15. The Fire
The Fire
Honor
By the time we reach the second cache, daylight is draining out of the forest.
Kai brings the dogs to a stop beside a low timber shelter almost invisible beneath the snow. Angus and Jax move immediately, getting the women inside while Kai checks the team.
We’ve put distance between ourselves and North Star, but nobody believes Lockhart has stopped looking.
“They’ll expect us to keep heading for the community,” Kai says.
Jax looks toward the trail behind us. “So we give them something else to follow.”
Kai nods. “Honor and I push north, break a fresh trail and make sure they see it. You and Angus stay here with the women until we’ve pulled them away. Once we’ve shaken them, we circle back, pick you up and continue south on the original route.”
“I’m coming with you?” I ask.
“You know Lockhart’s old roads better than anyone here except me.”
True.
Angus glances at the sidearm I’m still carrying. “Try not to shoot the Canadian.”
“Which one?”
Kai looks at me.
Angus grins. “Dealer’s choice.”
Kai gives him a look. “Joker’s wild.”
Kai looks at me. I almost smile.
We leave minutes later.
Kai and I take the dogs and the empty sled with us.
Lockhart’s men saw how we escaped North Star, so that’s the trail they’ll expect the women to be on.
Angus and Jax stay hidden at the cache with the others while we drive the team north, leaving six sets of paw prints and two sled runners carved plainly through the snow.
Twice we hear snowmobiles in the distance.
The second time, Kai takes us across an abandoned logging track where the sled trail will be impossible to miss.
“They’ll follow this,” I say.
“That’s the idea.”
Several kilometers farther on, he turns the team into dense timber, choosing a route where wind and low branches are already softening the snow behind us. We keep going until he finds a sheltered hollow deep enough to hide the dogs and sled from anyone passing nearby.
From there, we continue on snowshoes.
North at first. Then east through thicker timber. Finally south.
By the time we reach the trapper’s cabin, anyone following the obvious sled trail should be looking in a different direction.
“Think they bought it?” I ask.
Kai glances at me. “They’ve been mis-sled so yes.”
I stare at him. His mouth twitches. “Sorry.”
Darkness is settling as the cabin emerges between the trees.
Kai gets us inside and lights the fire while I cover the window. Soon firelight flickers across rough timber walls and heat begins pushing back the cold.
We should be listening for engines.
Planning the next move.
Instead, I see blood.
“Kai.”
He looks over.
There’s a dark patch on the sleeve of his coat.
“When did that happen?” I ask pointing at the spot.
“It’s nothing.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
I’m already pulling the first-aid kit from the cabin’s emergency supplies.
He gives me a look but takes off his coat.
A bullet grazed the outside of his upper arm. The wound isn’t deep, but it’s ugly enough to make anger flash through me.
“You knew you were hit.”
“I had eight women to get out.”
“And now you have one woman telling you to sit down.”
His mouth shifts. “Bossy.”
“Sit.”
He sits.
I clean the graze while he watches me in the firelight. My fingers are steady until I realize how close we are.
This is Kai.
The man in the trees.
The man who crossed Lockhart country because women he’d never met needed someone to come looking.
The man whose hunting call I answered from the washing line.
“I recognized your call,” I say quietly. “From when I was a kid. My grandmother taught it to me.”
His expression shifts. “My grandfather taught it to me.”
There’s something about that small connection, passed down to both of us by people who came before, that makes me pause.
I finish dressing the wound, but I don’t pull away. His hand closes gently around my wrist. Everything outside this cabin seems very far away.
“They could’ve killed you,” I whisper.
“They didn’t.”
“You came into that place for me.”
“For all of you.”
I meet his eyes.
“I know.”
His thumb moves once against my skin.
The touch changes something between us.
Outside, Lockhart is hunting us.
Inside, the fire burns brighter.
Neither of us moves away.
Trapper’s Cabin, Northern Manitoba. 1715 hours.
The fire has settled into a steady burn by the time Kai and I sit together facing it on the old couch, close enough to share the warmth filling the small cabin.
Outside, darkness has swallowed the forest. The dogs and sled are hidden in the hollow some distance away, and every few minutes Kai stops and tilts his head to listen for engines.
Nothing. So far.
“K?ya nam?ya nanitaw?”
I look at him.
Are you all right?
It’s a simple question. One my grandmother asked me countless times when I was little.
“Nikamiyo-macihon.”
I will be.
His eyebrows lift.
“What?”
“You speak Cree.”
“So do you.”
A smile touches his mouth. “I wasn’t sure how much you knew.”
“Enough to know you just asked if I’m okay.”
“And?”
“Nikamiyo-macihon.”
Something changes in his face.
We stay with the language after that, moving between Cree and English when one of us doesn’t know a word or when years of speaking mostly English leave us searching for the right one.
I remember more than I thought I would.
My grandmother’s voice comes back with every phrase. Words from my childhood. Things she taught me beside the fire, on walks through the bush, while preparing food at her kitchen table.
Kai has his own memories. His grandfather taught him much the same way.
For several minutes, this cabin could belong to another time entirely.
My gaze drifts past him to the photograph on the shelf beside the stove. A young woman smiles into bright summer sun, dark hair caught by the breeze.
I nod toward it. “Your sister?”
Kai follows my gaze. Something in his face changes.
“Yeah.”
I look at the photograph again. “She’s beautiful.”
“Her name was élodie.”
The French shape of it catches me.
“How old was she?”
“About your age. Twenty-five.”
I switch into French without thinking. “Elle aimait les chiens?”
Did she love dogs?
His expression softens.
“Beaucoup.”
Very much.
“She disappeared five years ago,” he says.
I go still.
“Near Lockhart land?”
He nods.
He tells me how the RCMP treated her disappearance. The questions they didn’t ask. The assumptions they made. How quickly the search faded away.
He tells me why he left.
“I never found her.”
The pain in those words needs no translation.
“I’m sorry.”
He looks into the fire. “I kept thinking if I learned enough country, tracked enough people, got better at finding what others missed, eventually I’d find something.”
Maybe he has.
Not élodie.
Not yet. But something that might finally lead to answers. I shift closer.
“I memorized names inside North Star.”
His gaze returns to mine.
“How many?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I start with the women who were there with me.
Ivy. Mariah. Lena. Tessa. Sarah. Danielle. Keira.
I give him every one I can remember.
Kai listens without interrupting.
“Mind if I record the names for HAVEN?”
“Go ahead.”
He opens the voice recorder on his phone and holds it between us while I repeat them slowly, one by one.
“If any of them can be found, we’ll find them.”
I look at him. “And the ones who can’t?”
“We find out what happened to them.”
The certainty in his voice makes me believe him.
I say his name in Cree.
He answers mine the same way.
Two names in a language carried to us by people who refused to let it disappear.
Lockhart tried to reduce every woman who passed through North Star to something that could be moved, used and forgotten.
They failed.
I remember every name.
And now Kai does too.
Trapper’s Cabin, Northern Manitoba. 1745 hours.
Maskwa settles outside the door with the rest of the team close behind him.
Kai checks them once more before coming back inside, brushing snow from his shoulders and securing the door behind him.
“They’ll let us know if anyone comes close.”
I glance toward the timber door. “All six?”
“Maskwa first. The others follow his lead.”
“That dog has opinions.”
Kai looks toward the door. “Too many.”
I smile despite myself.
The cabin has warmed considerably since we arrived. My gloves are drying near the stove, Kai’s coat hangs from a peg beside mine, and the fire throws enough heat across the small room that I’ve finally stopped feeling cold all the way through.
Kai sits beside me on the couch again. Closer this time. Neither of us comments on it.
I look across at the fresh bandage around his arm. “Still bleeding?”
“No.”
“Pain?”
“Manageable.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
His mouth curves. “A bit.”
“Better.”
“You always this persistent?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so.”
I turn toward him, drawing one leg beneath me. “You crossed one hundred and twenty kilometers of winter country, spent days hiding outside a mining compound, got shot at, helped pull eight women out and then let me patch you up. You don’t get to complain about questions.”
“I wasn’t complaining.”
“You were thinking about it.”
He laughs quietly. I like the sound more than I should.
I’ve seen him focused, watchful, stubborn and moving under gunfire with frightening precision. Hearing him laugh makes him seem younger somehow. Less like the man who came through the trees. More like Kai.
I study him openly now.
His dark hair hangs loose around his shoulders, still damp at the edges from melted snow. There’s fatigue around his eyes, but he hasn’t relaxed completely. Every sound outside gets a fraction of his attention.
I understand that. I’m doing the same thing.
“You should rest,” he says.
“So should you.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“Eventually.”
I give him a look.
“Stubborn.”
“You noticed.”
His smile comes again.
Our shoulders are touching now. I don’t remember either of us moving closer. Maybe we both did.
I look toward the fire, but I’m aware of him beside me in a way that makes everything else harder to ignore. The warmth of his body. The rough fabric of his shirt against my sleeve. His hand resting near mine on the cushion.
Thirteen days surrounded by men whose attention meant danger taught me to measure every movement around me.
Kai feels different.
He’s patient with me. Respectful. He gives me space instead of taking it.
I move my hand first. My fingers slide into his.
He looks down at them, then back at me.
“Honor.”
“I know.”
I know we’re still being hunted. I know Angus and Jax are waiting with seven other women who need us back, and whatever happens next may get worse before it gets better.
But I know something else too.
“I knew you were coming,” I say.
His brow lifts slightly.
“I didn’t know your name. I didn’t know who you were. But something in me kept saying Wait. Be patient. Someone’s coming.”
He watches me carefully.
“My spirit told me not to give up.”
His fingers tighten around mine.
“And then I heard your call.”
I lean closer.
Kai meets me halfway.
The kiss is slower than the one at the cache. No gunfire. No pursuit close behind us. No need to prove we survived.
Just us.
His hand settles at my waist and mine slides behind his neck as the fire crackles beside us.
Outside, one of the dogs shifts in the snow.
Kai stops immediately.
We listen.
Nothing follows.
He looks at me. I smile.
“Maskwa?”
“Probably judging me.”
“He does seem the type.”
Kai kisses me again.
This time, I’m still smiling when he does.
Trapper’s Cabin, Northern Manitoba. 1830 hours.
The fire in the hearth is the only light in the trapper’s cabin, painting the log walls in flickering shades of amber and shadow.
We’ve finished eating a simple meal of canned beef stew and bannock Kai cooked over the fire, washed down with strong coffee that tastes better than it has any right to.
Sitting together in the quiet cabin, a profound sense of ease settles over me, as though I’ve known this man for years rather than a handful of hours.
Kai leans toward me, his breath warm against my cheek as he whispers my name in Cree, low and steady, like a quiet prayer. The sound undoes something deep inside me that fear never could touch.
He reaches up, his fingers deftly undoing my braids, letting my hair fall free across my shoulders.
I reach for his shirt, pulling the fabric over his head to reveal his broad chest and the intricate tribal tattoos sprawling across his shoulders and forearms. My fingers trace the smooth, defined muscles of his torso, taking in the strength and warmth of his skin.
We move to the single bed in the corner, lying side by side on the narrow mattress. Outside, Maskwa and the team keep watch in the snow, but inside, the sub-zero dark holds no power.
Kai turns toward me, his hands thorough and gentle as he draws me close.
He kisses my lips, my neck and the curve of my collarbone, the faint taste of strong coffee still on his lips.
His hand glides down my stomach, sliding beneath the waistband of my trousers to cup my core.
His touch is considerate, unhurried, mapping my body with quiet reverence.
He parts my folds, finding my heat. He slides one finger inside me, then two, establishing a slow, rhythmic stroke that draws a soft moan from my throat. I arch against his hand, the wetness slicking his skin as he coaxes my body open.
“Please, Kai,” I breathe, my fingers gripping his biceps. “I need you now.”
He pauses, his dark eyes meeting mine in the firelight. “Are you covered, Honor?”
“I am,” I whisper. “I’m protected.”
He nods, shifting his weight to roll over me, his broad frame settling between my legs. He guides his tip to my entrance and pushes forward with a slow, deliberate stroke, filling me completely.
A quiet gasp slips from my lips at the sheer fullness of him.
Kai holds still for a single heartbeat, letting us absorb the feeling of being joined, before he begins to move.
His pace is steady and deep, driving into me with unhurried consideration.
Every movement carries the weight of a quiet promise, a connection rooted deep in our bones.
The heat coils fast in my lower belly, pleasure swelling until a tingling sensation starts rising through my body.
A high, breathless moan escapes me as the climax ripples through me.
Seeing my release take me, Kai’s breathing rasps against my ear.
He thrusts deep three more times, his muscles locking tight as his own release breaks, spilling his warmth inside me.
He pulls back and kisses me gently, and we smile at each other.
Afterward, he pulls me into his arms, shifting us until I’m lying mostly over him on the narrow bed. He reaches down and draws a thick fur blanket over us, wrapping us tight against the chill.
I settle against him, listening to the steady beat of his heart beneath my ear.
For thirteen days, darkness meant locked doors, footsteps in corridors and waiting for whatever came next.
This darkness is different.
Maskwa is outside. The other dogs are with him.
Kai’s arms are around me warm and secure.
For the first time in years, I’m no longer alone in the dark.
This feels like the beginning of something special.