Chapter Forty-Seven
Jackson
The storm has settled into a steady roar outside the stone overhang, wind dragging sheets of snow sideways across the ravine. It’s the kind of cold that stiffens the lungs when you breathe. The kind that whispers survival isn’t guaranteed. The kind that narrows the world to only what matters.
Inside the shelter, our breath clouds the air in slow, white drifts.
Brooklyn sits with her knees drawn up, arms wrapped loosely around herself—not for warmth, but containment. She’s holding herself together with the same control someone uses to cover a wound they don’t have words for yet.
I kneel near her—not touching, but close enough to share heat.
Close enough to let her know she’s not alone.
Close enough to catch her if she starts to fall.
But not close enough to make her feel held down.
Because God knows she’s felt enough of that.
Her eyes are fixed outward at the storm, unfocused.
I pull a thermal rescue blanket from my pack, thankful for the insight to have grabbed her pants, socks, shoes, and the pack and kneel before her.
“Brooklyn.”
I keep my voice low, level. “You’re safe right now.”
She doesn’t look at me. “I know.”
But her voice is thin.
Not weak.
Just stretched too far.
I grasp hold of her left ankle, the skin like ice against my own and slip her foot through the jeans, repeating the action with the other leg before gently shimming them up her frigid form. I slip off her wet socks, afraid to see frostbite on her delicate feet. They're red, almost purple but not black yet. That's good. I replace the soiled socks with clean, warm ones and slide her shoes gently over her feet, mindful of the numbing pain that she must be feeling.
But she doesn't flinch, or even make a soun.
And that scares me more than anything.
I wrap the emergency thermal around her shoulders and then shift my stance just slightly, sitting instead of kneeling. A posture that says: We’re not in danger this second. You can breathe.
Her next breath comes, but it’s shaky.
Controlled, but cracking.
“He didn’t yell,” she says softly, eyes still on the storm. “Not once. He barely even spoke at all. The only time he spoke was when he—”
Her voice breaks.
She swallows hard and keeps it together by force.
I don’t ask her to finish.
I don’t need details.
I already know what “not when he” means.
And what it doesn’t have to be spelled out to be.
Her voice continues, slow, careful, like stepping on glass, “He whispered. Like I was supposed to already understand something. Like… like it was familiar.”
Her jaw tightens.
She doesn’t cry.
She is too afraid that if she starts, she won’t stop.
I speak quietly, letting the words be solid and simple, “He doesn’t decide who you are. He doesn’t decide your past. And he sure as hell doesn’t decide your future.”
Her eyes close—hard.
And when she speaks, it’s almost silent, "I knew his voice.”
The words tremble once in the air and then settle like weight.
She opens her eyes again—but now she looks at me.
And there it is.
Not panic.
Not collapse.
Just truth finally too heavy to carry alone.
“I knew his voice,” she whispers again, breath unsteady. “Before he ever took me.”
I don’t flinch. I don’t ask.
I just nod once and say the only thing that matters, “I believe you.”
Her breath breaks—not a sob, not a cry—just a single exhale the shape of relief.
That’s when the sound comes.
A shift in the wind that doesn’t belong to the storm.
A pause in the snowfall.
A listening.
Dal goes still first. His eyes narrow toward the ravine opening.
Linc’s hand moves to his rifle.
Bos shifts his stance, shotgun at the ready, blocking Brooklyn with his body without needing to be asked.
Caleb steps to the mouth of the shelter, not outside, just near the edge and listens.
Nothing moves.
But something changes.
A new silence settles.
The kind that isn’t empty.
The kind that means presence.
Then—snow falls from a branch thirty feet up the ravine.
Not natural.
Not storm-driven.
Weight.
Someone is out there.
Watching.
Testing.
Not attacking.
Waiting.
Brooklyn stiffens. Not because she sees him—but because she feels him.
Her breath trembles.
She presses her palm flat to the ground, grounding herself.
Caleb speaks first.
“We can’t stay pinned. Not with him above elevation.”
Dal nods. “He’s measuring our reactions. Seeing if we’ll panic.”
“We won’t.” Bos’s voice is steady as bedrock.
But they all look at me next.
Not because I give orders.
That's now this works, even with me being the only one with the official capacity to be hunting someone like him.
But because I am the one he wants something from.
I look at Brooklyn.
She meets my eyes.
And I see something new there.
Not fear.
Resolve.
She’s not just surviving.
She’s refusing.
And that's enough for me.
Making a decision, I stand and say, “We stop running." Linc’s eyes harden. Dal straightens. Bos nods once. Caleb exhales slow—not relief. Readiness. I continue, "He’s tracking us because he thinks we’re protecting something weak. He thinks she’s breakable. He thinks we’re defending.”
My jaw locks.
“We aren’t defending anymore.”
Dal’s mouth ticks in the smallest ghost of a grim smile, "We hunt.”
“Yes.”
The storm howls around us as if answering.
“We split into two teams,” I say. “Bos stays with Brooklyn. Caleb, you stay with them. Secure the ridge break, maintain cover, stay inside blind zones.”
Bos nods sharply. Caleb says nothing—agreement in stillness.
“Linc, Dal, and I will run elevation,” I continue. “We'll push the flank and force him off his vantage. He loses the eyes, he loses control.”
Dal rolls his shoulders, warming muscle. “We’re faster in storm conditions.”
Linc checks the sightline through snow-density. “He knows we’ll come. He’ll take the high rocks to draw us into open field.”
“That’s where we don’t follow,” I say. “We push him sideways, funnel him where the terrain breaks and collapses.”
Dal finishes the thought, "Toward the river basin.”
Exactly.
Where the storm is strongest.
Where footprints vanish.
Where sound warps.
Where distance lies.
Where his advantage becomes ours.
Brooklyn watches all of us like she is watching a life she didn’t think she’d still have.
I kneel in front of her. Not to hold her. Not to promise safety.
To speak something true.
“We are coming back.”
Her lip trembles once. Just once.
“Then go,” she whispers.
Not in fear.
In conviction.
Before I get the chance to get to my feet, she grasps hold of my face, her fingers icy-cold against my skin and places her lips over mine.
It's not a kiss that says *Goodbye,* instead it says, *C*ome back to me.**
I don't make that promise in words, but she can read it on my face, in my eyes.
I'm not leaving her.
Not ever.
Then I rise. Linc and Dal move to either side of me, ghost-silent.
The storm howls as we step back into it—Cold, wind, white, movement, breath—The world shrinking into sound and instinct.
We disappear into the storm.
Behind us, Brooklyn. Bos. Caleb.
In front of us, the hunter who thinks he already won.
And he has no idea what’s coming.
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