Page 118 of Auctioned to My Bratva Boss

"Really?"

I jerked my chin toward outside the glass cabin.

She followed my gaze and immediately sat bolt upright in the blanket. A helicopter had landed at the edge of the snowfield at some point.

"When did you—" Her voice cracked.

"Just now, while you were watching the aurora."

She turned to glare at me, but the fake annoyance couldn't last two seconds before laughter broke through. She scrambled up, shoving her feet haphazardly into her boots.

"What are you waiting for?" She turned back to hurry me, face still flushed. "You said there's something better than the aurora."

I looked at her. Didn't move.

Nothing in this world was better than her in this moment. But I didn't say that out loud. I stood and took her coat from the rack, helping her bundle up myself.

I gripped her hand and helped her into the cabin. When the rotors spun overhead, the entire snowfield trembled. It shrank smaller and smaller below us until the night swallowed it completely.

We flew above the clouds for nearly an hour.

Our first landing was inside a cavern beneath a glacier. The ice walls were that almost-transparent blue that only comes from millennia of compression. Volcanic heat seeped up through the rock, pooling into dark red thermal springs at our feet. Blue and red tangled together in the same light.

"God..." She pressed against the ice wall, her white breath dispersing in the blue glow. "How can ice and fire exist together?"

"They always have." I stood behind her. "Most people just never get to see it."

She didn't catch my meaning, too busy reaching for the hanging ice overhead. I caught her outstretched hand and pulled her close—the rock was slippery. I wasn't taking chances.

When we emerged from the ice cave, we lifted off again. This time, the helicopter descended to the rim of a dormant volcano.We lowered down in a suspended basket, sinking gradually into that massive throat.

She gripped my hand the entire time, too nervous to let go.

"We're... going inside a volcano?"

"It's been asleep for almost five thousand years." I pulled her closer. "More docile than the babies in your belly."

She laughed despite herself, and some of her tension eased.

The deeper the basket sank, the darker it got, until the patterns scorched into the rock walls by ancient lava spread out wildly, like someone had melted an entire sunset and starfield into the stone.

She stared up, speechless for a long time.

By the time we rose back out of the volcano, night had deepened. She looked tired, resting quietly against my shoulder. The helicopter crossed ridge after snow-covered ridge according to my planned route, finally setting us down somewhere I hadn't told her about.

It was a snow valley cradled by mountains. At the bottom lay a hot spring that never froze, steam condensing into a thin veil in the subzero air. The aurora flowed overhead again, reflecting on the water's surface, even tinting the snow beneath us with shifting green.

I'd had people set up a transparent tent by the spring beforehand, with a warm lamp burning inside.

She stood at the valley entrance, not moving forward for a long moment.

"Matvey..." She turned to me, voice barely above a whisper. "Did you arrange this too?"

I nodded and pulled out the box I'd been keeping warm against my chest inside my coat, walking over to her.

"For you."

She hesitantly accepted it. The moment she lifted the lid, she froze completely.