Chapter 7 Mary
MARY
The dream starts with snow, but not the kind that falls gentle and quiet the way it does outside the compound walls.
This snow burns. It melts before it hits the ground and turns to steam, leaving the earth beneath it blackened, scarred, and wet with something thicker than water.
I stand barefoot in it, the soil slick under my toes, and all around me the trees are whispering in a language older than anything I’ve ever studied.
Then she appears.
My mother does not look as I remember her.
She isn’t bent by time, she isn’t weakened by grief, and she isn’t marked by the sacrifices that claimed her in the end.
She looks younger, stronger, with her hair long and braided in the old way of our line, wolf totems woven into the plaits with bits of bone and polished obsidian.
Her eyes are the same though, green like mine, sharp enough to cut and soft enough to make you believe you could rest in them.
“You’ve been holding too much,” she says. Her voice is low but it echoes through the trees as if the forest itself repeats her words. “You carry them all as though your bones were made for burden. They were made for running, child.”
“I don’t run,” I say, though my throat feels thick.
“No,” she agrees. “You don’t. But you’ve forgotten what freedom feels like. You chain yourself tighter than they ever could.”
The steam curls higher, and I can see shapes in it. Wolves, old as the first snow, their forms shifting in and out of smoke. They circle her like guardians, their paws silent, their eyes the color of fire through fog.
“Your blood is older than theirs,” my mother continues. “Older than foxfire, older than Syndicate steel, older even than the Pact. You’ve forgotten it, but the wolf has not. She waits. She watches. She hungers.”
I want to ask her what she means, but the words won’t come. My jaw won’t move. My feet won’t lift. The wolves close in, and for one heartbeat their eyes are my eyes, and their growls are my growl, and then the ground cracks beneath me and I’m falling into the dark.
When I wake, my mouth tastes like iron.
The cell looks the same as it always does — stone, chains, silence — but my body aches like I’ve been running for days.
My wrists burn from the cuffs, my throat is raw, and my head pounds in time with the hum of the vents.
I pull myself upright slowly, my back scraping against the wall, and take a deep breath that does nothing to ease the pounding in my chest.
The door opens, and of course it’s him.
Silas steps in, not with swagger, not with cruelty, but with that same grim stillness he always carries like armor.
He doesn’t speak at first. He sets something down on the chair — food, maybe, or bandages, I don’t care — and when he finally looks at me, his expression is the same as it always is.
Controlled. Brooding. Watching me like he’s waiting for something to crack.
“You were dreaming,” he says.
I narrow my eyes. “You watching me sleep now?”
“You were thrashing,” he replies, ignoring the bite in my tone. “Thought you were seizing at first.”
“I’m fine.”
He leans back against the wall, arms crossed, studying me like I’m a puzzle he can’t solve. “That’s the second time you’ve said that to me when you weren’t.”
I snap then, the frustration spilling out sharp. “And what do you care? You’re the one who dragged me here. You did this. You shackled me to a wall for your brother. You don’t get to act like you’re anything but loyal to him.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t fire back. He just watches me.
“Say something,” I demand.
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Then admit it,” I press, voice rising. “Admit that the only reason I’m here is because you chose him over everything else. Admit that your loyalty means more than whatever humanity you pretend you still have.”
He finally speaks, his voice low, heavy. “You think loyalty is a choice I had? You think I wanted any of this? Roman broke me before I ever had the chance to decide who I was.”
I laugh, sharp and humorless. “That’s a convenient excuse.”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s weakness,” I snap, surging to my feet, the chains clanging against the bolt in the floor. “You chose him every time you could have walked away. You still choose him. Don’t stand there and tell me you’re broken when you’re still holding the knife.”
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t raise his voice. He just looks at me, and the calm in his gaze infuriates me more than any snarl could.
“You’re right,” he says finally.
I blink, thrown off for just a second.
“You’re right,” he repeats. “I chose him. Again and again. And it killed whatever part of me could have belonged to anyone else. But don’t think for a second that means I’ll keep choosing him.”
The words hang in the air between us, heavier than chains. I don’t believe them. I don’t want to believe them. Because if I do, it means I have to admit something in me still wants to trust him, and that is a road I cannot afford to walk.
So I slap him.
My hand cracks across his cheek before I can think better of it, the sound sharp in the silence, my wolf surging at the contact like she wants to tear him open. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even raise a hand. He just takes it, slow breath through his nose, eyes still locked on mine.
The skin on my palm stings. My chest heaves. The chain at my belt rattles from the force of my movement.
And then he says it.
“I’d rather bleed for you than them.”
The words hit harder than any blow.
I stare at him, my breath stuck somewhere between my ribs and my throat. He doesn’t look away. He doesn’t back down. His cheek is already reddening, but he doesn’t touch it, doesn’t move, doesn’t give me the satisfaction of seeing him falter.
I want to spit. I want to laugh. I want to tell him he’s lying. But the words won’t come.
I don’t know what to say.