Not an animal this time.
Something lower.
A deep, distant rumble that vibrated faintly through the ground.
We both stiffened.
“What was that?” I asked.
He turned toward the ridge, eyes narrowing. “Not thunder.”
My heart knocked hard.
“Then… what?”
He didn’t answer.
He couldn’t, because the rumble came again—closer now, louder, rolling through the snow-covered earth beneath our boots like something waking up.
Something shifting.
The breeze went still.
The snow stopped falling for a beat, hanging suspended in the air like the world had paused.
Carson stepped closer to me without thinking.
“Sienna,” he murmured, his voice low and steady in a way that made every hair on my arms rise.
I looked up to see the bear and her cubs.
“We need to move.”
Chapter Sixteen
Carson
By the time I reached my cabin at Honey Leaf Lodge, the morning snow had tapered to a fine mist. I brushed it from my shoulders before stepping inside, kicking the door shut behind me.
The cabin exhaled the way empty places do — quietly, waiting. It smelled faintly of the coffee I’d made days before leaving for the dry run, mixed with cold air and the lemon oil someone had used on the wooden counters. Everything was clean, sparsely furnished, exactly how I liked it.
But the moment I dropped my pack near the bed, the silence didn’t settle the way it normally did.
It pressed inside my chest instead.
It felt as if the room expected me to explain why my chest felt strangely full.
I walked to the window and started peeling off my jacket. The quiet rustle of fabric filled the space, followed by the dull thump as I hung it on the hook by the door.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned forward, elbows on my knees, letting the last twenty-four hours unspool in my mind.
The bear.
The wolves.
Her slipping on the ice near the lake.
Her catching herself before I could.
