Chapter 32
Selina
Epilogue
“Don’t despair.” I leaned closer to the laptop screen. The video feed pixelated for a second before Maeve’s face resolved again, worry etched around her eyes.
“Xavier’s body hasn’t been found. Both SENTINEL and Oblivion are searching for him. That means he’s alive.”
“Logically, yes.” Her fingers worried the edge of her sleeve. “But logic and intuition aren’t lining up right now.”
“Trust your instincts. I learned that from a very stubborn operative who refused to give up on himself even when everything said he should.”
A ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “Sounds familiar.”
“Your brother’s strong, Maeve. He’s fighting with everything he has. I’ve seen it firsthand. He’ll prevail again.”
“I need to be there.” The words came out tight. “Get on a plane right now, fly to Europe. Help you search. Do anything other than sit here in this goddamn safe house in the middle of nowhere.”
“You can’t. Not yet.”
“I realize that.” She exhaled, shoulders dropping. “Dresner remains a threat. Oblivion continues hunting us. And Ronan would probably tie me to a chair if I tried.”
That pulled a laugh out of me, surprising us both. “Wolfe would do the same. Must be a trait among these reconditioned operatives and their need to protect.”
“Need is putting it mildly.” But Maeve’s expression softened, tension easing.
“Does he do the staring thing? Because Ronan will just… observe me. For no reason. I’ll be reading and look up, and he’s across the space watching like I’m the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
When I ask what’s wrong, he just says, ‘Nothing. Continue.’”
I had to laugh. “Yes! Wolfe does that exact behavior. Last week, I caught him observing me eat cereal. Just standing there, mug in hand. I asked if I had food on my cheek and he said, ‘No. I’m memorizing you.’” The memory made my chest tighten. “Who says things like that?”
“Someone who’s afraid of losing memories, I guess.” Maeve shook her head softly.
“To be fair, they were emotionally reprogrammed for years.”
“True.” Maeve’s smile faded slightly, though warmth remained in her eyes. “Makes it all the more meaningful that they chose to feel again. To love again. Even when it terrifies them.”
“Especially when it terrifies them.”
Silence stretched between us. Outside the cabin window, powder continued falling, blanketing the Swiss Alps in thick white.
“You’ll keep me updated? About Xavier? About everything?”
“The second we learn anything, you’ll hear it. I promise.”
“And you’ll be careful? Both of you?”
“We’ll get through, Maeve. We don’t know how to be anything else.”
She nodded, blinking hard. “Same here. We’ll get through this.”
“We will.”
“Stay protected, Selina. And tell Specter… no, I mean Wolfe, the same.”
“I will. You too.”
That earned me another smile. “Always.”
The screen went dark as the call ended. My own reflection stared back from the black glass.
My hair had escaped its bun, dark strands falling around my cheeks.
Shadows under my eyes from too many short nights due to excessive adrenaline.
But underneath the exhaustion, determination settled in.
The kind that comes when you’ve made peace with what you have to do.
I closed the laptop and stood, stretching muscles that ached from the pumping station incident. My cast caught the table’s edge. I wasn’t healed. But I was here. Alive.
With someone worth fighting for.
The window drew me across the small space.
Powder pressed against the glass in thick flakes.
The cabin sat nestled in a fold of the Alps, surrounded by towering pines that now bent under winter’s weight.
No other structures visible. No lights except our own.
Just endless white and the dark shapes of trees disappearing into the storm.
I pressed my fingertips to the cold glass, observing accumulation on the sill. The weather report this morning had been clear: roads would be impassable within hours. We were being isolated, truly cut off for at least three days, maybe more.
The thought should have made me anxious.
Instead, unexpected peace settled in my chest.
For the first time since this nightmare began, we had nowhere to run. No SENTINEL hidden agenda. No Oblivion operatives closing in. No desperately fleeing for our lives.
Just winter.
A pause we’d never been given permission to take, forced on us now by nature’s indifference to human urgency.
My breath fogged the pane. Outside, the Alps slept under their blanket, oblivious to the chaos that consumed our lives. The world continued turning. People lived regular days, worried about ordinary things: traffic, deadlines, what to make for dinner.
I’d forgotten what it meant to simply stop.
I turned from the glass, surveying the space. Three weeks ago, I’d been Dr. Selina Crawford, my life neatly ordered into professional obligations and carefully maintained emotional distance.
Now I lived in a remote shelter with a man who’d been engineered to kill, running from an organization that turned human beings into weapons. My medical license sat unused. Everything I owned, everything I’d built over a decade, had collapsed in the span of days.
It should have terrified me.
Maybe it had, at first. Those early days blurred together now: adrenaline and fear, the constant weight of being hunted. Every sound a potential threat. Every stranger a possible operative. Sleep came in bits and pieces, if it came at all.
This was supposed to be temporary. A brief, terrible detour before life resumed its typical trajectory. We’d expose Oblivion, eliminate Dresner, and somehow find our way back to resembling stability. That had been the plan, fragile as it was. Now, we needed to brace for the long run.
But standing here, observing powder bury the peaks, I couldn’t picture that other life anymore. Couldn’t imagine returning to my former apartment, my previous routines. That version of Selina seemed like someone I’d read about rather than lived as.
Mattie’s call yesterday had brought news: SENTINEL was moving on multiple Oblivion facilities, building cases, following threads.
Commander Dawson himself was coordinating the operation, pulling in resources from half a dozen countries.
They were close. Maybe weeks away from bringing the whole structure down.
A big maybe that I didn’t quite believe in yet.
My role in that? Stay hidden. Stay protected. Let them do their work.
Hope.
That was what I had to contribute now. Just hope, and the will to survive long enough to see Dresner’s empire crumble.
It should have seemed useless, being sidelined. But this waiting was different than before. Not the tense anticipation of prey hiding from predators, but quieter. Gentler.
Rest. Actual rest, for the first occasion since this started.
The door opened, letting in a gust of alpine air and Wolfe.
He carried an armload of firewood, moving carefully.
His shoulder bothered him; I could see it in how he favored his right side, the slight hitch in his movement.
Bandages wrapped his left palm where he’d torn skin on the metal platform at Vessy.
Powder dusted his dark hair and the shoulders of his coat, melting in the warmth. He appeared like a creature from a winter fairy tale. Dangerous and beautiful and somehow mine.
“Roads are gone.” He shouldered the door closed. “Saw the plow drive past on the valley route. They’re not even trying to clear up here.”
“Weather report said three days minimum.”
“Could be longer.” He crossed to the fireplace, wood cradled against his chest. “This much accumulation, this fast, they’ll prioritize valley routes first. Higher roads won’t see a plow for days.”
The flames already burned well, crackling warmth into the space. He didn’t need to add more logs. But he did anyway, arranging them with the same precise attention he applied to everything. The blaze jumped higher.
I observed him work. Observed how firelight played across his features, softening the hard edges that constant vigilance had carved into his expression. His shoulders sat differently than they had even yesterday. Lower. Looser. Not the coiled tension of a man ready to fight at any moment.
He was just building heat.
Such an uncomplicated thing.
When had we last had anything this uncomplicated?
“Warm enough?” No need to turn.
“Getting there.”
He added one more log, then straightened, brushing bark from his palms. The bandage on his left hand was clean; I’d changed it this morning, checking for infection, pleased with how well the lacerations were healing.
My fingers had lingered longer than necessary on his skin, and he’d let me, his gaze dark and steady on my expression.
The area glowed now. Heat radiated from the hearth, pushing back the chill that seeped through the aged panes. Outside, darkness was falling early, the way it did in deep winter among peaks. Inside, we had illumination. Warmth.
Each other.
“First occasion.”
He turned, silver eyes finding mine across the small distance. Eyebrow raised in question.
“First occasion we’ve been somewhere truly protected. Actually protected.” I gestured at the area around us: the modest refuge with its worn furniture and creaking floors, its isolation and peace. “Not merely hiding. Not merely catching our breath between running. But genuinely secure.”
His expression shifted. Tenderness replaced the usual wariness. He surveyed the surroundings: the faded couch, the scarred coffee table, the kitchen visible through an open doorway. Nothing special. Nothing remarkable.
A place we didn’t have to flee from in the middle of the night.
A place where we could just exist.
“Yeah. First occasion.”
The flames popped, sending sparks up the chimney. Powder continued its quiet assault on the panes, cocooning us in white silence. And somewhere in the space between us, tension that had been pulled taut for weeks finally, carefully, began to ease.