Chapter 30 Angie
ANGIE
The sky looks like it’s been painted by fire, streaks of pink and orange clinging to the horizon while the ice still glitters blue and silver under the last breath of night.
The Arctic has a way of stealing words from me, and that says something, because I always have words.
I could fill a thousand notebooks with thoughts and half-formed stories, yet standing here with Cassian, the whole world draped in light, I find myself too full to say anything at all.
He doesn’t speak either. He’s not the kind of man who fills silence just to hear his own voice.
Cassian lets quiet settle around him the way other people pull on a coat.
Still, even without words, I feel him. His hand brushes mine, rough and calloused, and when I slide my fingers into his, he holds tight, like that’s the only promise that matters right now.
From the ridge, I glance back at the hall we’re leaving behind. Smoke trails faintly from the chimney, curling into the sharp morning air. And further off, half-hidden by snowdrifts, a wolf stands watching us. I know those eyes, sharp and silver, even from a distance. Mary.
She doesn’t come close. She doesn’t have to.
She stands there long enough for me to feel her quiet approval, her gaze not hard this time, not warning, just steady.
A small smile curves her muzzle before she turns, fur rippling as she melts into the white, vanishing as if she was never there.
A chill runs through me that isn’t from the wind.
Something tells me she’ll be watching, even if we never see her again.
Cassian notices me looking. His grip tightens just a fraction, enough that I glance at him. He doesn’t say anything, but I catch the faint narrowing of his eyes, the way his jaw tenses. For a man of few words, his silences have entire conversations tucked inside them.
“She’s not our enemy,” I say softly.
His gaze flicks back to the horizon, as if he doesn’t want to admit how much he cares. “No. But she’s not here to make this easy, either.”
I nudge his arm with my shoulder. “Then it’s a good thing you’re not the kind of man who ever takes the easy road.”
His only answer is a quiet rumble low in his chest, a sound that somehow comforts me more than words.
We walk. The snow crunches under our boots, the wind sharp enough to sting, but with him beside me, it feels like we could walk forever. The Seal rests in his pack, but I swear I feel its pulse even from here, steady like a heartbeat guiding us south.
“Cassian,” I murmur after a while, because the silence has stretched and stretched, and my thoughts are bubbling over, “do you realize this is the first time you’re not walking away from something? You’re walking toward it. That feels big to me.”
He glances at me, one brow lifting in that quiet, unimpressed way of his. “Feels dangerous to me.”
I laugh under my breath, pulling my scarf tighter. “You always think in terms of danger. I think in terms of stories. And this one feels like it’s building to something worth telling.”
“You destroyed your story for me,” he says flatly, though not unkind. Just matter-of-fact, like he’s laying out the bones of truth.
I stop for half a beat, letting his words sink in. “No. I didn’t destroy it. I just rewrote it. And you’re in every line now.”
He shakes his head, though I catch the twitch at the corner of his mouth that betrays the ghost of a smile. “You should want more than this. More than a road through snow and blood.”
I squeeze his hand until he finally looks at me, really looks. “I don’t want more. I want real. And you’re the most real thing I’ve ever found.”
His throat works, like he’s swallowing down words he won’t let free, and that’s fine.
I don’t need him to spill every thought.
I can feel it in the way his grip never loosens, in the way he walks half a step ahead like he’d put himself between me and the wind itself.
That’s his language. And I’m learning to read it.
Hours pass. The sun climbs, throwing long shadows across the drifts.
Cassian guides us down an old hunting path, the kind only someone who’s lived half his life in the cold could find.
At one point, we pass a cluster of snow huts near the edge of a frozen inlet.
Smoke rises faintly, voices carrying on the wind. A small fishing village.
I glance at him, curious. “Supplies?”
He shakes his head, firm. “Not here. Too many eyes. Too many mouths that remember the ghost.”
The word hangs heavy. Ghost. The same whisper that clung to him in that other village, the one where they looked at him like he was a monster wearing human skin.
I tug on his arm gently until he looks down at me. “Let them whisper. You’re not a ghost. You’re flesh and blood and heart. And you’re mine.”
His jaw tightens again, but this time I see something soften in his eyes, something raw and unguarded that makes me ache. He doesn’t answer, not out loud, but his thumb brushes across my knuckles, slow and deliberate. That’s his answer.
We keep walking until the village is a speck behind us. The land stretches wide and endless, the horizon opening like a promise. My legs ache, my cheeks sting with cold, but I’ve never felt more alive.
As the sun begins to dip again, streaking the sky with new shades of gold, I lean closer to him and whisper, my breath clouding in the cold, “The Pact may be broken, but love will bring them home.”
He stops then, just for a moment, his grip tightening around my hand until it almost hurts.
His gaze fixes on the horizon, eyes dark and fierce, and though he doesn’t say it, I know what he’s thinking.
That no matter the storm ahead, no matter the weight of his brothers’ judgment or the shadow of Roman, we’ll face it together.