It still howled above us, rattling branches, dumping snow in heavy sighs, but down near the ground, the air was calmer, and Ranger led me to the base of a massive fir whose branches swept low enough to form a natural shelter.
We crawled inside.
The ground there was covered in needles instead of snow, dry and dark, and I curled up instinctively, pulling my arms in tight, while Ranger pressed his entire body along my side, radiating heat like a living furnace.
Time stopped behaving normally.
I shivered until my muscles cramped, then until my jaw hurt, then until the shaking slowed, and when warmth began blooming in my chest, seductive and wrong, Ranger reacted before my mind could register the danger, growling and licking my face aggressively, snapping me back into awareness just as my fingers fumbled with my zipper.
He knew what hypothermia did before I did.
Somewhere in the dark, coyotes started calling.
Not one, not two, but many, their voices overlapping, frantic and hungry, and Ranger’s posture changed completely, his body stiffening, his attention locking onto the darkness beyond the branches, no longer just a dog but something older, something meant to stand between danger and what it loved.
They came closer.
I could see their eyes eventually, flickers of yellow through snow, and when one lunged, Ranger exploded out of the shelter, meeting it head-on with a violence that shocked me, teeth flashing, bodies colliding, snow erupting around them.
He was outnumbered.
He was hurt.
But he didn’t retreat.
By the time the coyotes withdrew, deciding whatever we were wasn’t worth the blood, Ranger collapsed beside me, shaking, bleeding, alive.
I pulled my jacket open and wrapped it around him, whispering promises I didn’t know how to keep, while the storm kept screaming, indifferent to loyalty, to fear, to love.
Chapter Three: The Return That Was Worse Than Being Alone
I don’t know how long passed before the light appeared.
At first, I thought it was another trick of my freezing brain, another hallucination like the warmth, but then the beam cut steadily through the trees, methodical, controlled, and an engine rumbled nearby.
Help.
The word almost broke me.
I dragged myself toward the road, waving weakly, my voice barely functioning, until the vehicle stopped and a silhouette stepped out.
I recognized the shape before my mind could catch up.
The jacket.
The posture.
Caleb.
Relief and terror collided inside me, because he hadn’t come running, hadn’t shouted my name with panic, hadn’t dropped to his knees in the snow like a man who thought he’d lost a child.
He stood calmly by the truck bed and lifted out a tire iron.
That was when I understood the twist of cruelty he’d planned.
Leaving me hadn’t been enough.
He needed certainty.
Chapter Four: Predator Without Fur
He followed the tracks easily, his flashlight sweeping the ground, his voice falsely gentle as he called my name, and when he found blood in the snow, his tone shifted, satisfaction creeping in.
I hid with Ranger beneath an eroded bank near a frozen creek, burying us in snow, slowing my breath, praying, but Caleb saw the disturbance, reached down, and yanked Ranger out by the scruff, throwing him onto the ice like garbage.
Something in me snapped.
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