Total pages in book: 205
Estimated words: 204377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1022(@200wpm)___ 818(@250wpm)___ 681(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 204377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1022(@200wpm)___ 818(@250wpm)___ 681(@300wpm)
“We are together.” My focus homes in on his finger, the curl of it adding pressure to the trigger.
After everything we’ve suffered and overcome, this is how it ends. Not by a feral wolf or a deranged psychopath or a fiery plane crash. I’m going to die at the hands of someone I love.
“Wait!” White breath bursts past my lips. “Please, I don’t want to die. Not like this.”
“I love you.”
The finality in his tone shudders through me. I curl into myself, protecting vital organs as he pulls the trigger.
The boom of gunfire stops my heart. I fall to my knees, gasping as I register the arrow now protruding from Wolf’s arm.
Holding onto the gun, he cries out in pain, his eyes, wild and livid in the snowlight, directed behind me.
Turning my neck, I find Kody reloading his crossbow with the ease of a healed hand.
On my other side, Leo holds a rifle at the ready, trained on Wolf. “Put down the gun.”
Stunned and disoriented, I pat my chest, checking for a wound.
The bullet missed. Kody’s arrow must’ve ruined the shot.
“Weapons down!” Protective instincts surge me to my feet. I hold out my hands, warding them off. “Nobody shoots! Hear me?”
“Too late.” Leo’s outrage roars across the tundra. “He already fucking shot at you!”
He doesn’t lower his weapon. Neither does Kody.
“You going to shoot me again?” Wolf stares at them, fuming, shocked, hurt. So much pain writhes on his face, breaking him bit by bit. “You’re choosing her over your own brother?”
“No, they’re not!” I scream as Kody snarls, “Yes.”
“Everyone, please…” Easing my voice, I stumble toward Wolf. “Let’s just calm down. Wolf didn’t come here to kill me. We were just having a…moment.”
“Nah. This isn’t a moment. I definitely tried to kill her.” Wolf cocks his head at Leo and Kody, ignoring the arrow in his arm. “She’s dead anyway. We all are. So go ahead. Shoot me in the heart this time.”
“Don’t you fucking listen to him!” I whirl, trying to keep my eyes on all the raised weapons.
“No? Let me make it easy for you.” Wolf drops the gun, spreads his arms out like Jesus on the cross, and steps back.
Right off the cliff.
“Noooooo!” Pain slams into my chest and shocks my heart, cracking my ribs with the force of it.
Leo is instantly on me, holding me back as I try to rush to the cliff’s edge.
“Let me go!” Thrashing, shattering, and falling apart, I try to break the circle of his arms. “I need to go to him. Need to help him!”
He could be hanging on the side of the cliff or trying to crawl out of the river rapids. He’s not dead. He’s not. He’s not.
“Kody knows the way down.” He shifts me, tucking me against his chest, his voice cracking with grief. “He’ll find him.”
At the edge of my periphery, Kody races off along the cliff’s edge and into the inky black.
The heartache, the soul-deep fear, it slithers out of the cursed ground and wraps barbed tendrils around my limbs, pulling me down.
My legs give out, and Leo drops with me, holding me as I sob on my knees.
“I’m sorry.” I choke. “I’m so sorry. I tried to stop him. I didn’t say the right words. I failed—”
“You didn’t do this.” He grips the back of my head and wrenches my face to his. “Hear me? This isn’t your fault.”
At my nod, he releases me. My chin drops. My vision blurs with tears, but I cling to hope. Wolf could’ve survived the fall. By some miracle, he could’ve hit the river just right.
Beneath my hanging head, between the spread of my gloved hands, a shimmer of color glows through the ice. I absently rub at it, clearing away snow to reveal a bright splash of fuchsia.
I’m kneeling on a small frozen stream.
The same stream I cried into when I dropped Denver’s roses.
Leo sees them, too, brushing a hand over the ice that holds the preserved bouquet captive.
Once so beautiful and blooming with life.
Now frozen and dead.
A mocking symbol of our demise.
The tears come faster, harder. I don’t want to move from the cliff, but I can’t fight Leo’s strength as he picks me up and carries me back to the cabin.
“What if Kody needs our help?” I clutch his shoulders, my gaze locked on the darkness behind us.
“He won’t.”
“He can’t carry Wolf back by himself.”
“Shh.” Holding me close, he presses trembling lips against my temple. “Deep breaths.”
In the primary bedroom, he rebuilds the fire and pulls a chair to the window. There, curled up together with me on his lap, we wait.
And wait.
I don’t hear footsteps or see movement beyond the window. But after an eternity in purgatory, the wind falls silent. The sky grows darker. The world shifts.
Leo stands abruptly, taking me with him. Then he’s on the move, running, his long legs outracing mine as I chase him through the entryway and into the snow.