Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Jen
I wake up because something is wrong outside. I do not know what. My body knows. My body has been listening for things I never used to hear.
I open my eyes. Thaw is already awake.
He is on his side facing me, gold eyes open, the bond at my sternum carrying his attention before I have finished registering my own. He has not moved. He is just awake.
"You felt it," he says. Quiet.
"Felt what?"
"The bond climbed. Tell me what."
"Something is wrong outside."
"Where?"
"I do not know. The air. Something." I said getting frustrated.
He is sitting up before I have finished. He does not reach for clothes — he is still in the loose pants he sleeps in, bare from the waist up. His head turns once toward the door, then the window, then back to me.
"Crull."
The single word goes through the wall. The bond at my wrist throbs hot. The floor in the next room creaks and the door opens and Crull is there before Thaw has finished saying his name, amber eyes already reading the room.
"Jen felt something. Outside."
"I have been awake. I did not hear anything." Crull rumbles.
"Her hearing is different than ours now."
Crull's amber eyes come to me. He does not ask me to explain. The veins at his temples have darkened. He turns half a step into the hallway and his bulk angles toward the front door.
Harek is on the floor against the wall on the other side of the bed. He is up to his knees in seconds, the shimmer at his shoulders coming and going. He moves to the window and reads the tree line through the glass without putting his hand on the wood.
Three knocks on the bedroom doorframe.
"Awake," Thaw says.
Dean steps in. "Drone. North ridge. Three miles. Loitering."
Thaw goes still. "Loitering," he repeats. The way a man repeats a word he was hoping not to hear.
"Yeah. Not searching. Searching is a grid pattern, the drone flies a sweep. This one is holding station. Pinging. It is reading scent off the wind in real time."
"How long has it been there?"
"Less than five minutes. The sensor flagged it on the second minute. It is scent tech."
The wood-stove in the kitchen ticks. The men in the bedroom do not move. Outside the window the forest does not make a sound.
"Do they know it is us?" I say.
Dean's eyes come to me. "Not sure yet. One scent drone on a north ridge means they are narrowing. They do not know it is us. They know we are in the region."
"What about the wind?"
"East. Has been east the last ten minutes. Our scent profile is blowing away from the drone. They have not had a clean read. If it shifts north, they get one. If it shifts northwest, they get a very good one."
"And then?"
Dean's mouth tightens. "Then a clean scent read calls the rest of the assets. Thermal goes up next. Inside thirty minutes from a confirmed hit. A thermal pass on this cabin reads seven hot bodies and we are not getting out the door after that."
I look at the window. The pines are not moving. The mist is hanging in the air without direction. "How long until the wind shifts."
"One minute. Three hours. I can’t predict."
Thaw's hand finds the small of my back. The bond pours through. "We are leaving," he says.
Thaw turns to Dean. "Twenty-five minutes to roll. Less if your paranoia climbs."
"Eight out of ten right now."
Thaw turns to Crull. "Get Fen. Half-dose. Enough to ride. Not enough to drown him."
"Surfaced earlier." Crull says.
"I know. I want him close to the top."
Crull's amber eyes hold his brother's for a beat. Something dark passes between them. He turns down the hall.
"Dean. Stay on the sensor. Daron sleeps another ten — I want him fresh on the wheel."
"Yes."
Dean goes.
Thaw turns back to me. His hands at my shoulders are warm through the sweatshirt I slept in. The bond is open.
"Five minutes. Duffel. Boots. Anything you can’t leave."
"Nothing I cannot leave is in this cabin."
His hands at my shoulders tighten.
"That’s not true for me. In fact it is the exact opposite."
I look up at him. His gold eyes are steady on mine.
"I meant my stuff."
"I know."
He presses his forehead to mine for one second. Then he is moving. The bedroom empties around me.
I get up. I pull a jacket over my sweatshirt.
I pull on the borrowed boots. I am moving through the room gathering the few things that are mine — toothbrush, sweatpants, the book Dean handed me — when I feel Harek behind me.
He has come up without sound. He reaches past me and picks up my duffel.
He looks at me once. The third thread under my ribs goes warm and full.
Then he is gone down the hall with the duffel on his shoulder.
I walk down the hall.
I pass the back bedroom. The door is open.
Crull is sitting beside the bed with one massive hand at Fen's neck, holding his head up.
Fen's eyes are open. He is not fully there.
The bond-hollow at my sternum has gone cold and quiet.
Crull is talking to him — too low to catch the words, just the rumble of his rebuilt voice, the same one he uses with me when my pulse climbs.
Fen's eyes track Crull when he speaks. Slow. He hears it. Crull stays where he is.
I do not interrupt. I keep walking.
The kitchen. Harek is in the doorway from the porch with the second duffel on his shoulder. He stops. His free hand brushes the edge of the kitchen table once — just once. The shimmer at his shoulders comes up and goes still. Then he keeps moving. He does not look back.
I stop where I am. The spot by the wall is empty. This is where Harek sat when I found him after sunrise. The mark at my throat warms.
Dean's voice comes through the open door — low, tight.
"Wind just shifted. Northwest. We have maybe twenty minutes before that thermal is overhead."
I set the bag down. "Thaw."
He is in the kitchen doorway from the hall before I finish the second syllable, Crull behind him, Fen between them — limp, head against Crull's massive shoulder, breathing slow and shallow, the hollow at my sternum gone cold and quiet.
"Twenty minutes," Thaw says.
"Twenty if we are lucky," Dean says from the porch. "Get Daron. Tell him now."
I am already moving.