The bear rumbles deep, a sound only I can feel, and it settles heavy in my chest. I turn fast, before I let instinct drag me closer, before her fire burns through the walls I built with years of exile.
As I stalk up the ridge, her voice follows me, softer than the wind but sharper than ice. “You don’t scare me.”
The Seal under my ribs throbs once, as if in answer, and the bear growls with satisfaction.
Leaving her alive is a mistake. I know it with every step I take away from her camp.
But the truth coils deeper, the truth I can’t choke down. Protecting her is instinct. And instinct is stronger than exile, stronger than vows, stronger than me.
My exile unravels thread by thread, and I am powerless to knot it back together.
8
ANGIE
Idon’t trust silence. Not out here. Silence in the Arctic doesn’t mean peace, it means something’s waiting, something’s holding its breath, and I can feel it in the way my skin prickles as I go through my gear.
I tell myself I’m only double-checking the footage, making sure my drones logged correctly after the storm. Really though, I’m looking for him.
I pull up the files on my laptop, breath fogging in the cold, fingers fumbling over the keys with my gloves still on. Most of the footage is exactly what my producer asked for—ice sheets breaking, floes shifting, dogs running, my face red-cheeked from the wind as I narrate. But then I see it again, that blurred frame that shouldn’t exist, man and bear folding into one outline. I freeze with my finger hovering above the trackpad.
I whisper to myself because the sound steadies me. “It’s him. It has to be him.”
The edges of the image sharpen as the program auto-adjusts, and I suck in a breath when I see the gleam of eyes that glow faintly like fire through frost. The same eyes that pinned me to the snow this morning when he warned me off.
I bite my lip, half exhilarated, half terrified, and close the file fast, as if shutting the lid of a box that might bite. When the next window opens on its own, my heart sinks.
There’s a line of text in the corner I’ve never seen before, one that wasn’t there last week. Satellite uplink engaged. Sync active.
“No, no, no,” I mutter, scrambling to disconnect. I dive into the settings, and sure enough, tucked deep inside the operating system is a new program running slick as oil, a quiet parasite. My producer. He must have installed it in one of the last updates he pushed me. Every single bit of footage has already been mirrored somewhere far away.
“God, Gordon, you snake,” I groan, pressing my palms to my forehead. “You just couldn’t trust me, could you?”
The air in the tent feels thinner suddenly, and I can’t shake the thought that the Syndicate—that’s what Cassian called them—already has my files. Already knows.
The dogs bark outside, sharp and uneasy, and I snap my head up. At first I think it’s him, my glacier in boots, coming back down the ridge, but then I hear voices. Too many.
I push out of the tent, boots crunching in the snow. Three men stand at the edge of camp, slick coats shining like they’ve never seen real labor, their smiles stretched too wide. One of them lifts a hand as if greeting an old friend.
“Morning, miss,” he calls. His accent is southern, but his vowels are off, like someone who learned to blend in by rote. “We were told you had some equipment. Specialized cameras. We’d like to take a look.”
My stomach twists. The wind carries the metallic tang of steel, faint but sharp, hidden under their coats. My hands curl at my sides. “You’re not researchers. Researchers don’t show up without notebooks or clipboards. They don’t smell like a gun locker.”
The man’s smile flickers, but he recovers quick. “We just need your gear. Won’t take long. You can keep your dogs, even your tent. Just hand over the cameras.”
I laugh, high and too bright, because fear is chewing at my ribs and I refuse to let them hear it. “That’s funny. Because my cameras are my life, and I don’t hand my life to three strangers who stroll into camp with smiles that don’t touch their eyes. So maybe try again.”
The tallest one steps forward, gloved hand stretching as if to pat my shoulder. I jerk back, my pulse kicking. “Stay where you are,” I snap, voice shaking but loud. “Or I swear I’ll?—”
I don’t finish, because the air changes. Heavy, sharp, filled with something that doesn’t belong to the Syndicate or to me.
Cassian walks into the camp like he’s part of the storm itself, broad shoulders rolling under his coat, jaw hard, eyes lit faint and cold. The men stop moving, every one of them recognizing what walks toward them even if they don’t know his name.
“Leave,” he says, voice quiet but carrying like thunder across the snow.
The leader forces a laugh, nervous and brittle. “We’re just here for equipment. No trouble if she cooperates. Maybe you should walk along.”
Cassian doesn’t move fast. He doesn’t need to. He closes the distance like inevitability itself, each step steady, unhurried. His eyes never leave the man who spoke. “You won’t touch her.”
