“I’m afraid,” I admit.
“I know.”
“But I’m not sorry.”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. Because the next time he kisses me, it’s not tentative.
It’s surrender. It’s everything he’s been holding back.
And for the very first time since I stepped onto this frozen hellscape of a continent, I don’t feel like I’m chasing the truth anymore.
I feel like I’ve finally caught it.
17
CASSIAN
The wind comes hard across the ridge, carrying with it a sharpness that cuts deeper than the cold. The kind that bites through fur and coat and flesh and settles in the bones, reminding you this place has never been for the soft or the careless. Angie walks close behind me, boots crunching across the frostbitten pass, her breath puffing soft clouds into the morning air. She doesn’t complain, not even when her backpack shifts sideways again or when we round the outcrop and the canyon below yawns open like the earth's mouth waiting to swallow us whole.
I know this place. Not because I’ve been here, but because men like Harrow choose spots like this. A natural funnel. Too narrow to flank, too steep to scale. Visibility is perfect—for them. It’s a trap. And he wants me to know it.
At the bottom of the trail, standing like he owns every shadow around him, is Harrow. That bastard still walks like he’s never had to bleed for anything in his life. Polished black combat armor under a thick frostline parka, gear so new it probably still smells like the factory, rifle slung over one shoulder in a waythat’s meant to look casual. He’s not smiling, not exactly, but there’s a curl in his lip that says he thinks this is already done.
He raises one gloved hand and gestures toward the edge of the drop, where two of his men haul a steel crate into view—sealed, armed, cold to the touch just from the way it hums against the air. I recognize the build. It’s a containment unit. For creatures, not people. For experiments. They didn’t bring it to threaten. They brought it because they plan to use it.
“Cassian,” Harrow calls out, voice clean and steady, bouncing off the canyon walls with ease. “We’re not here to play. You know what this is. You know what we need.”
I don’t answer. Not yet. I just take another step down, keeping my body between him and Angie, calculating the angles, the elevation, the distance to the canyon wall in case I need to rip a section down over them.
“You surrender now,” he continues, “and I give you my word she walks out of here. Unharmed. Unchained. Untouched. You have my word, Cassian.”
“Your word means shit,” I reply, voice low but loud enough to carry. “And you think I’d hand her over for a lie wrapped in a deal?”
Harrow’s eyes narrow, and I see it then—that flicker of annoyance at being challenged, the way his jaw ticks just a little like he’s used to being listened to the first time he talks.
“You really think this is a negotiation?” he asks. “You’ve been on the run for what, five years? Ten? And now you’ve got a camera girl tied to your hip and think that makes you a king? No. What it makes you is vulnerable.”
My body tenses. I keep breathing through the pull in my chest, that low thrum under my ribs that means the bear is listening. Watching. Waiting.
“We’re taking you,” Harrow says, nodding to the man by the crate. “We can take her too. Or we can leave her here when we’re done with you. Choice is yours.”
And that’s when the snap happens—not in the air, not in my body, but in the silence that follows. It breaks like glass. Not a roar. Not yet. Just motion.
I move fast.
Not with the bear’s fury, but with precision.
I’m down the slope in seconds, body low, legs driving through snow and rock, fists clenched not for release but for control, because I want them to see this. I want them to understand that I don’t need claws to destroy what they’ve built.
The first man raises his rifle, but he’s too slow. I’m on him before the barrel clears his chest, and I grab the weapon mid-swing, twist, and crush it between both hands like snapping a branch. I drive my elbow into his temple as he stumbles, and he goes down without a sound, helmet skidding across the ice.
I pivot, drop low, and sweep the legs out from the second before he can even shout. His body hits the ground hard, and I’m already turning to Harrow as the man groans and curls in on himself.
Harrow pulled his sidearm now, aiming with both hands, feet braced like he thinks this canyon floor gives him home court advantage.
“You don’t want to do this,” he says, voice shaking now despite how hard he tries to fake calm.
“I didn’t,” I growl, and then I’m there.
