Because at last, the chains are broken.
12
SILAS
The forest feels endless.
We run until my lungs burn, until my legs threaten to buckle, until the only sound left in the world is the crunch of our feet breaking through crusted snow and the ragged pull of breath tearing from my chest. The storm hasn’t eased—it falls heavier now, thick flakes driving sideways, carried by a wind that howls like some ancient thing woken from the mountain’s bones. Snow clings to the branches above, bending the black pines low until their crowns nearly touch, their trunks closing us into a corridor of shadow and white.
Every breath feels colder than the last. It cuts sharp, carving into me, until my chest is fire and frost together. The wolf in me snarls against the weakness of flesh, demanding I keep moving, demanding I push harder, demanding I don’t falter when I can hear the hounds of the Syndicate in my mind already. But my body doesn’t care about what the wolf wants. My side burns hot, the bullet graze spreading wet warmth through my shirt, sticky and slow.
Mary notices before I can hide it.
“You’re hurt,” she says, sharp but not frantic, her hand catching my arm when I stagger.
“I’m fine.” The word tastes like iron.
She looks at me the way she looks at the horizon, serious, searching. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve bled worse.”
“Not out here,” she snaps, dragging me forward, her grip firm enough that I don’t fight her. “You’ll die before we even reach the tree line if you keep pretending you’re not slowing.”
The storm swallows her words, but the weight of them lingers. She half-hauls me through the drifts, her wolf bracing mine, until the trees open to a slope of jagged stone where the snow doesn’t settle as heavy. She scans quick, her eyes sharp and bright in the moonlight cutting through the storm, then pulls me toward a hollow at the base of the outcrop. It’s small, half-hidden by drift and branches, the kind of place a wolf would dig into for warmth.
She pushes me in first. My knees hit hard stone, and I hiss through my teeth when the movement tears the wound wider. Blood runs hot against my side. I press my hand harder to it, but the pressure only buys me time.
Mary crawls in after, snow caked in her hair, her breath steaming hard in the small space. The hollow is narrow, the walls of stone close on either side, but it shields us from the storm, muffling the wind to a distant moan. The ground is cold, dusted with old leaves that crackle faintly under us, but it’s dry.
“Sit down,” she orders, the tone not leaving room for refusal.
I drop back against the wall, the stone pressing cold into my shoulders. My chest rises and falls too fast, and my hand is slick with blood when I pull it away from my side. She notices instantly.
“Idiot,” she mutters, crawling forward on her knees. Her hands go for the clasp of my coat.
“Don’t,” I growl.
“Shut up.”
Her fingers are quick, tugging the coat off my shoulders, peeling the fabric away even as I grit my teeth. Cold air rushes in, biting at the wound. My shirt is soaked through, blood dark and heavy in the flickering light from the storm outside. She tears at the seam with her claws until fabric rips, then presses hard with a strip torn from her sleeve.
The pain flares white-hot, a shock that makes me want to shove her back, but I don’t. I hold still. I let her press the cloth hard enough to make the edges of my vision spark.
“You could’ve told me,” she says, her voice tight.
“You’d have slowed.”
She glares at me, fire burning in her eyes. “I carried you half the way anyway.”
Despite the pain, a laugh pulls from my chest, rough and low. “You did.”
She doesn’t answer, just keeps the pressure steady until the bleeding slows. Her hands are strong, her claws nicking stone as she grips tighter, and I realize it’s the first time in years someone’s tended me without demand, without expectation. Not Roman. Not his men. Just her.
When the bleeding has eased enough that I’m not drowning in it, she leans back and turns toward the pile of twigs and bark she scraped together at the entrance. The storm pushed enough deadfall under the rock that she finds dry wood. She strikes stone against claw until sparks catch, and a small flame flares, weak but growing. She shields it with her hand until it steadies, the firelight spreading across the stone walls, across her face, painting her eyes gold and green.
The hollow warms quickly, the air shifting, the shadows flickering. My body aches with exhaustion, my blood still sticky, but the fire makes it easier to breathe.
She doesn’t look at me at first. She stares into the flames, her jaw set, her wolf close to the surface. The silence stretches, filled only by the crackle of burning bark and the wind’s distant howl.
