Stupid.Gregor's voice in my head, sharp with disappointment.Tired climbers make mistakes. Mistakes kill.
I knew that. I knew better. But my body was screaming for exhaustion, for the kind of bone-deep tiredness that would let me sleep without dreaming, and I'd been chasing it for days.
I walked down the rest of the stairs.
At the bottom, I found James watching me.
"How long have you been there?" I asked.
"Long enough."
"Creepy."
"Worried." He stood up, brushing snow off his jeans. "You almost fell."
"I caught myself."
He crossed the distance between us, and the hum sang at his proximity. I was too tired to fight it. Too tired to do anything but stand there and let him look at me with those steady eyes.
"When's the last time you ate?" he asked.
"This morning."
"What did you eat?"
I tried to remember. Couldn't.
"That's what I thought." He reached into his jacket and pulled out an energy bar—one of the good ones, with actual protein. "Eat this. Then go inside and sleep. Real sleep, not whatever you have been doing, obviously more thinking than sleeping. I can hear you thinking too loud right now."
I took the bar. "I don't think too loud."
"You think at a volume that could wake the dead." He smiled, small and wry. "Eat. Sleep. Whatever you're training for, it'll still be there tomorrow."
I should have argued. Should have pushed back, maintained the distance I'd been trying to keep.
Instead, I unwrapped the bar and took a bite.
James watched me chew, something softening in his expression. "Good. Now go inside."
"Stop telling me what to do."
"Stop scaring me and I will."
I finished the bar, stuffed the wrapper in my pocket, and headed for the dorm. I didn't look back.
But I felt his eyes on me all the way to the door.
Sunday night, the vision came in full.
I was on the mountain. Not watching from a distance—there, boots crunching in snow, wind cutting through my layers, cold seeping into my bones.
The wolf was below me. I could feel it more than see it—a presence in the white, wild and terrified and hurt. It was running from something. Or toward something. I couldn't tell.
I started down the slope.
The wind picked up. Snow whipped around me, erasing visibility, turning the world into a howling blank. I kept moving. One foot in front of the other. The wolf was close now. I could hear it—not howling, but something worse. A sound like breaking.
And then I saw the figure.
