A shape slid between the trunks. Gray. Low. Fluid in a way that nothing domesticated could replicate.
Then more.
Wolves. Four visible. At least two more in the shadows—he tracked them by the displacement of snow, the faint scuff of paws on frozen ground. A pack. Six, maybe seven. Adults, well-fed, and territorial.
The wind changed. The wolves lifted their heads. They had his blood now.
He knew that because predators understood weakness. He’d built a career on the same calculation, and right now he was broadcasting weakness on a frequency that every carnivore in the mountains could read.
“Pav.” Harper’s hand closed on his, her grip tight enough to hurt.
Dogs behind. Wolves ahead.
He gritted his teeth.
The wolves weren’t hunting them. Not yet. Their posture was wrong for a hunt—no low stalking, no fanning to flank. They were watching. Evaluating. Six pairs of eyes tracking movement with an intelligence older than anything human.
Wolves were calculators. They assessed risk against reward with brutal efficiency. Two upright humans were an unknown variable.
The dogs, however—a pack of baying, charging, handler-driven dogs crashing through their territory—that was the real intrusion here. Loud. Uncontrolled. Everything a wolf pack hated inside its territory.
He made the call. There were no good options. Just the least fatal one.
“Stay beside me,” he said. “Match my pace. No sudden movements. Don’t run.”
He slowed just enough for her to keep up with him.
“Pav, there are wolves?—”
“I know. Walk.”
His weapon remained slung across his back, his hands visible at his sides. His eyes stayed on the alpha—the largest of the pack, a smoke-gray male who stood motionless between two pines, watching them approach.
Pav didn’t break stride. Breaking stride was prey.
Harper was beside him. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and her hand held the back of his fleece so hard the fabric pulled against his chest wound. But she walked, didn’t run.
He was aware, with a clarity sharpened by pain and adrenaline, that she trusted him. Again. Because somewhere between the helicopter and the drone she’d made a calculation of her own, and he was the answer she kept arriving at.
The alpha watched them pass. Ten feet away.
Close enough to die.
Close enough to see the yellow of its eyes, the scarring on its muzzle, the steam of its breath. The animal’s gaze followed them with the same flat, analytical assessment that Pav used on a target—reading threat, capability, intention.
It let them pass. The pack shifted in the surrounding shadows. Repositioning.
He kept walking.
They were a hundred feet past the wolves when it started.
The dogs. Louder now, the baying escalating in pitch and urgency as they closed the distance. The handlers’ whistles sharp and commanding. The sound of the pursuit funneling through the trees toward the wolves’ territory.
Pav halted.
The first snarl cut through the forest. Nearby. The sound hit like impact—too violent to process, deep and guttural. The snarls multiplied, overlapping, building into a sound that was less noise and more force—a wall of territorial fury unleashed.
The dogs’ baying broke apart. The confident tracking rhythm collapsed into something high-pitched and frantic. Yelping. Squeals. The handlers shouting—panicked now, the commands disintegrating into raw human fear.
