I skid to a stop at the edge of the lake, where the snow-covered bank gives way to frost-slick ice.
I remember this place and what waits beneath the dark water.
I lift my head and watch Luceran’s pale shape surge forward, paws pounding the ice, while Pax runs ahead of him toward the lake’s center. The distance between them is closing far too quickly.
I promised him. We will survive this. Together. I can’t abandon him now.
I step onto the ice, forcing myself to believe it won’t shatter beneath me. That I can stop Luceran, that I can somehow make this right. I run again, feet skidding, arms windmilling as I fight to keep my balance. Snow thickens, an ivory veil swallowing the world. Luceran’s fur becomes a ghostly blur ahead.
I raise a hand to shield my eyes. Cold claws into my chest until every inhale feels like knives. My legs burn. My bones ache. Still, I run.
Even when my strength begins to fail. Even when my lungs scream.
Suddenly I stumble to a stop, doubling over as snow fills my mouth and throat. I choke, gasp, lift my head into the storm.
“Luceran!” I scream, though the wind steals most of it, turning it into little more than a whisper. “Stop!”
The word is torn from me, hurled into the night, and I don’t know if he hears it.
Then I see movement through the sleet.
A shape. A shadow.
I hear a voice, then a growl, then the unmistakable sounds of struggle. A shiver rakes down my spine just as the ice cracks.
I stumble forward and drop to my knees, pressing my palms flat against the ice as if my stillness might somehow stop the fracture from spreading. As if I can will the lake to hold.
Through the sleet. Through the biting cold. I see them.
Pax is in the water.
The ice has split wide around him, black water churning as his arms flail wildly. He fights for purchase, for breath, for the surface, but he can’t reach it.
Because Luceran is holding him under.
Luceran, no longer the wolf, but the Fae male, bare and pale and luminous in the moonlight, beautiful and terrible all at once. His hands press down on Pax’s head, forcing him into the dark.
My lips tremble. A broken sound tears from my chest.
“No,” I sob.
Luceran’s head snaps toward me.
In the same heartbeat, Pax sinks beneath the surface, his dark hair blooming before disappearing into the black water, swallowed whole.
“No,” I cry again.
My body shakes uncontrollably as I rise to my feet, and the ice beneath me answers with another sharp crack. I feel the surface give way, feel myself falling, feel the cold water kiss my ankles, then fur and teeth and power surge around me.
Luceran sweeps me up onto his back, the wolf once more, massive and fast and unstoppable. He races across the ice, outrunning the fractures as they spider and split beneath us. The wind tears at my face as he sprints for the shore.
He leaps.
For a breathless moment, we are flying.
Then he lands cleanly on the snow, as the lake behind us collapses entirely, slabs of ice bobbing once before sinking into the black depths.
I roll off his back at once.
