Chapter Forty-Five
Jackson
The forest goes still in stages.
Not all at once, it's more like the world remembering how to stop breathing. Snow-laden branches hold their weight, motionless. The air, thin and metallic in my lungs, stops moving. Even the distant groan of winter wind dies off like it has realized we need silence.
Brooklyn is against the tree behind me. I can feel her breaths, short, tight, barely touching air. I keep myself between her and the treeline. I don’t touch her. Touch would be for comfort and this is not a moment for comfort. This is a moment for geometry and angles and control.
Caleb stands slightly forward and right of me. His head is tilted, not toward any visible movement, but toward the absence of it. It's in the way someone listens for thought instead of sound.
To our left, Dal has gone still. Not frozen but coiled, his stance is wide and quiet, his weight balanced over the inside of his feet. He’s waiting for a line of sight, not a signal.
To our right, Linc hasn’t luifted his rifle as of yet, but every inch of him says he is the kind of man who can fire and hit without ever needing the attached scope to aim.
Behind us, Bos anchors. I don’t have to look to know his shoulders are squared, his jaw locked, his breath slow. He’s watching the rear, because he always watches the rear. Because he keeps the ground no one else can see.
We are a closed circle, but something is already inside it. I feel him before I hear him.
A presence, not one that is large, loud, or moving. Just aware. Like a mind that watches without blinking, a gaze that doesn’t see people, but patterns.
Brooklyn stiffens behind me, so slight anyone else would miss it.
But I feel it.
*Recognition.*
Her breath hitches, not sharp, not panicked.
Controlled.
Contained.
She knows who’s out there.
I don’t turn. I don’t look back at her. If I do, she’ll see everything in me and I need everything I am right now pointed outward.
Then the voice comes.
Not close, but also not far. Placed, like a knife set on a table. “Move again,” the voice says, “and I’ll take her back.”
Brooklyn flinches so quietly it hurts.
The voice has no anger in it. No urgency or triumph, simpy making a statement. A description of an inevitable outcome.
A hunter telling the deer, **You stepped into the clearing and I am here. That is all*.*
Caleb doesn’t move, but something in him answers, quiet as a pulse.
Linc shifts one inch to adjust cover, Dal lowers his center of gravity and Bos angles his stance to widen our retreat vector.
We don’t speak, words break formations and acknowledge threat.
My mouth is dry and breathing slow as I project my voice outward, ensuring it's controlled and level, “You’re surrounded.”
The voice replies immediately, without pause, without concern.
“I know.” It's not said in arrogance, but truth.
Brooklyn’s fingers curl into the fabric of her coat, not clutching the fabric but as though she is anchoring herself inside her own body.
She has heard this voice before and she hates that she has.
I keep my tone steady again, as I speak, “You won’t touch her again.”
Silence, then, “You assume you get to decide that.”
His tone isn't mocking or curious, instead he's outlining his perceived flaw in my logic.
Caleb steps forward half a pace, deliberately, not in challenge but in analysis.
His voice is calm, almost conversational, but edged, “You don’t want her taken by force. If you did, you would have attacked already.”
There's another pause and the entire forest holds before the voice speaks again, “I already have.”
Brooklyn’s breath stops.
Just *stops*.
I feel the next inhale like she’s dragging air through broken glass and every muscle in my body wants to turn, to hold her, to promise something I cannot promise. But I don’t move. Movement is read as weakness.
Dal speaks next, his voice soft, low, and deliberate. “What’s your endgame?”
The voice answers with the ease of inevitability. “She comes home.”
The word *home* lands like frostbite.
Brooklyn’s voice comes out small and raw and made of splintered bone, “I’m not yours.”
The silence that follows is a sound.
But then the voice answers, “You always were.”
Brooklyn’s breath breaks.
And still, I don’t turn but I speak and my voice is no longer calm, “If you come near her, I will kill you.”
The reply is instant, emotionless. “I know.”
A branch creaks in the wind, except there is no wind.
Caleb’s eyes lock on a point sixty yards up-slope. His voice is nearly silent when he speaks, “Elevation ridge. Third rise. He’s not moving.”
Linc adjusts his angle as he lifts his rifle to scope him out and Dal adjusts his aim angle. Bos shifts his weight to prepare to advance backward, drawing Brooklyn with him.
It is choreography, we've done this a thousand times before. The hunt is second nature to us, even after all these years but, now the prey isn't a buck or elk, it's a much worse kind of monster.
I speak again, quieter now, not to taunt or to bargain but to declare, “She’s not going back to you.”
The forest holds still again and then, the voice smiles.
Not in sound but in shape. “You think you’ve found her.”
A breath.
A pause.
A certainty.
“I never lost her,” I reply, my voice just as certain but my skin goes cold and I feel Brooklyn shiver, just once, and it is the smallest movement that I have ever felt, but it is enough.
Enough for him because he whispers, closer now, impossibly close, like he is speaking from the dark between trees that were empty a moment ago, “She still hears me.”
I finally turn toward Brooklyn and find that her eyes are wide and glossedover with terror that she is trying to bury. But she doesn’t look at me becuase she is staring into the trees.
Staring at nothing, and yet at *him*.
I speak, not loud, but with a finality that could crack bone, “She hears you. But she doesn’t belong to you. Not now. Not ever.”
The forest exhales.
Quiet.
Then the voice disappears, not fading, not retreating, just gone.
Like he was never here at all, but he was and we all know he was.
Brooklyn’s knees buckle, but I manage to catch her before she falls.
No one speaks because every one of us understands the truth.
*He let us live.*
*For now.*
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