Unless you fucking kill him now, Nadia!
Guilt claws at my throat.
My wolf prowls beneath my skin, feeling… protective. The wrongness of it makes me want to scream.
I hate him for killing Chance. I hate myself for not finishing this.
But most of all, I hate that I can’t.
Chapter 5
Jericho
Cold wakes me before pain does.
The kind that settles into bone. I’m half-buried in snow and pine needles, face pressed against frozen earth. My wrists throb—wrong angle, wrong pressure. Metal bites into skin.
Not just metal.
Suppression cuffs.
Fuck.
The recognition comes instant and mechanical. Dragon-forged alloy designed to dampen shifter magic and physical strength. I’ve locked them around dozens of wrists myself. Know exactly what they do.
My dragonfire is gone.
Not banked. Not suppressed.Gone.
I don’t panic. Panic is for people who think fear will save them.
Instead, I take inventory.
Moderate head trauma. Laceration above left eyebrow—clotted but recent. Bruising across ribs, likely from impact. No broken bones. Core temperature dropping fast.
I’m in a dense forest. Wind from the northwest carrying snow and the distant smell of burning fuel. The convoy. Or what’s left of it.
I’m alone. Unarmed. Restrained. Facing an unknown number of hostiles. Survival probability decreasing with every minute of exposure.
I flex my fingers. Sensation returns slowly, pins and needles crawling up from numb fingertips. The cuffs allow minimal movement but no strength. If I tried to break them, the runes would activate. Painful. Potentially lethal.
Not an option.
I listen.
Wind howls through branches. Snow falling softly against fabric. My own breathing—shallow, controlled.
And beneath it all, something else.
A heartbeat.
Not mine. Faster. Closer than it should be.
Someone’s watching.
I don’t open my eyes. Don’t change my breathing pattern. Just track the sound, measuring distance and direction.
Ten feet. Maybe twelve. Upslope and to my left.
