Chapter 11
Jericho
The way she looks at me after that phone call tells me something has changed, though I don’t know what. Not fear. Not hatred. Not even the exhaustion pulling at her like gravity. Something else entirely—like a person standing at the edge of a cliff trying to decide whether to jump.
She hangs up the phone. Turns. Meets my eyes.
“We should move,” she says, voice flat and professional.
I nod.
She leads the way down the main street, and I follow at a careful distance, watching her more than our surroundings. The stiffness in her shoulders. The way she favors her left side. Blood runs down her fingertips.
She’s hurt worse than she’s admitting.
The motel is small, single-story, with peeling paint and a neon vacancy sign that flickers erratically. She stops at the office door and hesitates.
“I’ll wait here,” I say.
She glances back, nods once, and disappears inside.
Through the window, I watch her talk to the owner, who must be accustomed to bedraggled guests coming in covered in blood. Lucky us. She gestures, explaining something. Lost in the storm, probably. Need a room. Funds coming. The owner doesn’t look convinced but eventually hands over a key.
She emerges. “Room seven.”
We walk past four other doors before reaching ours. She unlocks it and steps inside. I follow.
The room is small but clean, aggressively normal with its beige walls and worn carpet. A single queen bed dominates the space, covered in a floral comforter that’s seen better years. Tiny bathroom visible through an open door. Window facing the parking lot.
One bed.
She notices. I notice her noticing. Neither of us addresses it.
She drops her pack on the floor and shrugs out of the rifle strap. The movement makes her wince, sharp and involuntary.
“You need to deal with that,” I say.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re losing blood.”
She looks down at the fabric soaked dark across her shoulder, more blood than before. “It’s not that bad.”
“Let me see it.”
“No. I’m a wolf. It’ll heal.”
I wait, counting to five in my head.
Goddamn stubborn woman.
“You can’t reach it properly. The wound is on your shoulder blade. You’ll need help.”
“I don’t need—”
“Yes, you do.” I keep my voice even, factual. “And we both know it. Even with advanced healing, blood loss can weaken you. We don’t have time for weakness right now.”
Her jaw tightens. She wants to argue, wants to maintain the distance, but biology doesn’t negotiate, and she’s losing blood faster than her healing can compensate for the damage.
“Fine,” she says finally, hard and clipped. “But just the wound. Nothing else.”
“Understood.”
She moves to the bed and sits on the edge with her back to me. Her hands go to the coat buttons.
I turn away, giving her the illusion of privacy while I gather supplies from the bathroom. Basic first aid kit—bandages, antiseptic, nothing sophisticated, but enough to work with.
When I return, she’s removed the coat.
And what was underneath.
Which was nothing.
Jesus.
She’s sitting there with her back to me, bare from the waist up, and I fix my eyes on the wound. Just the wound. That’s what I’m here for. Clinical. Professional. Necessary.
Except I’m aware. Can’t help being aware.
The graceful curve of her spine. The way her shoulder blade shifts when she breathes.
Old scars mapping violence across silken skin that catches the lamplight—knife wounds, claw marks, the evidence of a life spent in combat.
A soldier, like me. Someone who’s survived things that should have killed her.
Someone I’ve added to that list of survivals.
I focus on the wound.
The bullet passed clean through. Entry wound on her back, exit on the front of her shoulder.
Already healing, edges knitting together faster than human normal, bruising fading from black to purple to green in real time as I watch.
Her wolf healing is working, even though she’s weakened by cold and blood loss.
“This will hurt,” I say.
“Just do it.”
I start with the antiseptic. She goes rigid when it hits the wound but doesn’t make a sound, just breathes through it with the kind of controlled rhythm that speaks to years of field experience.
My hands stay steady as I clean the entry wound first, then carefully reach around to access the exit wound on the front of her shoulder.
My fingers brush skin that’s warmer than it should be. Not fever—something else. She’s running too hot even for a shifter, heat radiating from her in waves that I can feel through the careful clinical distance I’m trying to maintain.
I work quickly, efficiently, keeping my touch impersonal even as I’m hyperaware of the vulnerability in the line of her neck, the way her hair falls forward when she drops her head slightly, the fact that she’s trusting me with this when hours ago she wanted me dead.
The wound is clean. I apply bandages, securing them properly, and move back immediately to give her space.
“Done.”
She reaches for the blood-soaked coat crumpled on the floor.
“Wait.” I cross to my bag and pull out a spare shirt. Black, long-sleeved; it will be too big on her, but it’s clean. I toss it to her.
She catches it and stares at it for a moment like she’s trying to figure out the angle, the manipulation, the strategy.
There isn’t one.
She pulls it on. It hangs loose on her frame, sleeves too long, hem hitting mid-thigh. She rolls the cuffs up and doesn’t look at me.
“Thank you.”
The words are quiet, costing her something to say.
“You’re welcome.”
Silence settles between us, heavy and uncomfortable. She’s sitting on the bed. I’m standing by the window. The room feels smaller than it is, the air thick with things neither of us knows how to address.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask, needing to break the silence as much as obtain information.
“Aurora is sending an extraction team as soon as the storm lifts,” she says.
“When will that be?”
“Not sure. A day. Maybe two.”
“Right,” I say, my tone neutral, though the thought of spending two days in this room with her leaves me anything but neutral.
We’re quiet again. A little less awkward now.
“I don’t know your name,” I say impulsively.
She looks up, surprised. “You don’t?”
“No.”
She studies me for a moment, trying to determine if this is some kind of tactic.
“Nadia. My name is Nadia Frost.” She pauses, as if waiting for me to show some kind of acknowledgement.
“Jericho Allon.”
“I know.” Of course she does. She came into those mountains to kill me. Probably knows everything about me that’s accessible through intelligence channels.
But I didn’t know her name. Didn’t know anything except: wolf, Aurora, dangerous. Now she’s Nadia—real, specific, a person instead of an obstacle or a threat.
The silence stretches again, filling the space between us with unspoken weight. Time passes slowly. The room darkens as sunset approaches. She moves to the window and stares out at nothing, her reflection ghosted in the glass.
I stay where I am, giving her space that feels increasingly difficult to maintain.
But the question won’t stay buried. It needs asking.
“Why do you want to kill me?”
She goes completely still, every muscle locking. Doesn’t turn. Doesn’t answer. Just stands there silhouetted against fading light like a statue carved from grief.
I wait. I’m good at waiting. I learned patience in interrogations, in surveillance, in all the places where silence is currency and whoever speaks first loses ground. So I wait, and the quiet stretches between us until it feels almost unbearable.
Finally: “You killed my mate.”
The words are quiet, flat, empty of accusation. Just fact delivered like a report.
She still won’t turn around.
I should have expected this. Should have guessed from the depth of rage that goes beyond professional duty, from the way she looked at me in that shelter. This isn’t about ideology or allegiance. This is personal in the way that only death can make things personal.
“What was his name?” I ask.
She’s quiet for so long, I think she won’t answer. Then: “Chance.”
“Chance what?”
“Colombe. Chance Colombe.” Her voice tightens around the syllables. “August fifteenth. Five years ago.”
I run through memory, sorting through dates and locations and operations filed away in mental archives built over decades of service. August fifteenth. Five years ago. The details surface slowly but completely.
“Supply route,” I say, piecing it together. “Wolf team encountered Syndicate agents. Six targets. Three casualties.”
“Three casualties.” She laughs, but it’s brittle, ugly. “That’s what you call them. Casualties. Numbers in a report.”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t a number.” She turns now, and her eyes are bright with something that might be tears or rage or both. “He was my mate. My soul mate. We bonded when we were teenagers. Grew up together. Planned our lives together.”
The words start slowly but gain momentum, like something breaking. “We were supposed to be safe. It was a routine run. Just gathering intel, getting out clean. No one was supposed to die.” Her voice cracks slightly. “But you ambushed them. Your team. Your orders.”
“Yes.”
“And he died.” The words come out ragged now. “The bond just—it snapped. I felt it. I was in my mother’s kitchen making dinner, and I felt him die. Felt it tear through me like something physical. Like being ripped in half.”
She stops, wrapping her arms around herself in an unconscious gesture of self-protection. “They called to confirm what happened. But I already knew. The bond was gone. Just… gone. Like someone had cut a rope I’d been holding my whole life, and suddenly I was falling with nothing to catch me.”
I watch this woman who dragged me into a shelter to execute me, who’s spent years building rage into purpose, and she’s shaking. Not from cold or injury but from the weight of finally speaking this truth aloud to the person responsible.
“Five years,” she says, quieter now. “I’ve been planning this. Imagining exactly how I’d kill you. What I’d say. How it would feel.”