"The wood pile," Nash realizes. "They used the stacked wood to get onto the lean-to, then the roof."
We hear footsteps above us.Pad-pad-pad.Heavy. Pacing directly over our heads.
"What are they looking for up there?" I whisper.
"The chimney," Nash says. "It won't help them. Spark arrestor, heavy steel mesh. They can't get in."
But the sound of an apex predator walking on our roof changes the dynamic completely. The fortress has become a box.
The floodlights outside stutter.
They buzz once, dim, and then die.
The yard plunges into darkness.
"The generator," Nash says. "The shed."
"They took out the generator?" I ask, disbelief warring with terror.
"Not on purpose. Wolves chew—hoses, seats, anything with grease or salt worked into it. One of them found the fuel line while we were watching the doors." His voice stays flat. "Doesn't matter why. We're dark."
We're now in total darkness, save for the dying embers of the fire. The cabin feels instantly smaller, colder.
"Night vision," Nash says. "Do we have it?"
"It was in the Pelican case," I say. "The one at the bottom of the river. With the generator."
"Right."
We stand there in the dark, back-to-back, weapons drawn.
His spine presses against mine, one warm line in a room gone to ice, and every breath he takes travels through my own ribs. This is the calculation I never ran. Not the wolves. Him. Weeks ago he was a stranger with a rifle and doubts about my survival odds, and now the thought of this dark room taking him sets my hands shaking on the stock. I came north to recover a dead man's work and found a living one, and the wild that handed him to me is pacing the walls to take him back.
Three words climb my throat, the same three I have spent cheap on a pastry and a woman with cinnamon rolls and never once on the person who earned them. I swallow them down. Not here. Not in the dark with blood freezing on the snow, where they would land like a last thing instead of a first. He gets them alive, in daylight, or he does not get them at all.
"Nash," I whisper.
"Yeah?"
"What are they doing out there? Why cut the lights and go quiet?"
"Taking inventory," Nash says. "The lights are gone. They tested the door, the roof. They're measuring us—how fast we react, and with what."
"Measuring us for what?"
"To see if we're worth the calories. Predators don't gamble—a dug-in target costs too much. Energy. Injuries. A normal pack walks away from that math."
"And this pack?"
"This pack," Nash says quietly, "flushes us out."
As if in answer, a crash comes from the kitchen.
Glass shattering.
"The back window!" Nash yells.
He sprints toward the kitchen. I follow, the rifle heavy in my hands.
