Chapter 3
The wolf was young and stupid enough to investigate a hunter’s trap.
Pavel Morozov had tracked her pack for three winters, knew each of them by sight. Her mother, the alpha female with the scarred muzzle. Her mate, the alpha male, protective and watchful. Their five pups from last season, including this one, growing into their strength.
The pup bleeding into the snow, one foreleg caught in steel jaws, was the curious one. She’d get herself killed if she kept testing boundaries like this.
He approached slowly, hands visible, voice low, alert to any protective siblings lurking out of sight.
But she was alone.
She watched him with yellow eyes. Afraid, but not panicked. Somewhere in her wolf-brain, she recognized him. The human who lived on the mountain. The one who didn’t smell like guns and hate.
“Easy now.” He kept his voice gentle, not that she’d understand the words, but tone was everything. He kneeled beside her, shrugged off his jacket and draped it over her head. Darkness calmed prey animals and wolves too, sometimes.
She stilled beneath the fabric, so he worked quickly—injured animals gave you a narrow window. He sprayed antiseptic on the wound and jabbed an antibiotic into her flank. She snarled when the needle went in, back legs scrabbling against dirty snow, but she didn’t bite.
“Almost done, devochka.”
The trap’s release mechanism was Soviet-era, probably set by herders too lazy to guard their sheep—easier to blame wolves than do the hard work.
When he freed her, the wolf yelped and scrambled free, testing her injured leg as she limped away. She’d heal—wolves were survivors. She paused twenty feet away and glanced back, intelligent eyes meeting his and then she vanished between two scrappy fir trees.
Wolves didn’t pretend to be something they weren’t or lie about what they needed. They killed when they were hungry and protected their pack. Simple and honest. Everything humans weren’t.
He packed up the used needle and antiseptic, shrugged his winter jacket back on, and lifted the trap over his shoulder.
The sun lingered low, staining the snow blue-pink before surrendering to the horizon. Spring was still weeks away. Winter wasn’t finished with the mountains. He turned and descended the slope, heading back toward his cabin.
The cold burned everything numb. Out here he was free of orders and compromised objectives. No voice breaking through the static, calling his name. No brother he failed to bring home.
He blew air through clenched teeth and rammed the fragment of memory back down, locking it away where it couldn’t destroy him any more than it already had.
Ten years he’d been up here. Ten years of silence. Ten years among things that killed honestly. It still wasn’t enough. Maybe it never would be.
Voices sounded from up ahead, crunching up through the snow toward him. Two hunters appeared through the fir—rifles slung, passing a vodka bottle between them. Swaddled in army surplus fatigues, their faces were red from the cold and alcohol. They spotted the trap on his shoulder and slowed.
The nearest one had a thick black mustache and the twitchy alertness of a scavenger animal guarding a carcass. He swung his rifle around, barrel down but ready. “That’s ours.”
Pav dropped the bloody trap in the snow. “Not anymore.”
“You released our wolf?” The second hunter stepped closer, waving the vodka bottle. “You know what those animals do to livestock?”
“Leave.”
The two men glanced at each other. “We have a comedian here.”
“Last chance.” Pav’s voice was level. “Walk away.”
The first hunter raised his rifle, aimed at Pav’s stomach. “You’re going to put that trap back where you found it. Now.”
A wolf would have shown its teeth first. Men enjoyed pretending right up until the moment they pulled the trigger.
Pav exhaled a controlled breath. He didn’t have the patience for this shit. His feet were cold, he was hungry, and the hunter’s stink of vodka and sweat was already crawling under his skin.
He lunged and his hand shot out, grabbing the rifle barrel. The hunter’s grip was loose—drunk and overconfident. Pav jerked the weapon free and reversed it in one smooth motion of muscle memory. Some things never left you, no matter how long you stayed dead.
Violence arrived fast. Thought arrived later.
He smacked the rifle butt against the hunter’s temple. Wood on skull made a meaty crack. The man crumpled.
Too easy.
Pav pivoted, the rifle already leveled at the second hunter. The vodka bottle hit the snow with a muffled thud. They stared at each other, the hunter’s breath rasping in and out, clouding the air between them.
“Well?” Pav tilted his head.
“Fucking lunatic.” The man ran, high-stepping through deep snow, rifle bouncing on his back. “You haven’t heard the last of this!”
Pav waited until he’d disappeared into a stand of dense wood before he bent and pressed two fingers to the other man’s throat. Steady. He’d wake in an hour or two with a killer headache and a story. Pav straightened, faintly disgusted with himself for checking.
He emptied the rifle, pocketed the rounds, and threw the gun down beside the unconscious man. He picked up the trap and vodka bottle. The man was snoring now, soft and rhythmic.
Pav turned west—the opposite direction from the fleeing hunter—toward home. The stove would be down to embers by now. If the wind shifted east overnight, he’d have to cut more wood before morning.
As he hiked, a wolf howled.
Female.
A warning. Or maybe a thanks.
An hour later, darkness cloaking him, he slowed fifty feet from his cabin. Nothing looked wrong. But something was.
The forest had gone still around the cabin. He dropped the trap, unslung his rifle, and moved through the trees, circling wide. Snow gave beneath his boots with the faintest crush.
Two sets of boot prints in the snow. Military grade soles. Fresh. His cabin door stood ajar by an inch. Muted conversation drifted from inside. Masculine laughter.
The sound hit like a pressure wave and his ears rang. For one heartbeat, the forest tilted, and copper flooded his mouth. His hand flexed, searching for a radio that wasn’t there.
Command, say again.
Static. Then nothing.
His lungs burned though he hadn’t moved. Too late, his body told him. You’re already too late.
No.
This was not then. No storm. No brother bleeding out beyond reach.
Just men in his cabin. And men meant questions. Noise he had no tolerance for. He’d come here because no one asked you to choose when you were alone. The mountains didn’t care what you sacrificed. Only whether you survived.
And now the world had followed him anyway. Pav raised his rifle and paced forward.
Time to see who’d made the mistake of finding him.