He tears across the open snow between the smokehouse and the porch. He's fast. Impossibly fast. He covers half the yard in two seconds.
I have maybe three seconds before he reaches the steps.
Stance is everything,Nash's voice echoes in my head.Lean into it. Squeeze, don't pull.
I plant my feet in the flour my boots have tracked across the porch boards. I shoulder the rifle. I take a breath.
I don't look at the teeth or the yellow eyes. I look at the center of the chest.
I squeeze.
CRACK.
The recoil punches my shoulder.
The wolf drops.
He crumples mid-stride, and his own momentum carries him forward, sliding him to a stop five feet from the bottom step.
He doesn't move.
Silence falls over the yard.
The other wolves freeze. They look at their fallen leader. They look at me, the woman standing on the porch with the smoking rifle.
Then, as one, they turn and melt back into the trees. They don't run in panic. They retreat. It's a tactical withdrawal.
I stand there, the rifle smoking in the cold air. My ears are ringing. My pulse slams at the base of my throat.
Nash is staring at me from the yard. He lowers the shovel. He looks at the wolves retreating into the woods, then at the dead Alpha at the foot of the stairs.
He walks across the churned snow. He's limping. His right pant leg is dark from the knee down and it isn't melt water. He steps past the dead wolf without so much as a glance and climbs the stairs to me.
He takes the rifle from my hands, engages the safety, and sets it gently against the wall.
Then he pulls me into his arms.
I don't cry or shake. I feel cold, hard, and absolutely lethal.
"You got him," Nash whispers into my hair. His voice is shaking, even if mine isn't. "Aris, you got him."
"He was coming for the house," I say. The words sound distant, like they're coming from someone else. "He was coming for me."
"I know."
"Nash," I say, pulling back to look at him. "This isn't over. The pack is still out there. And we just killed the Alpha."
"Yeah," Nash says, looking at the dead wolf. "Which means the rest of them are going to be confused. And angry. And they know where we live."
He looks at me, and the softness of the morning is gone. The partner look is back.
"Get inside," he says. "We need to secure the perimeter. And we need to raise Finn on the radio."
"Or we get on the machine and run," I say. "The lodge is twenty minutes. Town is forty. We could be behind Finn's door before the coffee goes cold."
"With my leg leaking into my boot, on a trail with drift chokepoints, against a pack that just proved it can plan an ambush?" He shakes his head once. "If the machine bogs even once, we're meat in the open. Here we have walls. We patch the leg, we raise Finn, and we hold the house."
I look at the blood in the snow. I look at the flour covering the kitchen floor. I look at the dead wolf staining the pristine white step.
