The cabin is dark except for the faint orange glow from the hearth in the main room. Wind moves against the walls in slow breaths.
Then it comes again. Another voice joins the first. Higher. Sharper. A third. A fourth.
The sound threads through the trees and wraps around the cabin like fingers tightening.
Coyotes. The word lands in my mind, foreign and primitive.
I tell myself that they’re just animals, nothing more. But my body disagrees.
My pulse spikes hard this time — no negotiation, no discipline. My throat tightens. My hands curl into the blanket’s edge.
The howling rises again. Many tones layered into a pack.
I sit up too quickly and the room tilts. Memories resurface of the cold, but not this mountain’s cold. Russian winter cold.
A door slamming.
Laughter somewhere outside.
Stay there. You’ll be fine.
The sound of something circling in the dark.
I push the image away, but it clings like frost to my skin. I don’t want to remember.
The coyotes crescendo again, and something inside me fractures. I swing my legs off the bed and step onto the wooden floor.
The door to the bedroom is half-open. I didn’t leave it that way. Another howl. This one closer.
I move toward the hallway before pride can stop me. He is already awake. I find myself happy that he is.
Memory is a cruel equalizer.
Hawk stands near the living room window, posture angled toward the sound. The firelight outlines him in bronze and shadow.
And in his hand — a gun ready if needed. He turns his head slightly when he hears me. The pack howls again. My composure shatters one more inch.
“It’s nothing,” he says quietly. “Just coyotes.”
Just.
He lowers the weapon, but he doesn’t set it down. I hate that I’m standing here. That I walked out. That he can see the crack in my control.
“They travel in groups,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Many predators do.”
His tone isn’t mocking. It’s factual.
Another chorus rises outside, longer this time, echoing through the trees. My breathing stutters. I swallow it down.
“It’s not the sound,” I say, staring at the dark window. “It’s what it means.”
He studies me for a few seconds.
“What does it mean to you?”
I don’t answer. Because I don’t want to explain that once, years ago, they told me the countryside was quiet. That I would be safe for the night. That no one would bother me.
