The bear huffs. Shakes its head like something is buzzing in its ears. Then it backs out of the entrance, slow and heavy, and the shadow recedes.
I let the sound fall away.
My hands are shaking.
Sable stares at the entrance where the bear disappeared. Then at me.
“You weren’t afraid of it?” she asks.
I look toward the cave mouth, where the bear vanished into the rain.
“It was cornered. Protecting its den.” I flex my fingers, still feeling the shape of the sound I used on it. “That makes sense to me.”
“It could have killed you.”
I glance back at her.
“No animal ever hurt me.”
“What did you do to it?” she asks. “With the sound?”
“Found its rhythm. Matched it. Slowed it down.” I flex my hands. The shaking is easing. “Same thing that happens when you’re close to me. Just…aimed at something else.”
She’s quiet with that for a moment.
“A grizzly,” she says. “In the Cascades. That’s not normal.”
“No.”
“And it was living here. This was its den.” She frowns. “I wonder why someone left their things here.” She swallows. “Do you think the bear might have killed them?”
“No idea.” I look toward the entrance. “But it’ll be back. Which means we need to go. Now.”
I scatter the remaining coals. Fold the tarp and leave it where we found it; it isn’t ours. Sable is already at the entrance, checking the slope.
I stop and look back at the cave one more time: the blackened stones, the ground where we lay, the place where I remembered my music and kissed a woman who stayed when she could’ve left.
Leaving it feels wrong, which makes no sense. It’s a bear’s den. A cold hole in the mountain.
It is also the first place in years where I woke up as myself.
“Rafael.” Her voice, from outside.
I turn and follow her into the morning.
The mountain is white. Snow covers everything: the rocks, the trees, the ground we walked yesterday. The air is clean and sharp and so cold it hurts to breathe, but the sky is clear for the first time since the cabin. Blue. Wide. Endless.
I fill my lungs with it.
We walk. Downhill now, following the slope toward lower ground where the snow is thinner, and the trees grow taller. She leads again, but less urgently than yesterday. We’re not running from the helicopter now, we’re heading toward something, even if neither of us has named what.
She talks as we walk. About Ravenclaw. About Brenna. About what she’ll say when she makes contact. Her voice is steady, practical. The healer with a plan. But her hand brushes mine when the trail narrows, and the brush is deliberate, and my wolf presses toward the warmth of it.
We’ve been walking for maybe two hours when the trees open into a clearing.
I see them before she does. My wolf reads the wind and goes rigid.
Men. Four of them. Positioned at the tree line on the far side of the clearing, spaced apart, armed. They wear dark tactical gear. Not the transport handlers’ uniforms, but close enough to make my skin prickle. Dart rifles. One of them has something heavier on a sling.
