Chapter 13 - Keira

The mist over Halfmoon Lake is thick enough in the pale afternoon light that I cannot make out Attlefolk on the other side of the shining water. The surface shimmers in the fading daylight, and the fog wraps everything in a blanket of quiet.

The Rosecreek Bottoms has quickly become my favorite spot in the town—isolated, untouched by the chaos of the rest of the world, and permanently beautiful, as if suspended in time. A place where I go to think, or to try not to.

I’ve been decidedly trying not to think since the argument with Ado. I walked out on him, left him standing in the hallway. I haven’t stopped moving since. But here, by the lake, with nothing but the sound of the water lapping at the shore and the soft rustle of leaves in the trees, my thoughts catch up to me.

It’s hard not to think about what happened all those years ago—my time in captivity, the cold cell, the suffocating darkness, the way every noise made my heart race because I never knew if it meant help was coming or if it meant something worse. I can still feel the rough concrete floor beneath me, the smell of damp and rot. The hunger gnawing at my insides, the thirst that made my lips crack and bleed. Worst of all, the waiting. Waiting for rescue. Waiting for something to change.

But nothing did. Not until the visits with food and water stopped altogether, and I realized the compound I was imprisoned under had been abandoned. I was on my own.

To this day, I am still on my own. Sometimes, the world fools me into thinking otherwise, but I know the truth.

When I finally got out, I did that alone, too. I wasn’t the same. I didn’t even recognize myself in the mirror. I was hollowed out; broken in ways I didn’t know how to fix. I buried myself in the work, got lost in New York, and never tried to get found again—anything that would keep me from feeling too much, from remembering too much.

But you can only bury things so deep before they claw their way back to the surface.

Ado doesn’t understand. How could he? He wasn’t there. He didn’t see what I went through. And now he thinks he can situate himself back in my life and make everything better with a few words? I wish he knew it’s not that simple. Trust doesn’t come easy for me anymore; after everything that’s happened, it’s even harder with him. Especially when he refuses to tell me what I crave most to know.

I take a deep breath, trying to push my resentment away, but it clings to me like the mist, settling in my clothes, my hair. I shake my head and resume walking along the shoreline, hoping the movement will help clear my head.

The soft, comforting hiss of water retreating along the sand after each lap of the wave against the bank welded me back together. I focus intently on the sound, trying to let it into my soul.

Then I hear it—a faint rustling in the underbrush up ahead.

My breath catches in my throat, and I freeze, listening intently. It could be an animal, but I know intrinsically it’s a person. I know the smell of a shifter.

I step forward cautiously, my senses on high alert. As I approach the trees, a faint, metallic scent hits my nose—blood.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I reach for my pistol, drawing it slowly as I inch closer to the source of the noise. There’s movement in the trees, just beyond my line of sight. A shadow shifts in the fog. My heart pounds in my chest as I strain to see through the thick curtain of mist and reeds. Whatever it is, it’s close.

I take another step forward, and the smell of blood grows stronger. Something is wrong. My wolf raises her hackles and snarls.

Then I see it—a figure slumped against a tree trunk. The blood is dried on their shirt. The sight sends a rush of horror through me.

Whoever they are, they’re hurt. Badly. And I’m the only one here.

I take a deep breath, steadying myself, and move closer.

As I approach, my heart skips a beat. Recognition floods through me, cold and sickening. It’s him—the man who escaped from the riverside days ago. His face is pale, his shoulder a mangled mess of blood and bandages, but it’s unmistakable.

He must have been laying low by the lake this whole time. We never thought of checking this close to home. We assumed he wouldn’t be so stupid as to hide in our backyard.

His head lifts blearily. I see his eyes sweep over me, then harden, and something happens between us, something I can’t describe.

Before I can process my next move, something in me shifts. My instincts flare to life, taking over.

My skin prickles with energy, bones snapping and reforming, my hide sprouting as I transform into my wolf form. The change is quick, fluid, driven by adrenaline coursing through me.

But just as I finish shifting, I see him rise to his knees as his form shimmers and morphs as well. He’s a wolf, too. I should have known.

We lock eyes for a split second, and then we’re on each other.

His size and weight are formidable, but he’s injured. I smell the rot of the days-old gunshot wound festering in his shoulder.

I use that to my advantage, barreling into him with everything I have. We collide in a flurry of fur and teeth. He snaps his teeth against my ear as we tumble through the dirt.

I go for his shoulder, biting down hard. He yelps in pain, his body jerking violently beneath me, but I hold my ground, my jaws clamped around the wound. He thrashes, trying to throw me off, but I dig my claws into the earth and press down harder, pinning him beneath me.

I think I’ve won. But then, with a snarl of pain and fury, he shifts back, human once more, and my jaw stretches painfully, forcing me to let go.

His hand shoots out faster than I can react, and a blade flashes in the dim light. The knife shoots out across my face. A pin-straight line of pain incises along my cheekbone.

I yelp, reeling back, my vision blurring as blood drips down the side of my face.

I try to transform back, but my body falters, caught between forms as I stagger back from him. He’s panting, clutching his wounded shoulder, but there’s a gleam of recognition in his eyes now—a twisted, cruel smile that makes my insides churn.

“I remember you,” he rasps, his voice hoarse and taunting. “From the Bloodtooth Pack. You were one of their little pets, weren't you? The one we kept locked away for months.”

The world around me blurs, the sounds of the forest fading.

The cell. The hunger. The terror. It’s him. He was one of them. One of the men who kept me captive, who made sure I never saw the light of day.

Fear claws my insides, overwhelming me. I hear a phantom roaring in my ears like the sound of a motorbike revving on the highway. The screeching of my world as it grinds to a halt.

My wolf instincts take over, and I snap at his leg in desperation, trying to tear him apart before he can hurt me again. But he’s quicker this time. He pivots back on one foot. His boot slams into my ribs with a sickening thud.

The air rushes out of me at once. I collapse to the ground, gasping for breath. Pain radiates through my side, hot like a poker, and there is not one ounce of oxygen in my lungs, but I force myself to scramble up, to fight, to do something. He’s standing over me now, raising his boot for another kick, and I can’t move fast enough. I pant, heaving, trying to remember how to breathe.

Just as his boot swings down toward me, a blur of movement barrels into him from the side.

Ado.

The two of them crash into the ground, Ado’s wolf form snarling as he drives the man into the dirt. He’s relentless, teeth bared, muscles coiled with fury as he tears into the man who hurt me.

I stagger to the ground, lying with my head low and my teeth bared. I watch as Ado pins him down with sheer force, his jaws snapping inches from the man’s face. The man struggles, but he’s no match for Ado’s strength, not with his injury.

Ado snarls, his jaws snapping shut around the man’s throat with lethal precision. The fight goes out of the stranger instantly, his body going limp beneath Ado's mass. It’s over.

I watch the man I have dreamed about for years as he rips out the throat of one of the phantoms of my past. I see two halves of my life collide headlong before my eyes.

Ado doesn’t move for a moment, his wolf form looming over the lifeless body, teeth still bared in a final warning. Blood drips from his snout.

Then, slowly, he steps back. His eyes never leave the fallen man, as if waiting for some trick, some last-ditch attack that never comes.

I breathe out. The adrenaline drips out of me like the last dregs of rainwater in a gutter. My side aches where I was kicked, and the cut along my cheekbone stings in the cold air, but it’s nothing compared to the hard, heavy feeling in my stomach.

I stare at the dead man. It’s a strange mixture of relief and horror. He’s dead. One of them is dead.

The woods are silent around us; the only sound is the faint whistle of the wind through the reeds at the edge of the water. I don’t know how long we sit there, Ado and I, a few feet apart, both of us in wolf form, ensconced by the stillness of the lake. There’s nothing to say. There’s nothing we could say if we wanted to.

After what could have been an eternity, Ado pads over to me. His steps are careful and deliberate. He lowers his snout and licks my face gently, his tongue brushing over the cut on my cheek. It’s a simple gesture, but it soothes something deep inside me. I close my eyes, leaning into him and rubbing my head against his. I allow the warmth of his presence to chase away my lingering fear.

We shift back together, our bodies returning to human form in the same instant. The world feels colder, more jagged, without the protective layer of fur and the hum of wolf consciousness, but Ado is still there, close beside me.

He reaches into his pack, pulling out a small first-aid kit. His hands are steady as he cleans the wound on my face. The roughness of the butterfly bandage startles me compared with the gentle way he applies it. In the soft press of his fingers, I find a portal to a future where I don’t have to be alone.

I watch his movements in silence. He’s focused, determined, like this small task is the only thing grounding him right now.

Maybe this will prove to him that he was right in his own mind. He followed me—I asked him not to do that. But if he hadn’t come, I think, I’d probably be dead by now.

When he finishes, we sit together in the dirt, our backs against the rough bark of a nearby tree. Opposite us, the corpse of the criminal cools on the ground. The lake glistens faintly in the pale light in my peripheral vision, but everything is muted. Distant.

One of them is dead. One of the men who kept me captive, who haunted my nightmares for years, is finally gone. The truth of it won’t stop reverberating inside me. He must have taken other mercenary work after the Bloodtooths dissolved, drifting into the criminal underworld like the rest of them inevitably did. But now, he’s just a body on the forest floor.

A strange sense of peace settles over me. I think about leaning my head on Ado’s shoulder like I did on our stakeout, not far upriver from here. But I don’t. I can’t. If I touch him any more, I’ll come apart.

I glance at him. He’s staring out at the water, his expression unreadable, but I can feel the tension in him, the protectiveness that’s always been there, even when we were at odds. He saved me today. He saved me from the past, from the darkness that tried to pull me under.

I know I’m not ready to face whatever this means for us. So I echo his quiet until Ado texts the team to pick us up.