I nodded because I couldn’t speak.
Griff released me like he was forcing himself to. “Go,” he commanded, and his eyes flicked down to the knife at my thigh. “And if you have to use it… use it.”
My throat tightened around a sound that wanted to be a sob.
Then the first gunshot cracked across the wind from the southern inlet, loud as thunder.
The camp exploded into motion.
Humans grabbed bows and spears and anything that could become a weapon. Someone shoved Finn toward the north path with two smaller kids in tow, their faces pale and their voices silent.
Wolves shifted at the edges of the clearing, bones breaking with that familiar, awful music. Fur erupted. Bodies lengthened. Their eyes flared gold in the dim morning light.
No one screamed yet.
That came later.
I ran.
There was no room for thought, no room for anything, just wet ground and pounding breath and the weight of my new knife thumping against my thigh. I sprinted past the racks of drying fish, past the smokehouse, past the shelter where Aunt Moira kept her herbs. The wind snapped my braid against my neck. My lungs burned with cold air.
Behind me, the sea boomed with a deeper sound than the constant drum of waves. Engines.
When I reached the birch line, I risked glancing back.
The southern cliff edge had become a moving line of dark figures, spilling up from the beach like ants from a disturbed nest. Men in uniforms, rifles held high, bayonets glinting in the weak morning light. A flag snapped above one of the ships rocking in the wind, red and white.
It was the British.
Not the ragged scavengers we’d fought off years ago. Not the desperate bands that sometimes stumbled onto Skye and turned tail when they saw wolves standing beside humans. This was organized. This was planned.
This was an army.
A shot split the air and a man near the firepitjerked backward, arms flinging wide, and for a second my brain refused to name what I was seeing.
Then my mother’s voice rang out in the quiet.
“Tam! Go!”
I turned and ran harder.
The hollow waited beneath the fallen oak, its roots clawing up toward the sky like ribs. I dropped to my knees and crawled inside, dragging damp leaves and grit with me. My hands shook so badly I scraped my knuckles on the bark.
Inside, it smelled like old wool and earth. Someone had hung a small charm from the root ceiling, a crescent carved from bone. It was supposed to bring safe hunting. I prayed it would bring me safety now.
I pressed my palm over my mouth and listened.
Gunfire. Screams. The thunder of boots.
And above it all, the deep, furious roar of angry wolves.
I squeezed my eyes shut until sparks danced behind my lids.
Don’t think. Just breathe.
I tried to breathe.
Minutes passed, or maybe hours. Time turned syrup-thick, slow and choking. Every crack of a rifle felt like a physical blow. My knife was clutched in my hand without me remembering I’d drawn it.
