It’s snowing outside. It blew in when Briar left, rushing out the front door and letting it bang behind her. I think of Augie, huddled in his prison.
“I think that he’s better off where he is now than where he was before,” I say. Carefully. Kindly.
Winter nods. “That’s not a small thing. I know that. I ... It will have to be enough.”
We sit there for a moment. There’s a fire in the fireplace. My belly is full. I can hear the rumble of Ty’s voice, and it soothes me. Everything is changing, but I’m not unhappy with that. I’m not anything close to unhappy with thechanges.
It’s the traitor who’s been sandbagging us, the traitor I never saw despite all the complaints about disruption along our routes—but I shove that away.
“I miss so many people,” Winter tells me in a hushed voice. “But I’m also okay with this. With us. With this night, no matter why we did it. It felt ...”
“Like family,” I murmur.
We look at each other, then away. We don’t hug or anything too sappy, but when I feel myself smiling, I know she is too.
Much later, Ty and I go outside and stand there in the snow, letting it swirl around us. I set my hands on his hips and I hold my head back so I can catch snowflakes on my tongue.
I should tell him, but I don’t. I rationalize it. I tell myself that he has so few nights like this, where he doesn’t have to be the king of everything. Where he can just be himself. Why should I let some asshole traitor take that too?
“I told them I’d be coming back tonight, but they know where I am,” Ty says, looking down at me with that light in his eyes that I love the most. “Do you want to spend the night in your cottage?”
I smile at him. “I love my cottage.”
He looks more serious than I think he should. “I know you do.”
I don’t want him serious, not now. Not when I know what a gift it is to have time with him away from the den. Away from the pack.
I take his hands in mine and draw him backward, then turn so I can lead him across the yard toward my cottage. The snow keeps coming, and it’s cold. Refreshing. It’s in my hair and on my eyelashes, and I can feel the cold wet of it in the places we touch.
As we get near my cottage, I’m not sure if I see something fluttering at the corner of my eye or if it’s just more snow—
“Stop,” Ty growls out, yanking me back flush against him.
Not in a cute way. It’s an order.
I freeze there where he holds me. All I can feel is his heart in his chest, and mine keeping time. But I don’t protest.
In the next moment, I see it, mostly hidden by branches laden with snow until we stop. Until we look.
A figure in the trees, and all around him, steaming entrails melting the snow.
His back is toward us. I don’t understand how he doesn’t know we’re here, this figure in black crouched over his work.
I quickly realize it’s because he’s making noise. He’s chopping with an axe, again and again, and a quick scan makes it clear that there have to be the remains of at least five animals in front of him.
Something else is clear too.
I’ve been thinkinghesince I saw him. Now I can study the figure, and that confirms it. He’s big. Wide.
Ty is growling, low and long. I’m pressed against him, but my entire body is wired and ready. I can feel my fingertips splitting open to let the claws out.
The figure leaps to its feet in a fluid, athletic,smoothmotion—
And both Ty and I know him immediately.
I feel Ty’s body go stiff. I think I might whimper.How ...?
But it’s like we’re frozen.
