The wind shifts, sending snow whirling around me like a tornado. For a single heartbeat, the trees seem to move, closing in on me.
“I know you're out there!” My voice fractures in the cold. “If you want something from me—come take it!”
I’m met with the soft hiss of falling snow and disappointment. I don’t know what I expected. I think part of me wanted something big and brutal to step out from the dark and put me out of my misery. But nothing comes.
The longer the silence stretches,the clearer the truth becomes: I’m not angry at whatever’s out here. I’m angry at myself?—
For not being enough when Anna needed me. For spending two years hunting a man I’ll never get to confront. For standing in a frozen forest, pleading for something to hurt me so the pain I feel would finally make sense.
I inventeda monster so I wouldn’t have to face the one living inside my own skin. But there’s no monster. Just me, and the sad realization that I came here for blood—but I’m the one bleeding out.
Andrik POV:
Hero.
The word pierces right through me. Before I can stop it, a derisive sound rips from my throat.
If she only knew what I was, or the screams I carry from the souls I’ve shattered. I am no hero. I am the thing monsters fear in the dark.
But then her words fully register.She said she needed revenge, not mourning. Awareness slams into me like a sheet of broken ice. She didn't love him. She wanted him dead—a judge in her own right.
Relief floods through me so fierce it nearly bursts my heart. She wasn't mourning a monster. She was hunting one.And I took that from her.
Sae’varûn thrak’ven ar’ven, etra sael ves’kae. (I would take back the kill, if it meant your soul could breathe.)
But gods—she wanted him dead. She’s not his.She never was.
A laugh breaks free, and she whirls toward the sound. Her hand flies to the knife strapped to her thigh. She takes a step forward. Not away from danger—but toward it.
Toward me.
I have never seen something so wild, so alive.
She is a thunderstorm in a bloodstained parka, screaming into the mouth of something she cannot even begin to understand.
Every instinct I have is roaring at me to move. To step from the shadow and show her what waits in the dark.
To take what the bond whispers is mine.
But if I go to her now, she will only see me as something to fight—not as her mate, and I don’t want her surrender.I want to be chosen.
“Come take it,” she roars. Not knowing that every step she takes toward me, every furious word pulled from her throat, pulls at the fragile stitches of my restraint.
The earth groans beneath me, roots shifting to try and keep me still. The snow freezes mid-fall, suspended between us, as if the world has stopped to watch what happens next.
“That's what I thought,” she shrieks, her voice splintering with frost and fury. “All that skulking and hiding but nothing to say!”
“Kael’thurin veskai,”I groan quietly. (Gods help me.) She's baiting me, not out of arrogance, but out of pain. From grief so massive even the forest bows its head in recognition.
“Coward!” She spits.
The word burns like hot coal against my fur. Not because it offends me—because it’s true.
I am a coward. I’ve spent my life judging others, but I’m too afraid to face her. I can hold back the weight of a falling mountain, but I can’t hold back the terror of her looking at me and seeing a monster instead of a mate. I would tear out my own eyes if it meant I wouldn’t have to see the exact second her wonder turns to disgust.
“You watch me,” she snarls, stepping closer. “You tell me to stop, but you won't face me?”
Her boots crunch recklessly through snow. She’s fearless but so,sobreakable.
