I hit the ice hard. Pain shot up my right leg, sharp and electric, as I rolled onto my back, staring at the endless expanse of the Alaskan sky. The world spun, clouds blurring into a smeared gray canvas above me. When the dizziness subsided, I forced myself to look down.

My leg bent at an angle that turned my stomach. No need for a medical degree to diagnose this one—clean break, probably tibia and fibula both. The jagged end of bone hadn’t punctured skin, but that was my only stroke of luck.

“Damn it,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

My name is Ethan Carter, and I’d just fallen thirty feet down a ridge I’d climbed dozens of times before. Thirty feet of carelessness. One misstep on loose snow, and now I lay broken on the ice, miles from the ranger station, with night approaching and the temperature dropping by the minute.

I tried sitting up. Fresh agony pulsed from my leg, stealing my breath. The cold had already numbed some of the pain, but not enough. Never enough. I scanned the slope below me and spotted my backpack, torn from my shoulders during the fall. It rested against a scraggly pine fifty feet downhill, partially buried in snow. The radio was inside. My only lifeline.

The wind picked up, cutting through my thermal gear like it was cotton. I checked my watch: 3:47 PM. Sunset came early this time of year—I had maybe two hours of daylight left. After that, temperatures would plummet well below zero.

Panic wasn’t an option. I’d seen what panic did to people in the wilderness. How it clouded judgment, accelerated hypothermia, invited death. My father’s voice echoed in my head: The moment you panic is the moment you die.

I exhaled slowly, my breath crystallizing in front of me.

“Assess. Adapt. Act.” The mantra I’d repeated a thousand times in training.

Assess: Broken leg. No radio. Approximately four miles from the ranger station. Temperature dropping. Limited daylight.

Adapt: Can’t walk. Need to crawl. Use arms to pull myself forward.

Act: Start moving. Now.

I braced my palms against the ice and pulled, dragging my body forward a few inches. The broken leg screamed in protest. I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood, but kept moving. Another pull. Another few inches. The pain was constant now, a white-hot companion that wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

My gloved fingers dug into the snow as I established a rhythm. Pull, drag, breathe. Pull, drag, breathe. Each movement was its own battle, but motion meant survival. Stillness meant death.

After fifteen minutes of crawling, I’d covered maybe thirty yards. Sweat soaked my inner layers despite the cold—a dangerous combination. Wet clothes in subzero temperatures could kill faster than the broken leg. I paused to check my supplies.

The flare gun remained secured to my belt. One shot, maybe two if I was lucky. But in this weather, with visibility dropping, a flare might go unseen. And even if someone spotted it, rescue would take hours. Hours I might not have.

A sound drifted through the still air—distant, but unmistakable. A howl.

My pulse quickened. Wolves weren’t typically aggressive toward humans, but an injured man crawling through their territory? That changed the equation. I was no longer a threat. I was prey.

I forced myself forward with renewed urgency. Pull, drag, breathe. Faster now, pain be damned. The wolf’s howl was joined by another, then a third. They were communicating, coordinating. Hunting.

The cold seeped deeper into my muscles, making each movement more difficult than the last. My fingers, despite the insulated gloves, began to lose sensation. First sign of frostbite. I flexed them repeatedly, refusing to surrender to the numbness.

Another howl, closer this time. Much closer.

I glanced over my shoulder, scanning the treeline. Nothing visible yet, but they were out there. Watching. Waiting. Wolves were patient hunters. They’d follow an injured animal for miles, conserving energy until their target weakened enough for an easy kill.

That was their strategy. Conserve while your prey exhausts itself.

I reached for my hunting knife, drawing it from its sheath. The seven-inch blade wasn’t much against a wolf pack, but it was something. I kept it gripped in my right hand as I continued pulling myself forward with my left.

The light was fading now, the shadows lengthening across the snow. I needed shelter, or at least a defensible position. Out in the open like this, I was vulnerable from all sides.

Movement caught my eye—a flash of gray against the white landscape. I froze, tightening my grip on the knife.

Twenty yards to my left, a wolf stepped into view. Large, easily 120 pounds, with thick winter fur and eyes that reflected the dying sunlight. It watched me with calculating intelligence, head slightly lowered, assessing.

I knew better than to run—not that running was an option. Instead, I met its gaze, refusing to look away. Weakness invited attack. I had to project strength, even in my broken state. The wolf and I locked eyes for what felt like minutes but was likely only seconds.

“Back off,” I growled, the sound low and threatening.

The wolf tilted its head, curious rather than intimidated. It took a step forward, testing boundaries. I raised myself up as high as I could on my elbows, making myself appear larger.

“I said BACK OFF!” I shouted, loud enough that my voice echoed across the snow-covered landscape.

The wolf hesitated, then retreated a few steps. Not out of fear, but reassessment. It slipped back into the treeline, disappearing from view. But I wasn’t foolish enough to think it had gone. Wolves don’t give up that easily. It was regrouping, perhaps joining the others.

My arms trembled from exertion as I continued forward. Each yard gained was a small victory against the wilderness, against death itself. My father had died out here, frozen in a blizzard during a rescue mission. The irony wasn’t lost on me—son of a legendary ranger, dying the same death, alone in the snow.

No. Not today.

I pushed on, refusing to surrender to either pain or memory. The cold had become a dull ache in my bones, my body’s core temperature dropping despite my efforts. Hypothermia was setting in. My thoughts began to drift, memories bleeding into present awareness. Dangerous signs.

Focus, Ethan. Stay present.

Something caught my attention—an irregularity in the snow ahead. I blinked, forcing my vision to sharpen. Footprints. Large, human footprints, heading west—toward the ranger station.

I wasn’t alone out here.

Hope surged through me, providing a momentary respite from the pain. But caution quickly tempered that hope. In these mountains, a stranger wasn’t automatically an ally. The footprints were fresh, maybe an hour old at most. Deep impressions, evenly spaced. Whoever left them was moving with purpose, not struggling.

I altered my course to follow the tracks. They provided a path of least resistance through the snow, and if they led to the ranger station, all the better. If they led to trouble… well, trouble was better than freezing to death.

The light continued to fade, painting the landscape in deepening shades of blue. Night was coming. With it would come a temperature drop of at least twenty degrees. My window for survival was narrowing.

The wolves howled again, their voices echoing off the mountains. They were tracking me, following my scent trail of blood and sweat. I checked my watch—I’d been crawling for nearly an hour, and had covered less than a mile. Too slow. Much too slow.

My vision blurred momentarily, the first major sign of hypothermia taking hold. I shook my head violently, fighting against the creeping lethargy that whispered for me to rest. Just for a minute. Just close your eyes.

“No,” I said aloud, my voice hoarse. “Keep moving.”

I followed the mysterious footprints as darkness fell. My world shrank to a small circle illuminated by the rising moon reflecting off the snow. Pull, drag, breathe. The mantra continued, though each movement was slower than the last.

The silence was broken by the soft crunch of snow ahead. I froze, straining to hear. Not my imagination—someone was moving in the darkness beyond my vision.

I could make out a silhouette now, tall and broad-shouldered, moving steadily along the path. Human, definitely human. But something about the movement seemed off—too steady, too mechanical. No stumbling, no hesitation, despite the treacherous terrain.

My instincts screamed caution. In my years as a ranger, I’d learned to trust those instincts. They’d saved my life more than once.

I gripped the flare gun, weighing my options. Signal for help from this stranger, or remain hidden? The wolves were closing in behind me. My body temperature was dropping dangerously. I couldn’t survive the night without shelter or assistance.

But something about that silhouette—something I couldn’t quite identify—made my finger hesitate on the trigger.

Trust no one. My years in the wilderness had taught me that lesson well. People were unpredictable, dangerous in ways wolves could never be.

But sometimes, survival meant taking risks.

I raised the flare gun, my arm trembling from cold and exhaustion. One shot. One chance.

The figure paused, as if sensing my presence. For a brief moment, I thought I saw it turn slightly in my direction.

I had to decide.

My frozen fingers clenched around the knife as I dragged myself forward through the snow, each movement sending shards of pain up my shattered leg. My breath came in ragged clouds, hanging in the frigid Alaskan air before dissipating into nothingness.

That’s when I saw it.

The hunting cabin emerged from the swirling snow like a mirage—weathered logs, half-buried in drifts, its roof sagging under winter’s relentless weight. Relief surged through my chest, powerful enough to momentarily dull the throbbing in my leg.

Shelter. Maybe supplies. Maybe salvation.

But something was wrong. The door hung open, edges splintered where it had been forced inward. Someone had been here—recently. And whoever they were, they hadn’t bothered covering their tracks.

“Careful, Ethan,” I whispered to myself, the sound of my own voice startlingly loud in the vastness of white.

I approached with the caution of someone who’d spent a lifetime in these mountains. The wilderness had taught me one thing if nothing else: hope is dangerous when it makes you careless. I dragged myself closer, leaving a shallow trench in the snow behind me, my leg a useless appendage now.

Cautiously, I pulled myself through the doorway, my injured leg screaming in protest as it bumped against the threshold. Inside, the air hit me like a wall—thick with the scent of damp wood, lingering smoke from the long-dead fireplace, and something unmistakable. Something metallic and organic.

Blood. A lot of it.

My pulse quickened as my eyes adjusted to the dim interior. Against the far wall, slumped in the shadowy corner, was a man dressed in thick winter gear. His parka was soaked through with dark, frozen blood, staining the floor beneath him. A rifle lay beside him, empty shells scattered around like discarded promises.

My stomach twisted. “This wasn’t an accident,” I muttered, scanning the cabin with a practiced eye.

The overturned chair, the deep gash in the wooden floor, the blood splattered across the walls—all signs of a violent struggle. The man’s gloves were torn, his hands stiff with frostbite, one still clutching a hunting knife. His face was half-hidden beneath a fur-lined hood, but I could see the frozen expression of pain.

This wasn’t a wolf attack. The cuts were too clean, too precise. Someone had done this. Someone human.

I needed supplies. I forced myself forward, reaching for the rifle first, wincing as my movements sent fresh waves of agony up my leg. I checked the chamber—empty. It clicked uselessly.

“Damn it,” I hissed, letting it drop.

The knife, then. I pried it from the dead man’s grip—sharp, sturdy, better than the small one I carried. My fingers trembled as I searched the body’s pockets, trying not to think about who he might have been, who might be waiting for him somewhere.

A flare. Matches. A folded map.

I opened the map with numb fingers. It was creased and smudged with what looked like blood, but clearly marked with a strange symbol near the ranger station. A warning? A target?

My gut told me this was important, but there was no time to analyze it now.

The hair on the back of my neck rose suddenly, a primal warning system that had saved my life more than once. A low, guttural growl rolled through the small cabin, a sound thick with hunger and menace.

I froze. Slowly, I turned.

Standing in the open doorway, its massive frame nearly blocking out the swirling snow, was a wolf unlike any I had ever seen. Its fur was thick and matted, patches of frost clinging to its body like armor. Its eyes—golden, almost unnatural—locked onto mine, unblinking.

This was no ordinary wolf. This was a hunter that had been waiting.

I had seconds to act. My fingers gripped the useless rifle. With a grunt of effort, I swung it like a club, hurling it toward the wolf.

“Back!” I shouted, the word tearing from my throat.

The heavy metal struck the beast’s shoulder, knocking it back just enough for me to move. The wolf snarled, recovering fast, muscles tensing to lunge.

I scrambled toward the doorway, dragging my broken leg through the snow and slush. The pain nearly blinded me, but survival instinct kept me moving. I barely made it two feet before I felt hot breath on my ankle. Then—pain. Searing, sharp. The wolf’s teeth clamped down, puncturing through my boot.

A strangled yell escaped my throat. I twisted, stabbing wildly with the knife. The blade met resistance—fur, flesh. The wolf howled, releasing me just long enough for me to wrench myself free.

I hit the ground hard, rolling through the snow, gasping as my injured leg sent fresh agony through my body. More howls echoed in the distance. Not one. Not two. The whole pack.

“Move, damn it!” I commanded myself, digging my gloved hands into the snow. “Move!”

I forced myself up, dragging my body toward the nearest tree line. Every breath burned my lungs. Every movement sent fire through my leg. My vision swam, the pain threatening to pull me under. I had been running on adrenaline for hours, but my body was reaching its limit.

The cold had worked its way through my clothes, my skin, down to the marrow of my bones. My fingers were growing numb despite the gloves. Even the pain in my leg was becoming distant, which I knew was a dangerous sign.

“Keep it together,” I muttered through chattering teeth. “Just keep moving.”

I needed a plan. I needed to outthink the pack. The rangers’ first rule of wilderness survival: when you can’t outrun, outsmart.

Through blurred vision, I spotted an outcrop of jagged ice and rock jutting from the mountainside about fifty yards ahead. If I could get there, I could make a stand. Climbing would be nearly impossible in my state, but I didn’t have to climb—I just had to force the wolves into a disadvantage.

I pushed myself forward, leaving a trail of red in the snow. The wolves would follow it like a roadmap, but at least I would choose the battleground.

“Not dying today,” I muttered through clenched teeth. “Not like this.”

I’d seen too many good rangers fall to Alaska’s unforgiving wilderness. My father included. His last words to me echoed in my head: “The difference between life and death out here isn’t strength, Ethan. It’s will.”

The howls grew closer. They were gaining on me, sensing my weakness. I dragged myself faster, ignoring the screaming nerves in my leg, focusing only on reaching the outcrop.

Just as I reached the base of the rocks, a strange feeling prickled at my senses. The sudden certainty of being watched. Not by the wolves. Something else.

My eyes darted to the ridge above. A figure stood there, shrouded in the storm. No movement. No sound. Just watching.

“Hey!” I shouted, my voice swallowed by the wind. “Help me!”

Nothing. Whoever they were, they weren’t coming to help. Maybe they were just waiting for the wolves to finish me off.

Or maybe they were planning something worse.

I pressed my back against the rock face, knife gripped tightly in my right hand. The wolves closed in, circling now, their movements calculated and patient. They knew I was trapped. They knew I was injured. They were just waiting for the right moment.

The lead wolf—the one I’d stabbed—approached cautiously, its golden eyes never leaving mine. Blood and saliva dripped from its jaws, steaming in the cold air. The other wolves spread out, moving to surround me.

I scanned my surroundings desperately, looking for anything I could use. The flare gun weighed heavy in my pocket. One shot. Make it count.

The wolf pack closed in, five of them now, their breaths visible in the frigid air. I raised the knife, planting my back firmly against the icy rock. Blood dripped from my wounds, steam rising from my body in the freezing air.

I could fight. I would fight. But the real danger wasn’t just the wolves.

It was whoever was up there, watching.

And whatever they wanted—I had a feeling it was worse than death.

My pulse thundered in my ears as the wolves’ low growls vibrated through the cold night air. Their eyes cut through the darkness like amber searchlights, circling closer with each passing second. I could make out their muscular forms shifting in the flickering moonlight, their breath forming small clouds in the frigid Alaskan air.

I tightened my grip on the hunting knife, my knuckles white against the worn handle. The cold bit into my exposed skin where my gloves had torn during the fall, but adrenaline numbed the worst of it. My shattered leg throbbed with each heartbeat—a constant reminder of my vulnerability.

Running wasn’t an option. These creatures were too fast, too relentless, and I was nothing more than wounded prey. The leader of the pack, a hulking gray beast with scars crisscrossing its muzzle, crouched low on powerful haunches, preparing to lunge. I braced myself, calculating the angle of attack, knowing this might be the end.

“Come on then,” I whispered through gritted teeth. “Let’s get this over with.”

The wolf’s muscles tensed, and I readied my knife.

Then—a gunshot shattered the silence.

The blast ricocheted through the trees, sending the wolves scattering into the underbrush like shadows melting into deeper darkness. Another shot followed, the bullet striking close enough to the pack leader that it let out a furious snarl before vanishing into the night.

I turned toward the source of the gunfire, my breath catching as a figure emerged from the tree line. The woman was bundled in a thick, heavy coat, her face obscured by a scarf wrapped tight against the cold. She held the rifle with the steady confidence of someone who knew exactly how to use it, her eyes scanning the perimeter for any lingering threats.

She kept the rifle at the ready, her posture suggesting she wasn’t fully convinced the danger had passed. “You look like hell,” she said, her voice rough from the cold.

I swallowed hard, tasting copper. “You have no idea.”

My body swayed involuntarily, the rush of adrenaline ebbing away now that the immediate threat had withdrawn. Every system in my body was beginning to register the true extent of my injuries—not just the broken leg, but the bruised ribs from the fall, the cuts across my hands, the slow-creeping hypothermia.

The woman took a step closer, her rifle barrel dipping slightly as she offered her other arm. “You’re lucky I was nearby. Those wolves don’t usually hunt this aggressively.”

I hesitated, my instinct to refuse help warring with the practical knowledge that I couldn’t make it alone. Pride had no place in survival situations—that’s what I always told the rookies. Now I had to take my own advice.

I accepted her support, my arm slinging across her shoulders. Every step sent fresh jolts of pain through my chest, but I forced myself forward, focusing on placing one foot in front of the other.

“Name’s Ethan,” I managed, my breath forming small clouds between us.

She nodded curtly but didn’t offer her own name. Smart. Names created connections, and connections created obligations. Out here, obligations could get you killed.

We moved carefully through the snow, our boots crunching softly in the eerie silence that had descended after the gunshots. The wolves were gone—for now—but they would return. This was their territory, and they knew we were wounded.

“I saw your flares,” she explained after several minutes of labored progress. “I was already heading for the ranger station. Something’s going on up there.”

I reached into my coat, pulling out the map I had taken from the bloodied corpse in the cabin. The paper was stiff with frozen blood, the ink smudged but still legible. I hadn’t had time to study it properly in the cabin, not with the wolves closing in.

The woman frowned as she examined it, her gloved fingers tracing a circle marked near the ranger station. “This doesn’t look right,” she murmured. “If this is accurate, we’re walking straight into something worse than wolves.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, studying her face for any clue to what she knew that I didn’t.

She hesitated, then folded the map and handed it back. “Let’s just say I was heading to the station for a reason. And it wasn’t for the company.”

By the time we reached the ranger station, the first hints of dawn were creeping over the horizon, painting the snow-covered landscape in shades of pale blue and lavender. But something was wrong. The building stood in eerie silence, the door slightly ajar, shifting in the wind. No lights. No movement. No smoke from the chimney, which was standard procedure during winter storms.

My gut twisted with the instinctive knowledge that something was deeply wrong. Logan should be on duty—he was always meticulous about protocol. The station should be lit, radio checks happening on the hour. Instead, there was nothing but this unnatural stillness.

The woman motioned for silence, lifting her rifle as we approached the entrance. The snow near the door had been disturbed—tracks, human ones, but erratic, as if whoever left them had been dragging something. Or someone.

I pulled my knife again, the familiar weight offering little comfort as we stepped inside.

The interior of the station had been ransacked. Supply cabinets stood open, their contents scattered across the floor like the aftermath of a localized hurricane. A metal filing cabinet had been pried open, its contents apparently removed. Most disturbing of all, the radio—our lifeline to civilization—had been smashed to pieces, wires torn out as if someone had wanted to ensure no one could call for help.

I scanned the room methodically, looking for any sign of Logan or the other rangers who should have been here. Nothing. No blood, which was a small mercy, but also no indication of where they might have gone.

“Someone was here,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Recently.”

The woman tightened her grip on her rifle, her eyes flicking toward the hallway leading to the back rooms. The temperature inside wasn’t much warmer than outside—the heating had been off for hours.

“We’re not alone, are we?” she asked, though it wasn’t really a question.

I shook my head, every sense heightened. A breeze slipped through a broken window, stirring papers on the desk. It reminded me too much of the cabin—the body, the bloodstained walls, the sense of something unseen watching from the corners.

“Whoever killed that man in the cabin,” I said, “they might still be here.”

Then we heard it—a creak. Barely audible, but in the silence of the abandoned station, it might as well have been a gunshot. My fingers tightened around the knife handle, and the woman slowly raised her rifle, angling it toward the dark hallway.

Another sound—closer this time. Footsteps. Deliberate. Unhurried. Not the careful movements of someone trying to hide, but the confident stride of someone who didn’t feel the need to conceal their presence.

The air seemed to thicken as a shadow shifted at the end of the hall.

A man stepped forward into the weak light filtering through the windows. He was dressed in a ranger’s uniform—my division’s uniform—but something about him felt fundamentally wrong. His posture was too relaxed for the situation, his face too calm. His eyes gleamed with something I couldn’t read—something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

The woman adjusted her aim, but the man simply smiled, as if we were all old friends meeting for coffee instead of strangers in a ransacked outpost.

“You should have stayed in the snow,” he said, his voice smooth and almost amused. “Now, you’ve seen too much.”

I shifted my weight, ignoring the stabbing pain in my leg, calculating distances and angles. The ranger took a slow step forward, hands loose at his sides, as if daring us to make the first move. His uniform was too clean, too pristine compared to the chaos surrounding us. No ranger who’d been working in these conditions would look that immaculate.

The woman took a half-step back, keeping the rifle trained on him. “Who are you?” she demanded.

The man ignored the question, his gaze moving casually around the room as if admiring the decor rather than the destruction.

“It’s not safe here,” he continued, tone eerily even. “You should leave before it’s too late.”

I caught the woman’s glance, a silent communication passing between us. Something wasn’t right, and we both knew it.

“You did this,” I said, voice low, accusatory.

The ranger’s slow smile widened, revealing teeth that seemed too sharp, too white in the dim light.

“You don’t even know what this is,” he murmured. “But you will.”

Then, before we could react, the lights flickered—just for a second. The emergency generator must have been trying to kick in. When they came back, weak and stuttering, the man was already moving.

He lunged with a speed that seemed impossible, closing the distance between us in a heartbeat. I barely had time to raise my knife before he slammed into me, sending both of us crashing against the counter. Pain exploded through my broken leg as my back hit the edge of the desk, but survival instinct overrode everything else.

The woman fired, the sound deafening in the enclosed space, but the ranger twisted at the last second—the shot went wide, shattering a window. Cold air rushed in as I struggled against the ranger’s unnatural strength. His fingers closed around my wrist, forcing the knife downward, closer to my own chest.

I gritted my teeth, pushing back with everything I had. His face was inches from mine, and I could see now what had bothered me before—his eyes were wrong, the pupils expanded so wide that the irises were nearly invisible.

“Who the hell are you?” I gasped, muscles straining.

He didn’t answer, just applied more pressure on the knife. The tip of the blade was now just inches from my throat. I couldn’t hold him back much longer.

The woman had reloaded, her breath ragged as she tried to find a clear shot. “Move!” she shouted.

I twisted to the side as much as I could manage, giving her the angle she needed. Another gunshot rang out, the sound reverberating through the station.

The ranger staggered back, clutching his side where the bullet had found its mark. But he didn’t fall. He didn’t even seem particularly bothered by what should have been a devastating wound.

Instead, he straightened, that twisted smile still on his face as a dark stain spread across his uniform.

“You should’ve run when you had the chance,” he said, voice still eerily calm despite the wound.

And then, impossibly, he took a step toward us.

My breath came in ragged gasps, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. I pressed my back against the wall of the ranger station, my injured leg barely supporting my weight. The room stank of sweat, gunpowder, and fear—the unmistakable cocktail of a situation gone terribly wrong.

Across from me, Ranger Caleb Holt stood with his pistol raised, his stance steady despite the gash along his arm where my knife had grazed him. The cold blue of his eyes was unreadable, but his intent was crystal clear—I wasn’t leaving here alive.

I adjusted my grip on the knife, my fingers numb but determined. My voice came out hoarse, laced with defiance. “Yeah, well—I’m not dead yet.”

There’s a peculiar clarity that comes in moments like these. Time doesn’t exactly slow down—that’s a myth perpetuated by action movies and unreliable memoirs. What actually happens is your brain becomes hyperselective about what it processes. Unnecessary details fade away. What remains is only what matters for survival.

In that moment, what mattered was the slight shift in Caleb’s weight, the almost imperceptible tightening of his trigger finger, the calculated distance between us. These weren’t conscious observations so much as instinctive readings, the kind that separate those who walk away from those who don’t.

Caleb lunged, his gun aimed at my chest. The movement was fast, but I had been expecting it. I twisted to the side, ignoring the searing pain that shot through my leg like a lightning bolt. My knife hand came up, driving forward, aiming for his gut.

The gun fired.

The explosion of sound filled the small room, deafening in the confined space. My ears rang with the impact, disorienting me momentarily.

For a second, time seemed to freeze.

Then Caleb staggered, his body jolting as the bullet ricocheted off the doorframe. My blade found its mark, sinking into flesh with a resistance that traveled up my arm. Not the clean slice of a training dummy, but the messy, complicated penetration of human tissue.

Caleb let out a strangled gasp, his fingers loosening on the gun. Blood darkened his shirt, spreading fast like spilled ink on paper. He stumbled backward, his expression flickering between shock and disbelief.

I barely had the strength to stay standing. My whole body shook from exhaustion and blood loss. My leg was useless, dead weight dragging me down. Every heartbeat sent a fresh wave of agony through my shattered bones.

Caleb hit the floor hard, his breath ragged and wet. He tried to lift the gun again, but his hand trembled too much to keep it steady. Our eyes met one last time—his filled with a strange mixture of hate and something else. Recognition, maybe. Or resignation.

Silence descended, heavy and absolute.

Then—Caleb stopped moving.

I exhaled, my vision blurring at the edges. I slumped against the wall, knife still clenched in my grip, unable to make my fingers release it. “Well. That was fun.”

Serena Caldwell—brilliant doctor, terrible getaway planner—stood over the fallen body, the gun still tight in her grasp. The adrenaline was visibly rushing through her system, making her chest rise and fall in quick, uneven breaths. Her usually steady doctor’s hands trembled slightly.

Then, suddenly, she laughed. The sound was sharp, half-disbelieving. She shook her head, running a hand through her sweat-dampened hair.

“Next time, let’s just take the damn road.”

I let out a short, dry chuckle, though every breath hurt like someone was driving a knife between my ribs. “I’ll consider it.”

Through the broken window, I caught the first hints of daylight creeping over the jagged mountain peaks. The sky was a soft, pale blue, streaked with orange—almost mockingly beautiful after the horror of the night.

The nightmare was over.

Barely.

My gaze flickered down to my ruined leg. The makeshift bandage Serena had applied hours ago was soaked through with blood, the swelling so bad I could barely tell where my boot ended and my skin began. The pain had settled into a constant, throbbing presence, like a second heartbeat.

I knew, with absolute certainty, I’d never walk the same way again.

That’s the thing about survival in the wild. It rarely comes without cost. The mountains take their payment, one way or another. Some pay with their lives. Others, with pieces of themselves. I was getting off relatively cheap, all things considered.

I closed my eyes for a second, trying to steady myself. My body was spent, drained beyond anything I had ever known. Even breathing seemed to require more energy than I could spare.

But I was alive.

That had to be enough.

Serena knelt beside me, pressing her fingers to the side of my neck, checking my pulse. Her lips pressed into a thin line. Too fast. Too weak. I could read the diagnosis in her expression before she said a word.

“We need to move.”

I cracked one eye open, summoning what little sarcasm I had left. My voice came out as a lazy drawl. “You wanna carry me? Be my guest.”

Serena huffed. “Smartass.”

But her hands were gentle as she examined my leg again, her touch clinical and efficient. The concern in her eyes was anything but professional, though. I’d seen that look before—on the faces of rangers finding a hiker too far gone to save. The kind of concern that comes with counting someone’s remaining hours.

“I’ve seen worse,” I lied.

“No, you haven’t,” Serena replied, not looking up from my leg.

We couldn’t stay here. I knew that with the certainty of someone who’s spent a lifetime in situations where hesitation equals death. The ranger station was compromised. The moment someone came looking for Caleb Holt, questions would be asked. The right ones. The dangerous ones.

Serena moved first, collecting what little supplies we had left—ammo, water, a spare med kit. The efficient movements of someone who understood that time was a luxury we didn’t have.

I struggled to sit up, gritting my teeth against the pain. My leg wasn’t just broken anymore. It was wrecked. Pulverized. The kind of injury that, in another setting, would have doctors showing interns the X-rays as a cautionary tale.

Serena caught the way I winced, her voice softer than before. “You’re going to need surgery.”

“Yeah.” I exhaled slowly, conserving energy. “Add it to the list.”

A crackling sound broke the morning stillness—the radio.

Serena and I both froze, our eyes snapping to the corner of the room where Caleb’s radio lay half-buried in his discarded gear. The speaker buzzed, a garbled voice breaking through the static.

“Holt, what’s your status? Report in. Over.”

Serena and I exchanged a look. Her eyes widened slightly, asking a silent question. I gave a small shake of my head. Don’t answer.

Then another voice cut in—sharper, impatient.

“Holt, we know you made contact. If you don’t respond, we move in.”

My blood turned cold. There it was—confirmation of what we’d suspected. Caleb wasn’t working alone. His operation, whatever it was, had backup. And they were coming.

Serena snatched the radio, twisting the dial until the static overtook the voices. Her movements were jerky, panicked.

“They’ll be here soon,” she muttered, stating the obvious in the way people do when reality becomes too overwhelming.

I ran a hand down my face, trying to shake the exhaustion that clung to me like a second skin. “Then let’s make sure we’re gone before they arrive.”

Serena helped me to my feet—foot, really, since I couldn’t put any weight on my injured leg. I braced against her, hissing as pain shot through my entire body.

“This is a terrible idea,” she muttered, adjusting her grip to better support my weight.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Moving hurt.

More than I wanted to admit, even to myself.

Serena had wrapped my leg tight, binding it with strips torn from a ranger’s uniform we’d found in a locker, but even so, every step was like walking on shattered glass. I gritted my teeth, refusing to let it slow us down. We had a narrow window before the reinforcements arrived, and we weren’t sticking around to say hello.

Through the broken doorway, the cold morning air bit at my skin, a sharp contrast to the stifling atmosphere inside. Fresh snow had fallen overnight, covering our tracks from yesterday. A small mercy.

Four miles to the nearest town.

Four miles on a ruined leg.

I had survived worse. At least, that’s what I told myself as Serena half-dragged me across the threshold, leaving bloody footprints in our wake.

Research on human endurance often focuses on extremes—marathon runners, Arctic explorers, mountain climbers pushing the boundaries of what’s physically possible. What these studies consistently reveal isn’t that extraordinary people have extraordinary physical capabilities. Rather, they’ve developed extraordinary mental frameworks for processing pain and fatigue.

In that moment, I wasn’t thinking about studies or mental frameworks. I was thinking about the next step. And the one after that. Breaking survival down to its most basic components.

I glanced back once, just once, at the ranger station.

A crime scene now.

My crime scene.

No going back. Not ever.

Serena tugged at my sleeve, her voice urgent. “Come on. We don’t have time to hesitate.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, turning away from what we were leaving behind. “I know.”

We moved slowly through the snow, an awkward three-legged creature making halting progress. Each step was a negotiation between necessity and agony. The cold air burned my lungs, but it also helped clear my head, pushing back the encroaching fog of blood loss and exhaustion.

Behind us, the ranger station grew smaller, a dark smudge against the pristine white landscape. Soon it would be out of sight altogether. But the consequences of what happened there would follow us like shadows.

“What was he involved in?” Serena asked, breaking the silence that had fallen between us. “Why was he ready to kill us?”

I didn’t have a satisfying answer. Just fragments of a larger puzzle—the dead man in the cabin, the map with strange markings, Caleb’s willingness to kill fellow rangers.

“Something worth killing for,” I replied. “That’s all I know for certain.”

The morning sun cast long shadows across the snow as we made our painful progress. In the distance, the outline of mountains stood stark against the brightening sky—indifferent to our struggle, as nature always is. Neither cruel nor kind, simply present.

We weren’t victorious.

We weren’t safe.

But we were alive.

And for now, that was enough.

I adjusted my arm around Serena’s shoulders, feeling the strain in her body as she supported my weight. Neither of us spoke about the likelihood of making it to town before Caleb’s colleagues caught up. Neither of us mentioned the blood I was leaving behind with every step, or the growing pallor of my skin.

Some truths don’t need articulation.

Instead, we kept moving, one painful step at a time, into a future that had no guarantees except this: whatever came next, we would face it together.

For a lone wolf like me, that realization was almost as unsettling as the men who were hunting us.

Almost.