Chapter 5
Jericho
Cold wakes me before pain does.
The kind that settles into bone. I’m half-buried in snow and pine needles, face pressed against frozen earth. My wrists throb—wrong angle, wrong pressure. Metal bites into skin.
Not just metal.
Suppression cuffs.
Fuck.
The recognition comes instant and mechanical. Dragon-forged alloy designed to dampen shifter magic and physical strength. I’ve locked them around dozens of wrists myself. Know exactly what they do.
My dragonfire is gone.
Not banked. Not suppressed. Gone.
I don’t panic. Panic is for people who think fear will save them.
Instead, I take inventory.
Moderate head trauma. Laceration above left eyebrow—clotted but recent. Bruising across ribs, likely from impact. No broken bones. Core temperature dropping fast.
I’m in a dense forest. Wind from the northwest carrying snow and the distant smell of burning fuel. The convoy. Or what’s left of it.
I’m alone. Unarmed. Restrained. Facing an unknown number of hostiles. Survival probability decreasing with every minute of exposure.
I flex my fingers. Sensation returns slowly, pins and needles crawling up from numb fingertips. The cuffs allow minimal movement but no strength. If I tried to break them, the runes would activate. Painful. Potentially lethal.
Not an option.
I listen.
Wind howls through branches. Snow falling softly against fabric. My own breathing—shallow, controlled.
And beneath it all, something else.
A heartbeat.
Not mine. Faster. Closer than it should be.
Someone’s watching.
I don’t open my eyes. Don’t change my breathing pattern. Just track the sound, measuring distance and direction.
Ten feet. Maybe twelve. Upslope and to my left.
Waiting.
The tactical part of my brain logs possibilities: Syndicate cleanup crew. Aurora reinforcement. Unknown third party.
The third option makes the most sense. Because whoever locked these cuffs around my wrists isn’t following protocol I recognize. This is personal. Methodical.
I sense movement.
Footsteps crunching through snow. Deliberate. Unhurried. Coming closer.
I open my eyes.
She steps into view like she materialized from shadow.
Tall. Lean. Moving with lethal grace that makes every muscle in me lock despite the cuffs. Thick, black hair pulled back from a face that’s all sharp angles and rage. Even through the storm-gray light, even through the pain fogging my vision, I can see she’s—
The thought derails.
Her eyes flash when she looks at me.
The wolf.
The recognition hits deeper than conscious thought. Bone-level awareness that floods my nervous system despite the suppression cuffs dampening everything else.
This is the presence from the ridge.
The one that lit my dragonfire without permission. That made my body react before my mind could process threat or reason.
She’s armed. Rifle slung across her back—Syndicate issue, likely scavenged from the wreckage. Her stance broadcasts control. Experience. The kind of readiness that comes from years of combat.
This is not a hired gun.
We stare at each other.
Her expression gives nothing away. No rage. No satisfaction. Just cold assessment.
Then the wind shifts.
It carries her scent straight into my face—earth and gunpowder and something underneath that makes my suppressed dragonfire try to surge against the suppression cuffs. Warm soil after rain. Wild places.
Female.
Pain lances through my skull from the attempted flare. I lock my jaw against the reaction.
She notices. Something flickers across her face too fast to read.
I speak first. Keep my voice level despite the cold cramping my jaw. “You’d have killed me already if you wanted me dead.”
Her eyes narrow fractionally. “You’re assuming I’ve decided.”
“You used cuffs on me instead of a bullet. That’s a decision.”
“Temporary.” She shifts her weight. “Don’t mistake delay for mercy.”
Fair enough.
I don’t ask who she is. Don’t ask what I did. Because the answer could be a hundred different things, and none of them would change the current situation.
Instead, I assess.
She’s fatigued but functional. Blood spatter on her coat—not hers, given the lack of visible wounds. She’s been in the fight. Probably the one who pulled me out of the wreckage.
My dragonfire tries again. This time not aggressive heat—something else entirely. Something that recognizes her on a level that stirs my dragon.
Wrong.
Everything about this is wrong.
The cold presses deeper. My breath mists in the air.
She watches me assess her the same way she’s assessing me. Sizing each other up, calculating angles and weaknesses.
Except she’s armed and free, and I’m restrained and losing core temperature by the minute.
“You’re an Aurora operative.” I make it a statement.
“Was.”
Past tense. Interesting.
“Defected?”
“Walked away.” She tilts her head slightly. “You’d know about that.”
The observation lands without malice. Just fact.
I would know. Did know. Two days ago, when I contacted Viktor Parlance and offered intelligence in exchange for sanctuary. When I burned every bridge the Syndicate built.
Except I didn’t make it to Aurora.
And now I’m here. With her.
The wind picks up. Snow begins falling more heavily, sticking to her hair, her shoulders. She doesn’t brush it away. Doesn’t move. Just stands there watching me like she’s waiting for me to give her a reason.
Storm coming.
She knows it too. I can see the calculation.
I speak carefully. No pleading. No apology. Just logistics. “Syndicate scouts will come. They’ll follow the wreckage, and when they find it, they’ll spread out looking for survivors.”
“Let them.”
“Exposure will kill us both before they do.”
“I’m not afraid of the cold.”
“You’re wolf,” I say, and her eyes narrow. “That makes you stronger, but not immortal. With these cuffs on, my fire can’t warm me. I know storm patterns in this range. We have maybe two hours before visibility drops to nothing.”
She doesn’t respond.
I push. “You kept me alive for a reason. If that reason matters more than proving a point, we need to move now.”
The wind moans through the pines. Somewhere distant, metal groans as wreckage settles.
She moves.
Reaches down and grabs my jacket, hauls me upright with strength that shouldn’t surprise me but does. The world spins. My vision grays before sharpening again.
Her face is close now. I catch her fragrance again, stronger this time, cutting through the cold.
My dragonfire strains against the binding. Not to burn. To—
The pain hits sharp and immediate. I lock my jaw.
She sees it. Something crosses her expression. Then she releases me.
I stay upright through sheer will.
“You move when I say. You speak when allowed. You try nothing with fire.” Her voice drops lower. Harder. “And if you give me one reason—one—I will finish what I started.”
“Understood.”
She steps back. Gestures north with the rifle barrel. “Walk.”
I walk.
Each step punches cold through boots that weren’t designed for extended exposure. My ribs protest. The gash above my eyebrow throbs.
I don’t complain. Don’t slow.
Behind me, I hear her footsteps. Measured. Controlled. Tracking my every movement.
This is not about Aurora. Or the Syndicate.
This is personal.
And I have no idea why.
I’ve spent two decades reading people. Assessing threat levels and motivations with accuracy that kept me alive through operations that killed better men.
But this woman—this wolf with silver eyes and controlled fury—is a closed book.
The only thing I know for certain: she’s keeping me alive.
For now.
The forest thickens as we climb. Branches hang low under snow weight. My legs burn. My lungs ache. I hate being this fucking weak.
She doesn’t slow. Just moves with absolute certainty, like she knows exactly where we’re going, even though I can’t see landmarks through the storm.
Wolf senses.
And I have nothing. No fire to warm me. No strength beyond mortal limits. Just vulnerability that grates against every trained reflex.
I keep walking.
Minutes blur together. Endless trees and falling snow and the rhythm of footsteps crunching through winter silence.
Then she stops.
I stop too. Don’t turn. Just wait.
“There.”
I follow her gesture toward an outcrop of granite barely visible through the storm. A natural overhang creating shelter from wind and snow.
She moves past me. Checks the space—sight lines, escape routes, defensive positions. All the things I’d check if our situations were reversed.
Finally, she steps back. “Inside.”
I duck under the overhang. The temperature rises fractionally. The space is tight. Maybe eight feet deep, six feet wide. Rock walls on three sides.
Defensible if you’re armed.
A trap if you’re not.
She stays near the entrance. Rifle still slung but accessible. Every line of her body broadcasting readiness.
We’re three feet apart.
I can hear her breathing even out now that we’ve stopped moving. Can see snow melting on her shoulders, darkening the coat. Can smell her despite the cold—that same scent that made my fire strain against the cuffs.
The wrongness hits again. Harder this time.
My body recognizes something my mind refuses to accept. Something the cuffs dampen but can’t eliminate. Some simple awareness that she’s—
I shove the thought down. Focus on facts.
Fact one: She could have killed me a dozen times.
Fact two: She hasn’t.
Fact three: That doesn’t mean she won’t.
Outside, the storm intensifies. Visibility drops to nothing. Wind screams through the trees.
She breaks first.
“You don’t get to die yet.”
The words land flat. Final. Not mercy.
Just postponement.
I meet her eyes. Hate simmers there, visible even in the dim light filtering through snow and shadow.
“Understood.”
She sits. Back against the rock wall. Rifle across her lap. Eyes never leaving me.
I lower myself to the opposite wall. Hands locked in cuffs. Dragonfire suppressed. Every advantage stripped away.
We watch each other.
Three feet of frozen air between us. I catch that scent with every breath. See the pulse beating at her throat. And my body keeps reacting in ways I can’t control and don’t understand.
She sees it. I know she does.
Her eyes narrow slightly. Her hand tightens on the rifle.
“Don’t.”
I don’t ask what she means. Just hold her stare.
Outside, the storm swallows the world. Inside this stone shelter, something else builds. Dangerous. Undeniable.
Neither of us looks away.