"Solar flare," I mutter, watching the sky. "The magnetosphere is lit up like a Christmas tree. We're not getting a signal out on HF."
"What about the landline? Or the emergency sat line? One of them has to be working."
I lift the landline handset. Dead—no tone, not even static. Ice takes the copper down twice a winter. I try the emergency sat unit next, and it searches and searches and never finds the sky. "Same storm that's lighting up the aurora," I say, setting it down. "It scrambles the satellites too. Nothing is getting through tonight."
"Right." She drops into a kitchen chair, heedless of the flour. "So we're alone."
"Reid's twenty miles of coastline away if he's an inch, and Rhys's dock is iced in—nothing's launching from Birch Bay." I lean my forehead against the cold window frame. "Hank flies the north route tomorrow. And Finn won't miss us for days—after two weeks in the bush, he'll figure we've gone to ground on purpose."
"So it's us," she says. "And the pack."
"And the pack," I agree.
I look out into the yard, keeping to the side of the frame.
The dead Alpha is still there, a dark lump in the snow. But beyond him, at the edge of the woods, I see eyes.
Yellow. Reflective. Watching.
"They're not leaving," I say quietly.
"Why?" Aris asks. "We killed the leader. Shouldn't they scatter?"
"They're starving. And they're angry. They've invested too much energy in this hunt. They tracked us across half this island. They took the smokehouse. They lost a member. They're not looking for a meal anymore, Aris. They're in too deep to leave. It's win or starve now, and they know it."
I turn back to the room. The house, solid as it has always felt, suddenly seems flimsy. The big front windows look like fragile sheets of ice.
"We need to board up," I say. "The downstairs windows. The glass in the doors."
"Board up?" Aris stands up. "With what?"
"Plywood. There's a stack under the porch overhang, left over from the smokehouse build. We can pull it in without leaving the porch. That, and whatever furniture we can move."
I look at her. She looks exhausted, battered, and scared. But she doesn't look broken.
"Can you hammer?" I ask.
She picks up the box of ammo from the table. She racks the bolt on the rifle, checking the chamber.
"I can hammer," she says. "I can stitch. And apparently, I can shoot."
I look at her, and I know I'm in trouble, not just with the wolves, but with her. I love her, and the math just got worse. Now I have to keep her alive through this too.
"Okay," I say. "Let's fortify the castle."
Hauling the stack in takes ten minutes of ugly choreography—Aris holding the storm door with the rifle shouldered whileI drag sheets across the porch boards two at a time, both of us watching the tree line between trips. The wolves let us work. That worries me more than if they hadn't.
Chapter Twenty-Five
ARIS
Every lampin the cabin is on, and it still isn't enough.
We've created a fortress of artificial light. The fireplace is roaring, casting dancing shadows against the cedar walls. We've dragged the heavy oak dining table in front of the sliding glass doors, a barricade that feels pitifully symbolic against the strength of a wolf pack.
I'm sitting on the floor by the couch, the rifle across my lap. Nash should be flat on his back with that leg elevated. I told him so twice. Instead, every time the wind gusts, my grip tightens on the stock.
Nash is at the radio.
