“My apologies for the sudden touching of your person,” a voice rumbled from somewhere above her.

Elle blinked, abruptly realizing that she wasn’t staring at a blank landscape of snow, but a white shirt stretched tight over the chest of a person. Swallowing nervously, she craned her neck back to look at her rescuer.

He was tall. Really, really tall. Oh, and there were muscles. The shirt was a plain white T-shirt she knew now, pulled firmly over his athletic build. It bunched tightly over his biceps, emphasizing their thickness. He had a tattoo on his right arm, but her eyes were too busy trying to take in his sheer gargantuan size that she never really noted what it was of.

“Um, it’s no problem,” she said, astonished that her voice didn’t crack or falter.

Did she mention that he was handsome? Like, stunningly so? A strong jaw, uncovered by any stubble—just the way she liked it—formed the basis for a face that provoked all sorts of thoughts inside her that she desperately wished she didn’t think. Prominent cheekbones and a powerful nose complimented his slightly canted eyes. She looked at them now, noticing the brown circles tinged liberally with amber. They were dark and mysterious, and yet they twinkled mischievously in the daylight, diffused as it was from the gray clouds.

“Are you unharmed?”

“Uh, yeah, yeah I’m fine,” she assured him. “No problems here, see?” she twirled to demonstrate, lifting her arms to prove it.

She twirled. With her arms in the air. Her jacket lifted up, and suddenly Elle realized that her rear, likely covered in snow, was in full view of him. She slammed her arms down and continued her spin, stopping once she faced him, her face burning hotly in embarrassment.

“Yes, I see,” he reassured her.

Elle could have died. What had she been thinking?!

“So,” her mouth said of its own accord. “Do you come here often?”