Chapter 23
Mariah
The morning came in shades of steel and mist. The camp was alive before the sun, a quiet, disciplined chaos of last-minute preparations. Wolves checked their gear, their breath clouding in the cold air. Humans and wolves alike sharpened blades and loaded guns and ammunition.
I stood at the edge of camp, watching the ridge where the first patrols had already disappeared into the trees. The weight of Varek’s jacket was heavy over my shoulders, his scent still clinging to the fabric—a comfort I was desperate to cling to.
He stood beside me, quiet, his hand resting on the small of my back. We didn’t speak. There wasn’t anything left to say that hadn’t already been said. The silence was enough.
Elsie approached first, her rifle slung over her shoulder, her eyes already rapt with the focus of the coming fight. “Ready, sweetheart?” she asked, though her tone was less of a question and more of a command.
I took a breath and nodded. “Ready.”
“We move ahead of the rest,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at me. “You and me. We’ll make better time on our own. Once we’re in the tunnels, we’ll link up with the Watch scouts. From there, we move straight for the lab.”
I nodded, adjusting the straps on my pack. “Got it.”
She glanced at Varek. “I’ll keep my end of the bargain, alpha. If any of my people get trigger-happy with the serum, I’ll deal with it.”
Varek’s jaw clamped and he answered through gritted teeth. “See that you do.”
Elsie smirked, then turned to me. “Stick close to me. And for God’s sake, don’t stop moving once we’re inside. Hesitation gets people killed.”
“I know,” I said, my voice steadier than I would have expected.
Her eyes softened, just for a second. “Good. Then let’s do this.” She gave a curt nod to Varek. “We’ll see you on the other side.”
I turned to Varek then, and the gravity of what was to come settled between us. “Be careful,” I whispered, my hand resting on his chest.
“You too,” he said. He leaned down, his forehead pressing against mine, his breath warm in the cold air. “Come back to me.”
“I will.”
We kissed, quick and desperate, the taste of ash and promises. His hands lingered on my face for a moment longer than necessary, and then he stepped back.
“You get her there and you get her back,” he said evenly. “If anything feels wrong or even a little off, you pull out. You don’t wait for shit to go sideways.”
Elsie grinned, snapping the safety on her rifle. “Relax, Commander. I’m not in the business of dying stupid.” She tilted her head, keen gray eyes glinting.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You’ve got one job out there. Keep her alive.”
Elsie’s grin faded, replaced by a more serious frown. “Don’t worry, alpha. I know exactly how valuable she is.” She adjusted her rifle and added, more quietly, “To all of us.”
Varek’s gaze shifted to me then, and for a heartbeat, the rest of the world disappeared. I could see the battle already in his eyes, the part of him that wanted to grab me and drag me as far from danger as possible, and the part that knew he couldn’t.
He reached out, brushing his thumb across my cheek one more time. “You stay with her,” he said. “If anything goes wrong—”
“I’ll handle it,” I finished for him, placing my hand over his. “You have your mission. I have mine.”
The faintest smile curved his lips. “You sound like a soldier.”
“Maybe I’m learning from the best.”
His hand lingered on my face for one last heartbeat before he let it fall. “I’ll find you when it’s done,” he said.
“You’d better.”
Elsie cleared her throat loudly. “Alright, lovebirds, break it up. We’ve got a city to crash.”
Varek gave her a look that could have cut through stone. She only grinned wider. “Don’t worry, big guy. I’ll bring her back in one piece.”
“You’d better,” he said again, voice like gravel.
Elsie turned to me, nodding toward the trees. “You ready, Mariah?”
I tightened the straps of my pack and straightened. “Let’s go.”
I took one last look at Varek, at the man who had dragged me out of hell and made me want to fight for a future I hadn’t dared to believe in. Then I turned and followed Elsie into the trees.
We set off at a brisk pace, our boots crunching through the frost, the camp fading behind us. The forest swallowed us quickly, the path narrowing into a thin line between the trees. The cold air stung my lungs, but every step steadied me.
For a while, we moved in silence, the only sounds our breathing and the faint click of Elsie’s rifle strap against her shoulder.
After a while, she spoke, her voice quieter than I expected. “He loves you, you know.”
I glanced at her, surprised. “That obvious?”
She smirked. “Sweetheart, it’s obvious from orbit. The man looks at you like you hung the moon. And if that doesn’t terrify you a little, you’re stronger than I thought.”
“It does,” I admitted. “Terrify me. But it also… makes me want to be worthy of that kind of love.”
Elsie gave a short nod, her expression softening just a fraction. “Good answer.”
Over the next three days, we traveled light and fast, keeping to the game trails that wound through the trees and dipped between the folds of rock.
The morning mist clung to our clothes, beading on Elsie’s rifle and turning my hair to damp curls.
She moved with a kind of relaxed confidence that made me think she’d done this a thousand times before—boots silent, eyes always moving, one hand resting comfortably on her weapon.
The ground was slick from a recent rain, and every sound felt too loud in the quiet between the ridges. Somewhere far below, a hawk cried, its echo fading into the valley.
Elsie broke the silence first. “You always this quiet?” she asked without looking back. “Or are you just scared I’ll bite?”
I smirked. “You don’t seem like the biting type.”
She glanced over her shoulder with a grin. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s where you’re wrong.”
I shook my head, smiling despite myself. “You remind me of Kendra.”
“That the mouthy brunette?”
“Yeah. She’d love you. Or you’d kill each other within five minutes.”
“I’m charming as hell,” Elsie said, stepping over a fallen log. “People just can’t handle me.”
“I’m sure that’s it,” I replied dryly.
Her laugh bounced off the trees, easy and genuine.
It faded as the terrain began to dip again, swallowing the sound.
The trees thinned to reveal the scar of old roads and crumbling concrete structures below.
From here, the land looked sick with patches of charred soil, skeletons of cars, and broken towers leaning like tired giants.
The world that had existed before the Collapse had long since rotted away, leaving only reminders that humans had once ruled here.
Elsie scanned the area just ahead of us and pointed with her rifle. “There. That’s our way in.”
Nestled into the side of a slope was an old access tunnel, half-hidden by brush, its steel doors rusted and warped by time. It looked dead, but the faint outline of boot prints in the dirt told a different story.
“Watch patrols still use this route,” she murmured. “Stay quiet and be careful. Keep your head down.”
We slipped silently inside, easing the oiled hinges open and closed with barely a whisper.
The air in the tunnels was thick and stale, heavy with the metallic tang of rust and oil.
The walls were lined with old wiring and pipes, and every step echoed softly against the stone floor.
Elsie lit a small lantern, its dim light spilling over the curved walls, turning the passage into an endless artery leading straight into the city’s underbelly.
For a while, we didn’t speak. The air pressed close, damp and claustrophobic.
Elsie must have felt the tension rolling off me, because she finally spoke. “So,” she inquired, voice casual but quieter than usual, “what was it like for you? Growing up in the city. You, Kendra, and Lia.”
I looked at her, surprised. “You already know what the city was like, don’t you?”
She shrugged, the motion stiff. “Maybe. But I want to hear it from you. We may have grown up in the same place, but on different streets.”
That caught me off guard. I hadn’t thought about her that way before, not as the sarcastic, hard-edged fighter she’d become, but as another girl who’d grown up under the same constant threat of being taken and bred once we turned of age.
Another girl like me.
I exhaled slowly. “We lived in the slums. Broken glass in the streets, burned-out cars for playgrounds. We scavenged what we could. Kendra used to trade scrap for medicine, and Lia would sneak food from patrol drops.”
Elsie gave a dry little laugh, no humor in it. “Sounds familiar. I was a south block kid myself.” We walked a few more steps before she continued, “They came for you too, didn’t they?”
I nodded. “Eventually. Lia and I tried to hide, to run, but they caught me during my escape.”
Elsie’s jaw tightened. “Yeah. They got me, too. I got lucky enough to survive it. Guess you did, too.”
I tried to smile, but it came out crooked. “If you want to call it that. Some days it just feels like I just traded one kind of nightmare for another.”
She gave me a sideways look, her brows drawn together a little bit disapprovingly. “Sweetheart, we’re free, aren’t we? That’s more luck than most.”
“Yeah. That’s true,” I said softly.
The tunnel forked ahead, one path sloping down, the other up toward faint flickers of light. She tilted her chin toward the incline. “Up there. We’re almost under the city.”
We moved carefully, hugging the walls as the sound of muffled voices filtered through the stone. I guessed that it was wolves on rotation, their boots heavy against the floor above. My pulse quickened.
Elsie crouched, motioning for me to follow. “We’ll slip through the maintenance shaft. If we’re lucky, we’ll come up near the southern hangar without being seen. Most of the guards will be watching the outer walls.”
“Lucky?” I whispered. “Since when does luck have anything to do with your plans?”
She grinned. “Since now.”
We squeezed through the narrow passage, climbing hand over hand until the metal grate above came into view. Faint light spilled through the cracks, and the scent of smoke and oil grew stronger.
Elsie peered back at me, then whispered, “Welcome home, sweetheart. We’re back in the wolves’ den.”
I swallowed the fear that rose in my throat and nodded. “Then let’s finish this.”
We listened for several minutes and watched for shadows in the light filtering down to us. Then, sensing the way was clear, together we lifted the grate and crawled back into the belly of the beast.