Chapter 32 #2
James’s outbursts had never scared me. But Caden’s stillness did. It felt different. Final. Like one wrong word might shatter something I’d never get back.
And walking through that forest, facing that calm, lethal kind of distance… I’d realized it could break me.
He could break me.
Say something, Emma. Anything. Ask if he’s dizzy, if he can even see straight.
Instead, I focused on the rhythm of our steps. Left. Right.
Don’t look at him. Don’t think about the fact I almost lost him—how his mouth had gone cold under mine—how if I’d been a second slower, he’d still be under that water.
The thought made my stomach twist.
He could’ve died, and the last thing you ever said to him—
“Are you seriously going to ignore me?” The words tore out before I could stop them, too loud in the quiet of the woods. My boots sank into damp moss as I hurried to close the distance between us.
Caden didn’t slow. His stride stayed measured, as if my voice hadn’t even reached him. “Depends,” he said finally, tone dry, eyes cutting toward me without a pause in his step. “Are you going to acknowledge you keep running from me?”
“I’m not running from you,” I hissed, now matching his pace. “I’m angry at you for lying to me.”
He ducked under a low branch, that muscle near his temple twitching. “One does not necessarily exclude the other.”
“You lied to me for over a year, and now you act like I don’t have a reason for feeling any type of way about it.” I grabbed his arm. “Which is even more hurtful, Caden.”
He stopped so suddenly I nearly crashed into him. When he turned, the moonlight sliced across his face, cold, beautiful, unyielding. “I’ll drop the act when you do the same.” His tone was glacial, but his eyes didn’t leave me for a second.
“I’m not ignoring you, Emma.” His voice dropped, carrying more weight than a shout ever could. “But I refuse to entertain your denial any longer.”
He stepped in close, close enough for the heat of him to cut through the night air, for the breath between us to feel charged. “You want to talk?” he murmured. “Then be ready to have a real conversation. Because I’m done with half-truths and fearful excuses.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Caden’s head jerked up. In a single motion, his hand clamped around my neck, the other sealing my mouth.
“Shh.” His breath brushed my ear. “Listen.”
The forest stilled. Then, faint but growing, a mechanical hum. My pulse spiked. Caden released me, eyes narrowing toward the dark canopy.
“Caden.” My voice came out thin. “That’s a drone.”
“We need to move.”
He caught my hand and yanked me into motion. Branches whipped at our faces, roots clawed at our boots, and the forest closed in while the drone’s sound swelled, the rhythm of its rotors pulsing like a heartbeat overhead.
“It’s catching up!” I gasped.
“What are the chances of it getting a visual through all these leaves?” he shouted back, ducking beneath a fallen limb.
“Low,” I said, stumbling over slick moss. “But what worries me more is the thermal feed.”
“You think it can detect body heat?”
“If it’s military grade? Yeah.”
The hum grew louder—closer—its rhythm turning into a metallic snarl overhead.
Then the night exploded.
A flash seared through the trees, followed by the sharp hiss of impact. Bark splintered beside us, scattering in a spray of sparks and sap. The smell of ozone burned the air.
“Shit!” I dropped low instinctively, covering my head as another burst ripped through the canopy, tearing branches apart. “It’s shooting at us!”
“Run!” Caden’s command left no room for debate.
He yanked me up by the wrist, and we sprinted through the dark, the forest alive with sounds I really didn’t want to hear. A pulse of light cut through the trees again, skimming so close I could feel the heat brush my back.
“Move!” he barked.
We veered left, crashing through brush and mud, hearts pounding out of rhythm with the drone’s roar. Somewhere above, it adjusted course, hunting.
“It’s right above us,” Caden hissed, dragging me behind a trunk thick with frost.
The spotlight swept past—blinding white slicing through the black—then arced back again, searching.
“We can never outrun it,” I whispered.
Caden’s jaw locked. “Then what?”
My eyes flicked to the left, to the hollowed creek bed glinting faintly through the trees. Meltwater pooled between stones, rimmed with frost, a thread of mist curling above it.
“There.”
“Emma—”
“Trust me.”
Before he could protest again, I pulled him into the shallow pool. The cold hit us as shock while the world went silent but for the rush of blood in my ears.
Caden sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Holy shit, it’s freezing—”
“Stay down.”
We crouched low, water lapping at our chests, our breath fogging faintly against the surface. The spotlight skimmed the treetops, then swept lower, searching. The light fractured across the ripples, turning the water into a mirror of broken stars.
My fingers dug into Caden’s sleeve. “Don’t move.”
The drone hovered, its whine reverberating against the trees. For a heartbeat, its light lingered over the pool.
And then it drifted on.
The hum faded, leaving only the sound of our shivering breaths and the creak of ice forming around our clothes.
Caden moved first. No words, only a quick exhale as he shoved himself upright, water streaming off him. The sound of his boots crunching against the frozen bank felt deafening after the drone’s departure.
He turned back and caught my arm, hauling me out with a force I was slightly surprised by. I stumbled onto the mud, knees hitting the frost, lungs burning as air knifed through me.
“Caden—”
“Not now,” he snapped. “We need to move.”
The look on his face wasn’t anger, it was something a lot worse. Fear wearing the mask of control.
He stripped off his soaked jacket and wrung it once before throwing it back on. “Between the river and now this, our core temps are tanking. We’ll be dead in twenty minutes if we don’t find some shelter.”
“Well, where the hell do you want to go?” I barely managed to ask, teeth chattering as I did.
He didn’t answer, grabbed my hand again, fingers icy against mine, and started pulling me uphill through the trees.
Behind us, the forest swallowed the last trace of the drone’s hum, leaving only the echo of our footsteps and the faint hiss of wind through the pines.
“Caden,” I gasped, stumbling over a root, “where the hell are you going?”
He didn’t slow. His shoulders were rigid, breath heaving in visible bursts.
“I saw something,” he ground out, voice tight from cold and strain.
“What? What do you mean, you saw something?”
“While we were running,” he said through gritted teeth, half dragging me over a fallen log. “Looked like a cabin. Or what’s left of one.”
The words lit a small, desperate spark in my chest. My fingers were numb, my clothes heavy with freezing water, but I forced my legs to keep moving.
“You’re sure?”
“No,” he bit out, glancing back once, eyes wild in the dark. “But it’s the only chance we have.”
He heaved me up the incline, the air thinning into mist as snow began to fall. Somewhere in the distance, a branch cracked.
I didn’t know if it was the forest settling or something else catching up.