Cold Spell

Lucas is shouting at me, Kai too, everyone is yelling, the roar of the gunshots and the wolf and Flannery’s screams as it tears at her.

And then a sound louder than the rest. Deep, something that reverberates through me and hurts my ears as I run at Mora. She’s still, tense, watching me, holding my eyes to hers—

Keeping me from looking at the ground. From seeing the crack in the ice that I trip over. I fall forward again, bracing for the pain when I strike the ground, but this time it isn’t there. There is no ground—there’s water.

I slide down so quickly that I’m not sure what’s happening until a thousand knives are digging into me all at once. I try to flail, try to swim, but I can’t feel anything except shooting pain in my head—because I can’t breathe, I realize. My lungs are still, won’t even struggle for air. There’s bright light above me in the sea of dark, and I want to swim toward it, but the darkness of the water is spilling over into my vision. I finally inhale, but my lungs fill with ice. My chest screams a final time before fading—

Something sharp tears into my shoulder, brighter than the pain of the freezing water. The world swirls around me, and suddenly air is sharp and hard on my body, the world is loud again. I’m pulled backward, away from the water, the ice hard and angry against my body. Everything feels heavy, and I want to close my eyes—is it getting warmer? I can’t tell. I force myself to look over to whoever is dragging me out of the water.

My lips part. I try to scream but there’s no sound—it’s not a hand digging into the soft spot of my shoulder. Teeth, sharp and white, black lips pulled back over a pale brown muzzle. It’s a wolf; a low, steady growl vibrates from his throat into my body. I finally find the strength to struggle, to twist away—it’s not as hard as I expect it to be. I crawl backward across the ice, slipping when my hands are too cold to find traction, unable to look away from the wolf as it follows me, one slow step at a time. It lifts its eyes, looks at me—

They’re golden. A gold I know, a gold I’ve seen a thousand times before.

“Kai?”

The wolf stares and drops his head low. I lift a shaking hand toward him. I need to touch him, need to feel that this is real—

A clicking noise from behind Kai—I look around him and see Ella, gun out in front of her.

“No,” I say, voice breaking and weak. “No, no, it’s him. Don’t.” Kai stays perfectly still. He doesn’t move as I scramble forward, wrap my arms around his neck, and let my fingers dig into his fur. Ella’s eyes are steeled; she’s breathing heavy, staring. Behind her, I see Callum helping Flannery. Blood is streaming down her arm from bite marks across her shoulder and chest.

“Move,” Ella says.

“Please, Ella, don’t shoot him—”

“Not him, Ginny. Move,” Ella hisses at me. I turn, look behind me, and suddenly I realize what she’s really aiming at. Mora, standing perfectly still, but breathing hard, furiously. Her eyes go from me, to Kai, to Ella, back again. I can see the body of one of her guards behind her, a pool of blood spreading out on the ice and freezing, turning dark purple. There’s a cracking sound.

“Stop,” Ella says to Mora, voice steady. “Break this ice one more time and I’ll shoot.”

“You’ve only got one shot,” Mora snarls. “Better not miss.”

“I didn’t miss back in Nashville,” Ella reminds her, and Mora’s face contorts with anger. “Ginny, Kai, move. Get to shore.”

I rise, steadying myself against Kai. My legs don’t work right—they don’t bend—and my clothes weight a million pounds. Yet we slowly, carefully pick our way away from Mora, away from Ella. Lucas is waiting for me where the ice is thicker, casting Kai a wary look before picking me up and carrying me the rest of the way to the shore. There’s a body in the grass nearby—one of the guards, I realize with relief.

“We’re all alive, then?” I ask, just to be sure.

“So far. But there’s one bullet left, and it’s the one in Ella’s gun,” Lucas answers grimly, setting me down beside Flannery on the embankment. She’s pressing hard on her shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding. Callum is beside her, searching through bags frantically, gun in his hand—looking for more ammunition. I look over, realize Kai has stopped at the edge of the ice. He looks at me, turns back to see Ella. Neither she nor Mora have moved an inch. Lucas is pale, his fingers shaking.

Kai finds my eyes with his—still his, even in the wolf’s body. I swallow, and he turns and bolts back toward Mora and Ella. He stops in front Ella, then paces back and forth between her and Mora, head low, looking more and more like an animal with each step.

“Just let Mora go,” Lucas says under his breath, standing at the edge of the ice. “Everyone back away, just go. Ella, baby. Come on.”

Something cracks behind us, farther up the embankment. I can’t bring myself to care at first, but the sound grows louder, becoming more frequently. Becoming footsteps, dozens of footsteps. Flannery looks first; her eyes widen, I see something like a scream forming on her lips, but it never escapes. I finally look away from Kai, turn my head to see—

Wolves. No, not wolves. Fenris. Running at us.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

A strangled sound emerges from Lucas’s throat. I see him close his eyes, bracing for the teeth, the claws. I exhale. After all that, this is how we’re going to die?

The first Fenris leaps over us. Then another, another. They avoid us entirely, instead headed for the ice, elongated faces and jaws, their teeth yellowed and bloody. They look so different from Kai, from the guards we killed. I can’t believe I ever thought Mora’s wolves were Dalia’s beasts.

The sight breaks through Ella’s calm exterior. I can see her panic; one shot left, a dozen wolves, Mora… there might as well be zero shots. Kai lowers his head and growls so loudly I can hear the sound from here, but they don’t stop; they pass him, finally stopping between Ella and Mora. The Fenris at the front of the pack pauses, and then twists, contorting. His snout sucks into his face; there’s a cracking sound as his spine changes, as his haunches become hip bones. He becomes a man with a wild, angry grin.

“Mora,” he says in a singsong voice. “Darling.”

Mora doesn’t answer. Her confidence fades; her shoulders slacken. She doesn’t move, doesn’t look at them—if it weren’t for the slow, even rise and fall of her chest, I’d say she wasn’t breathing. As strong as she’s always looked to me, she now resembles a ragdoll, something to be tossed around. Behind the Fenris, Ella softens her grip on her gun and takes a step away.

“Time to stop all this and come home,” the man—the Fenris—says, extending a hand to her. Behind him, the others pace, scratching at the ice and snarling to one another. They look at Mora hungrily, angrily. She reaches up, her hair behind her ears, and seamlessly, as if she’s sliding into a dress, changes.

When the Fenris change it’s violent—cracking, popping, skin to fur and nails to claws. When Mora’s guards change, it’s faster, simpler, but it still looks painful. Mora, however, looks beautiful as she slips away from her human form and becomes a solid white wolf with clear blue eyes.

So that’s why they want her, I realize, watching. She’s theirs.

“You did well,” the Fenris says. “We thought we’d never find you, for a while. Who’d have thought it would be a mortal girl to lead us straight to your door?” His eyes flash toward me, vulgar and leering. He smiles again.

Mora stands perfectly still. A gust of wind ruffles her fur; Kai and Ella continue to slowly, carefully retreat, wary of drawing the pack’s attention.

“Are you sure there’s no more ammunition?” Lucas mutters to Callum.

“Not a single round.”

“Then someone here better figure out what we’ll do when they come back this way. They’re slower in this weather, but they’re faster than us,” Lucas says gravely. Flannery looks over at me, reaches down, and presses a knife handle into my hand. My fingers are too cold to close around it.

The pack leader walks over to Mora, running his hand across her head as if she’s a dog. “There we go,” he