The words hit like claws. My wolf surges, snarling low in my throat before I can stop her. A growl hums through my chest, soft but certain. She heard. She agreed.
I jerk back, his hand slipping from my wrist. My breath fogs in the cold, my heart hammering too fast, too loud. The wolf paces, restless, insistent, ears pricked and tail high. But I force her down, shove the sound back, lock my face still.
He’s feverish. He’s delirious. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
I tell myself that, again and again, even as I tuck the blanket tighter around him, even as I feed the fire another stick, even as I sit back against the wall and watch the sweat bead and roll down his temple.
But my wolf doesn’t believe me.
She growls again, softer this time, a sound of recognition rather than warning, and I can’t pretend I don’t understand her.
Hours crawl past. The storm rages, branches cracking against the stone above, snow seeping in through cracks until it dusts the floor white. My eyes sting from staying open, but I don’t let them close. I can’t. Silas tosses and mutters in his fever, words spilling low and broken, too quiet to always catch. Sometimes it’s my name. Sometimes it’s curses, sharp and guttural. Once, it’s “brother,” spit like a wound that never healed.
I sit close, hand against his chest when his breath hitches, pressing gently until he steadies. Every time my skin touches his, my wolf presses forward, ears pricked, watching him with interest that makes my jaw tight.
“You’d drive anyone mad,” I whisper once, brushing damp hair from his forehead. “Even half-dead, you manage to get under my skin.”
His lips part, breath catching. “Mary…”
The way he says my name—it’s not sharp, not mocking. It’s soft, reverent. My chest tightens, my wolf pushing forward with a rumble of approval.
“Sleep,” I whisper, my voice breaking softer than I mean it to. “Just sleep. You can fight me in the morning.”
His body eases under my hand, his breath settling into something steadier, though the fever still burns. I sit there, my palm pressed lightly against him, until my arm aches, until the fire burns low again.
By the time dawn seeps gray through the cracks, I haven’t slept. My body aches from stillness, my mind from the weight of choices that wait for us beyond the hollow. The storm has eased, snow falling soft now, the air clearer, sharper.
Silas stirs, eyes blinking open, heavy but clearer. He looks at me, confusion first, then something steadier, almost soft.
“You stayed,” he murmurs, voice hoarse.
“I didn’t have much choice,” I say, though the truth is I never thought of leaving.
He smiles faintly, tired but real. “You kept me alive.”
I nod once, forcing my voice steady. “Don’t make me regret it.”
The wolf inside me paces slow, quiet now, satisfied for the moment.
And I wonder if maybe she sees further than I do.
14
SILAS
The snow never stops. It falls in veils, soft and endless, blanketing everything in sight until the world feels buried, hushed, made strange by the silence of it. Each step sinks ankle-deep, sometimes knee-deep, and every time I pull free it feels like the land is trying to swallow me back down. My side aches where the bullet grazed me, the bandage stiff with dried blood under my coat, but I don’t let her see me falter. She already carried me once. I won’t let it happen again.
Mary moves beside me, her breath steaming in hard pulls, her hair tangled and frozen at the edges, the fire of her wolf steady in her eyes even when exhaustion drags at her shoulders. She doesn’t complain. She doesn’t even ask where I’m leading us. She just follows the same way I’ve followed orders for a century, steady and unyielding, though hers is born of grit rather than obedience.
“Slow down,” she says at last, voice rough from the cold.
I glance at her. “You tired?”
She shoots me a look sharp enough to cut. “Not for me. You’re bleeding through your coat.”
I grit my teeth, glance down, and see the dark stain spreading again, the heat of it seeping through cloth to meet the cold. She’s right. But I don’t stop. “It’s nothing.”
Her jaw tightens, and she mutters something under her breath that sounds likeidiot fox.But she doesn’t press. Instead, she changes the subject, her eyes scanning the wind-swept expanse ahead. “We can’t keep walking like this. They’ll track us.”
