Chapter Twenty-Five
ARIS
Every lamp in the cabin is on, and it still isn't enough.
We've created a fortress of artificial light. The fireplace is roaring, casting dancing shadows against the cedar walls. We've dragged the heavy oak dining table in front of the sliding glass doors, a barricade that feels pitifully symbolic against the strength of a wolf pack.
I'm sitting on the floor by the couch, the rifle across my lap. Nash should be flat on his back with that leg elevated. I told him so twice. Instead, every time the wind gusts, my grip tightens on the stock.
Nash is at the radio.
He's been there for an hour, hunched over the receiver, twisting the dial through the static.
Hiss. Pop. Hiss.
"Anything?" I ask, though I already know the answer.
"Same aurora," Nash mutters, not looking up. "Still scattering everything."
He spins the dial again. "On a normal night Reid would be clogging the marine band right about now, bragging about a halibut haul or flirting with the dispatcher. Tonight, nothing."
"Reid," I repeat. He drove me in from the harbor my first day, all grin and no filter. "The charismatic one?"
"The loud one," Nash corrects, dry. "He's got a forty-foot boat and an ego to match. If anyone could punch a signal through this static, it would be him. Just to hear his own voice."
He tries the handset again. "Lantern Bay, this is Misty Meadows. Do you copy? Reid, are you out there? Over."
Static.
Nash slams his hand down on the table. "Useless." He picks up the emergency sat unit, watches it search for a sky it can't find, and sets it down gently, which is somehow worse.
He stands up, pacing the room. He checks the shotgun by the door and the rifle leaning against the couch. He checks the window coverings, sheets of plywood he screwed into the frames an hour ago, leaving only narrow slits for observation.
"They're out there," he says, stopping at one of the slits. His voice has dropped an octave.
"They're waiting for full dark," Nash says, keeping his eyes on the slit. "They lost their Alpha. The new Beta has to prove he can lead. And we're the thing that killed his predecessor."
"So we're a job interview," I say, my scientist brain reaching for a metaphor, anything to make the fear hold still.
"Basically."
I walk over to the window slit and peer out.
The yard is illuminated by the floodlights Nash rigged up. The snow is blue-white, stark and empty. The trees beyond are a wall of black.
"Turn off the inside lights," I say.
"What?"
"If the lights are on inside, they can see our silhouettes moving. We can't see them. We need to reverse the advantage."
Nash looks at me for a second, then nods. "Smart."
He moves around the room, killing the lamps. The cabin plunges into darkness, lit only by the firelight.
Now, when I look out, I can see better.
And I see them.
They're shadows detaching themselves from the tree line, ghostly shapes drifting over the snow.
"One," I whisper, my breath fogging the cold glass.
"Two," Nash murmurs from the other window. "By the shed."
"Three," I count, spotting movement near the incinerator. "And four. They're flanking."
"Five," Nash says. "Near the snowmobile."
"Six," I finish, seeing the largest shadow peel away from the darkness near the woodpile. "The big black one keeps circling behind the others."
"That's the Beta," Nash says. "He's keeping them organized."
The wolves are ghosts in the floodlights. They don't move like dogs; they flow. They trot with a loose-limbed gait that eats up the ground. They are circling the cabin, moving in and out of the shadows, testing the perimeter.
One of them pauses at the corner of the porch. He sniffs the wood where I killed the Alpha. Then he looks up at the window. I flinch, instinctively stepping back, even though I know he can't see me in the dark house.
"They're probing," Nash whispers, his hand gripping the shotgun so hard his knuckles are white. "Looking for a weakness. They won't find one. This house is cedar over stone. Oak doors. Triple-pane glass."
"Glass breaks, Nash."
"Not easily."
He walks back to the radio, frustration coming off him like heat. He keys the handset again.
"Birch Bay, this is Misty Meadows. Rhys, do you copy? Over."
Static. Hiss. Pop.
"Come on, Rhys," Nash mutters. "You're the responsible one. Pick up the damn handset."
"Rhys," I say, keeping one eye on the wolves outside. I've never met him, but I saw the invoice taped to the cinnamon rolls Hank dropped on the gravel bar—every line crossed out, the zero balance circled. "The one who documents things for the record."
"That's him," Nash says, adjusting the squelch. "He runs the dock at Birch Bay—the store, the fuel station, the bait shop, the whole show. Only Hollister who actually owns a calculator and knows how to use it. If anyone is monitoring the emergency channel at this hour, it's him."
"And Reid?"
He sighs, letting go of the handset. "If I could get Rhys, he'd have armed Hollisters on sleds in my yard within the hour. Or he could get word to Reid. The Kingfisher works all winter out of Lantern Bay—skim ice doesn't scare her. And Reid's reckless enough to run the strait in the dark."
"But we can't reach them," I say.
"No. We're on our own."
Outside, a low, mournful sound begins.
Aroooooooo.
It starts with one wolf, the Beta, likely, and is quickly joined by others. A chorus of howls rises into the night air, overlapping, harmonizing, creating a sonic wall that feels like it's vibrating the very timbers of the cabin.
"Quiet!" Nash commands, but his voice is lost in the noise.
"They're rallying," Nash says over the noise. "Telling us we're surrounded. They want panic. They want us to run."
"It's working," I mutter.
The howling stops as abruptly as it began. The silence that follows is worse. It's heavy, pregnant with intent.
Then, the scratching starts.
It comes from the front door: long, rhythmic scratches against the heavy wood. Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
It sounds like a giant hand testing the lock.
"Get away from the door," Nash orders, raising the shotgun.
We back into the center of the room. The scratching continues for a minute, then stops.
Then we hear a thump on the roof.
I look up at the ceiling beams. "Nash. They can climb."
"The wood pile," Nash realizes. "They used the stacked wood to get onto the lean-to, then the roof."
We hear footsteps above us. Pad-pad-pad. Heavy. Pacing directly over our heads.
"What are they looking for up there?" I whisper.
"The chimney," Nash says. "It won't help them. Spark arrestor, heavy steel mesh. They can't get in."
But the sound of an apex predator walking on our roof changes the dynamic completely. The fortress has become a box.
The floodlights outside stutter.
They buzz once, dim, and then die.
The yard plunges into darkness.
"The generator," Nash says. "The shed."
"They took out the generator?" I ask, disbelief warring with terror.
"Not on purpose. Wolves chew—hoses, seats, anything with grease or salt worked into it. One of them found the fuel line while we were watching the doors." His voice stays flat. "Doesn't matter why. We're dark."
We're now in total darkness, save for the dying embers of the fire. The cabin feels instantly smaller, colder.
"Night vision," Nash says. "Do we have it?"
"It was in the Pelican case," I say. "The one at the bottom of the river. With the generator."
"Right."
We stand there in the dark, back-to-back, weapons drawn.
His spine presses against mine, one warm line in a room gone to ice, and every breath he takes travels through my own ribs.
This is the calculation I never ran. Not the wolves.
Him. Weeks ago he was a stranger with a rifle and doubts about my survival odds, and now the thought of this dark room taking him sets my hands shaking on the stock.
I came north to recover a dead man's work and found a living one, and the wild that handed him to me is pacing the walls to take him back.
Three words climb my throat, the same three I have spent cheap on a pastry and a woman with cinnamon rolls and never once on the person who earned them.
I swallow them down. Not here. Not in the dark with blood freezing on the snow, where they would land like a last thing instead of a first. He gets them alive, in daylight, or he does not get them at all.
"Nash," I whisper.
"Yeah?"
"What are they doing out there? Why cut the lights and go quiet?"
"Taking inventory," Nash says. "The lights are gone. They tested the door, the roof. They're measuring us—how fast we react, and with what."
"Measuring us for what?"
"To see if we're worth the calories. Predators don't gamble—a dug-in target costs too much. Energy. Injuries. A normal pack walks away from that math."
"And this pack?"
"This pack," Nash says quietly, "flushes us out."
As if in answer, a crash comes from the kitchen.
Glass shattering.
"The back window!" Nash yells.
He sprints toward the kitchen. I follow, the rifle heavy in my hands.
The plywood patch Nash installed over the kitchen window, the one above the sink, has been smashed inward. A wolf is halfway through the opening, snarling, its paws scrambling on the stainless-steel counter.
It's not the Beta—it's a younger male, scrawny, desperate enough to try the gap.
He's all ribs and teeth, head inside the room, eyes glowing in the faint light from the other room.
"Get back!" Nash roars.
He racks the shotgun slide. Clack-clack.
The sound is universal. The wolf flinches, trying to scramble back out, but his hind legs are caught on the sill.
Nash doesn't hesitate. He can't. If that wolf gets in, the pack follows.
BOOM.
The shotgun blast in the enclosed space is deafening. It blows the window frame apart. The wolf is thrown backward out into the snow.
Nash pumps the shotgun again. He steps up to the broken window, aiming into the dark yard.
"Anyone else?" he screams into the night. "Come on! Who's next?"
Silence.
Then, the sound of retreating paws. Fast. Running toward the woods.
Nash sags against the counter, breathing hard. The cold air is pouring in through the shattered window, freezing the sweat on my face.
"They breached," he says. "Through the plywood."
"We need to board it up," I say. "Better this time. Use the table leaf. It's oak."
We work frantically in the dark, using screws and the heavy oak leaf from the dining table to seal the window. My hands are shaking so hard I drop the screwdriver twice.
When it's done, we retreat to the living room. We pull the couch in front of the hallway entrance, creating a smaller perimeter.
We sit on the floor, huddled together in the dark.
"They're gone for now," Nash says. "The shotgun scared them. But they'll be back."
"We can't stay here, Nash," I say quietly. "We have no lights. The window is compromised. You're injured. If they come back tomorrow night …"
"We can't leave," Nash argues. "The snowmobile is exposed. We'd be sitting ducks on the river."
"Then we hold the walls and wait," I say. "Finn knows where we live. You go quiet out here, somebody comes looking. You told me that."
"After two weeks in the bush and one night home?
" Nash shakes his head in the firelight.
"Finn thinks we've gone to ground on purpose.
May's probably running a pool on when we resurface.
Silence won't smell wrong to anybody for three, four days.
My leg doesn't have three days. Neither does that window. "
"We don't leave on the snowmobile," I say. "We leave on the offensive."
Nash looks at me in the firelight. "What?"
"You said it yourself," I say. "Reid is the chaos. Rhys is the logistics. You need both."
"I can't reach anybody. The radio's scattered, the landline's dead, and the sat unit hasn't found a satellite since sundown."
"No," I say. "But we can go to where the signal is."
"The relay ridge," Nash says slowly. "Five miles east. Finn and I bolted a repeater up there years ago so the lodge could reach town. And the seaward face drops straight down to the strait."
"Then we get to it," I say. "We boost the signal. We call Rhys. We get a boat."
"It's five miles on snowshoes," Nash says. "Through their territory."
"It's better than dying in this kitchen," I say.
Nash is silent for a long moment. He looks at the boarded window. He looks at his bandaged leg. He looks at me.
"You really want to go back out there?"
"I want to survive," I say. "And to do that, we have to stop acting like prey."
Nash reaches out and takes my hand. His grip is iron-hard.
"Okay," he says. "We go at first light. We hunt the hunters."
"And then?" I ask.
"And then," Nash says, "I'm going to call my brothers. And I'm going to tell Reid to point the Kingfisher up the coast and not spare the throttle."