It’s a wild, broken laugh, breathless and sharp, the kind that comes when terror breaks and relief rushes in like a tide. She clutches her camera to her chest as though it’s her lifeline, her curls sticking everywhere, and laughs again, softer this time, almost disbelieving.
The sound slices through me. It echoes in places I thought were dead.
I stand.
She turns her head, eyes catching on me. She sees me for the first time, and I know what she sees—tall man in furs, hair unbound, eyes too sharp, body too still. Not a fisherman. Not a rescuer she can thank with words that make sense. Something other.
Her lips part. I see the question forming, but I can’t hear it. I won’t.
I take one step back, then another. Her hand lifts slightly, as if she might reach for me, but I turn and walk away before she can find her voice.
The bear grumbles, unhappy at the retreat, but I shove the sound down. This is not for us. She is not for us.
Behind me, her laughter follows, lighter now, clinging to the wind like smoke. I hate that it lingers. I hate that it makes my chest feel too tight.
By the time I reach the ridge, the poachers’ trail is gone from my thoughts. All I can hear is that laugh, ringing clear, breaking into the silence I’ve carried like armor for years.
When I reach my shack, I throw the door wide and stand in the dark, fists clenched. The Seal beats once under my ribs, mocking me, reminding me of bonds I’ve sworn to bury. The bear rumbles low, restless, remembering the warmth of her weight in our hand, the sound of her breath when it came back, the spark of her laugh.
I slam my palm against the wall, hard enough that the wood cracks. “Forget her,” I snarl into the dark.
But the silence doesn’t answer. It only carries her laughter back to me, curling through the ice halls of my solitude, refusing to fade.
I tell myself I’ll forget by morning.
I know I won’t.
4
ANGIE
Ihuddle over my laptop with the heater sputtering in protest beside me, the tent walls snapping like sails in the wind. My fingers ache from cold and nerves, but I don’t stop scrubbing back through the footage. Each time I pause, sharpen, and lean in, my breath fogs the screen like a second veil.
There. That frame again. The one that refuses to behave like it should. The pixels bleed, the motion blur stretches wrong, and yet I can’t deny the shape that lingers—half-man, half-bear, caught in an impossible silhouette.
I mutter into the recorder clipped to my collar, voice hushed though no one is here to hear me. “Enhancing contrast at thirty percent. Grain correction applied. And still, ladies and gentlemen, we have… something that absolutely shouldn’t exist.” My laugh comes thin, strained. “I’m officially spooking myself.”
The radio at my elbow crackles, and Gordon’s voice blares in like a drill sergeant. “Angie, you got something yet? Investors are breathing down my neck, and I’m about two hours away from putting a bullet in my own foot just to have drama worth reporting.”
I roll my eyes so hard it nearly hurts. “Gordon, put down the gun, because you’re not going to need theatrics when I send this clip. But—and hear me out before you blow your gasket—I’m not sending it yet.”
Silence follows, heavy enough that I can picture him pinching the bridge of his nose, red in the face, pacing around some warm office while I sit here with frost in my eyelashes. Then comes the explosion. “Angie. What do you mean you’re not sending it? Do you want this project to tank? Do you want your dogs repossessed? Do you want to explain to your father why you’re crawling back broke with nothing to show for six months of his guilt money?”
I grip the edge of the laptop tighter, my knuckles whitening in the glow. “I mean,” I say carefully, because if I shout he’ll only shout louder, “that I need to know what this is before I let it loose. I’m not about to upload shaky footage that could be a bear, could be a man in a costume, could be—hell, could be some glitch—just so you can plaster it with clickbait headlines. I want proof, Gordon. Real proof.”
He groans loud enough to rattle the speakers. “You’re impossible. Proof doesn’t sell, Angie, spectacle sells. You have spectacle. Send it.”
“No.” My voice cuts sharper than I expect. “Not yet. You’ll get something. Just not tonight.”
Before he can chew me out further, I flick the radio off and flop backward onto my cot. The canvas creaks under me. My curls spread across the blanket, damp from melted snow, and I stare at the low ceiling while my heart drums unevenly.
The footage still burns behind my eyes. That shape, caught mid-motion, eyes gleaming with something not human, not animal either. Haunted, like it carried storms inside. I hug my recorder closer and mutter, “There’s a story here. And I’m going to find it before Gordon sells it for clickbait.”
A shadow darkens the tent flap, and I bolt upright, heart leaping. A voice rasps from outside, old and thick with accent. “Miss, your dogs are restless. They smell something. Best you tie them closer tonight.”
I unzip the flap to find one of the locals—Jari, the fisherman who lent me extra fuel last week. He’s wrapped in layers of fur, his beard stiff with frost, eyes pale as sea ice. The dogs tug at their harnesses behind him, whining low.
“Thanks, Jari,” I say, pulling my coat tighter. “They’re probably just bored of listening to me talk to myself.”
