Chapter 8: Into the wilderness

FAYE'S POV

I didn't plan the escape. There was no careful consideration of routes or timing or what I might need for survival in the mountains. There was only the knowledge that if I stayed in that room, waiting for Mrs. Thorne to arrive with whatever punishment had been decided, something inside me would break in ways that couldn't be repaired.

My wolf had already broken. Now it was just a matter of keeping my body functioning long enough to find somewhere to collapse.

The servant quarters were emptying as the night deepened—staff filtering back from their various ceremonial duties, moving toward rest, toward the normalcy of sleep and tomorrow. I waited until the corridor was relatively quiet, then pulled on the heaviest cloak I owned and slipped out into the night.

No one tried to stop me. Why would they? I was invisible, and the invisible don't warrant observation.

The main doors of the fortress were unguarded on the service side—only the grand entrance received formal security at night. I pushed through the heavy oak with shaking hands, and the cold air of the Pacific Northwest mountains hit me like a physical force.

It was freezing.

The kind of cold that came in early winter, when the season was still transitioning but had already decided that warmth was a luxury that needed to end. Frost clung to the ground in delicate patterns. The sky above was clear, stars scattered across black velvet, and the moon was nearly full—bright enough to cast pale shadows across the fortress grounds.

My wolf was still silent inside me, but not calm. Silent in the way that comes before something shatters completely.

I moved away from the fortress without consciously deciding which direction to go. Simply away. Away from the halls where Ethan had rejected me. Away from the ceremony space where I'd been so thoroughly, so publicly, so completely destroyed. Away from the pack that had laughed at my desperation.

The forest began almost immediately beyond the fortress perimeter—dense stands of pine and fir that had been growing for centuries, their branches heavy with frost. I plunged into them without hesitation, letting the darkness swallow me, letting the trees shield me from the sight lines of the fortress.

Only once I was deep enough that the torches were no longer visible behind me did I stop.

I sank to the ground at the base of a massive fir tree, my back against the rough bark, and something inside me finally broke free.

My wolf emerged in fragments—not a full shift, but something in between. My shoulders hunched and reformed. Claws extended from my fingertips, splitting the skin along my palms. My jaw ached as it began to lengthen, my teeth becoming something other than human. The transformation was incomplete, chaotic, the kind of half-shift that only happened when a wolf was in severe distress.

The pain of it was almost a relief.

At least this pain was physical, tangible, something I could understand and endure. The pain of the broken bond was something else entirely—something that lived in the spaces between thought and feeling, something that couldn't be fought or reasoned with or endured through sheer determination.

My mother had told me once, years ago, that she'd heard wolves could die from a broken bond. If the rejection was severe enough, if the connection was deep enough, sometimes the severed half would simply stop functioning. The heart would continue beating, but the wolf would fade away, leaving only an empty human shell behind.

I understood now why some wolves might choose that ending.

"No," I gasped, forcing my wolf back down, forcing the half-shift to reverse itself. My claws retracted with a sharp, tearing sensation. My jaw realigned. The immediate physical agony of that forced reintegration was almost easier to bear than what waited on the other side of it.

My wolf pressed back, trying to emerge again, and I had to grip the rough bark of the tree and force her down through sheer will. We couldn't afford a full transformation. A transformed wolf would be easier to track, easier to hunt if anyone decided to pursue me.

And they would pursue me. Not tonight—the pack was too busy celebrating, too distracted by the festival. But tomorrow, when I didn't appear for work. When Mrs. Thorne came to collect whatever punishment had been decided.

Tomorrow, I would be a servant who'd abandoned her duties. A servant who'd violated pack law by disrupting a sacred ceremony. A servant who'd had the audacity to claim a bond she had no right to claim.

By tomorrow, I needed to be far enough away that they couldn't find me.

I pushed myself to my feet and started walking deeper into the forest. There was no path, but there didn't need to be. The trees parted before me—or perhaps I simply didn't care about the branches that tore at my cloak and left scratches on my exposed skin. The cold was actually helpful now, keeping me numb, keeping me functional.

The moon was bright enough to navigate by. I could see the frost-covered ground beneath my feet, the way the shadows fell between the ancient pines. I could hear the sound of a stream somewhere off to my left, water rushing over rocks in that particular way that suggested a decent drop in elevation.

That's where I'd go. Toward the water. Water left no clear scent trail. Water confused pursuing wolves. If I could reach a stream and follow it far enough, I might be able to lose anyone who tried to track me.

My wolf was still silent, but I could feel her presence—a cold, distant thing, like touching something that had been left out in winter too long. Part of her was still at the ceremony, still reaching toward Ethan even though he'd made his rejection so clear. Part of her was already dying, beginning that slow fade into nothing that rejected mates sometimes experienced.

"Not yet," I whispered to her, my voice rough and unfamiliar. "Not yet. We survive first. We fall apart later."

She didn't respond, but I felt her pull back slightly, accepting the necessity of continued function even if survival seemed pointless.

The forest grew denser as I moved deeper into it. The trees were larger here, wider, the kind of ancient growth that had been undisturbed for decades. The frost was thicker on the ground, creating patterns of ice that crackled beneath my feet. My breath was coming in visible clouds now, the cold sharp enough to make each inhalation sting.

I didn't feel it. The cold, the scratches, the exhaustion that was beginning to creep into my limbs. There was only the absence where the bond had been, only the gaping void where my future had collapsed.

The stream, when I finally reached it, was a shock of sound and motion in the frozen silence of the forest. Water rushed over rocks with enough force to create spray that froze almost immediately on contact with the cold air. The banks were steep here, the ground sloping down at an angle that made navigation difficult.

I picked my way down carefully, my hands gripping exposed roots and rocks to keep from sliding. The water smelled like minerals and ancient earth. It smelled like freedom and escape and the beginning of something that might end in oblivion.

Once I reached the stream bed, I simply followed the water, letting it carry me away from the fortress, away from the pack, away from everything that had rejected me.

My wolf was fading now—not dramatically, but noticeably. Like a light being dimmed gradually, becoming less present, less insistent. I tried not to think about what that meant. Tried not to consider the possibility that she was simply giving up.

Instead, I focused on the next step. Then the next. On breathing in and breathing out. On putting distance between myself and the place where I'd been publicly destroyed.

The moon tracked my progress across the frozen forest, and I moved like a ghost through the winter night—invisible as always, but this time by choice. This time because I couldn't bear to be seen.

This time because being seen had destroyed me.

Behind me, the fortress lights eventually disappeared. Ahead of me, the forest stretched endlessly, offering nothing but cold and darkness and the possibility of a death that might be kinder than returning to face the consequences of my presumption.

For the first time since the rejection, my wolf and I were in complete agreement.

Whatever happened next, we weren't going back.