009— ASH.

I moved before I thought about it.

Three steps and both my hands were on his wrist. Grabbing, pulling, twisting — like if I just tried hard enough I could undo the last thirty seconds and the paper would still be in my drawer where it belonged.

He didn't move. Didn't even shift his weight. Just looked down at my hands on his arm the way you look at something mildly inconvenient.

"Let go," I said.

"Who gave this to you?"

"It's mine. Give it back."

"Who gave it to you, Sloane."

"Give it back right now—"

His eyes moved from the paper to my face and I felt the exact second it happened. The moment he saw through me completely. The desperation I couldn't pack away fast enough. The way my voice had cracked slightly on “right now” like a person who was scared and not just angry.

I watched him register it. Watched him file it somewhere behind those flat cold eyes.

I hated him so much I could taste it.

"This is a code," he said. "From Crew."

"It is NOT from Crew—"

"Then what is it?"

"It's MINE, it belongs to me, just give it—" 

I grabbed for it again. He raised his arm and I couldn't reach. I was jumping for it, actually jumping, like a child, like something pathetic, and I hated him for making me look like that. 

"Please. Please just give it back. You don't understand what that is—"

"I see," he said quietly.

The lighter came out of his pocket.

My heart stopped.

"Don't," I said. 

"Don't you dare — Kai, I'm serious, don't you DARE—"

The flame caught the corner.

I grabbed at it anyway. Burned my fingers and didn't care because that paper was the only thing standing between me and a death I hadn't finished fighting yet and he was burning it, he was actually burning it, and there was nothing I could do. Nothing — and in four seconds it was gone. Just ash. Just grey dust drifting down to my carpet like it had never been anything at all.

I dropped to my knees.

Pressed my fingers into the ash.

“You idiot,” I thought, and I wasn't thinking about him. I was thinking about myself. 

About how happy I'd been. How stupidly, recklessly, embarrassingly happy. Smiling at customers, floating through my shift, going to Murphy's like a normal person, and not once in all of that happiness had I thought to save the number in my phone first. Not once. 

I'd protected a piece of paper in a locked drawer like that meant something. Like locks meant anything in a world where Kai Volkov existed.

The ash was cold under my fingers.

She said there's a way. She said there's a way to stop it and now that way was dust on my carpet and I was on my knees in my good jacket that I'd worn because today had been the best day I'd had in months and—

"The next time I find a message like that," he said above me. Unhurried. Like I wasn't on the floor.  

"You'll be the one I'll—"

I stood up.

The rage came so fast it bypassed everything. Bypassed the grief and the fear and the desperation. I turned around and slapped him across the face so hard my entire arm rang.

The sound of it cracked through my apartment like a gunshot.

He went still.

Completely, absolutely still.

And his eyes — those flat, cold, empty eyes that had never once shown me anything, went wide.

Just for a second. One single second of pure unguarded shock and I felt a wild desperate satisfaction bloom in my chest.

I braced myself.

I knew what was coming. I'd felt those hands before. I knew exactly what he did when I pushed him too far. Iwaited for the wall, waited for his fingers around my neck, waited for the air to disappear again…

He looked at me.

For a long moment he just… looked at me.

Then he turned and walked out.

The door swung shut behind him.

His footsteps went down the corridor and then down the stairs and then there was nothing. Just silence. Just the ash on my carpet and the sound of my own breathing.

I stood there for five full seconds.

Then I picked up the mug from my counter. The one that said ‘Briar Falls,’ the one I'd bought with my very first shift's tips because I'd needed something that was mine in this town, and I threw it at the wall.

It shattered beautifully.

Something cracked open in my chest and I threw the next thing. And the next. Books and my spare skate bag and the wobbling chair and the lamp that had never worked anyway. 

I screamed into my hands and then I stopped screaming into my hands and just screamed, loud and ugly.

I didn't care about the neighbors or the walls or any of it because he had burned it, he had burned the one thing, the one person who had looked at me in three months and said “you don't have to die…”

I ran out of things to throw.

Stood in the middle of the wreckage with my chest heaving and my hand still stinging from the slap.

“Find her yourself,” something in me said. 

You know her face. You know she's a wolf in this town and wolves leave traces. Find her.”

I wiped my face.

Started cleaning up.

I went to the diner first thing the next morning.

My manager looked up. "Day off."

"I know. Quick question." I leaned against the counter and kept my voice light. Nothing important. 

"That older woman. Two nights ago, my section, sat alone, paid cash. You know her?"

He thought about it. "She comes in sometimes. Few weeks between visits. Always alone."

"You know where she goes after?"

"Morrison, I run a diner."

"Does she talk to anyone? Meet anyone?"

"I make eggs," he said. "Not my business."

I tried three more diners after that. Two cafes. The pharmacy on the corner where wolf instincts always eventually led people.

"Older woman. Small. Very calm. Silver ring with a wolf on it."

"Can't say, love."

"Maybe I've seen her."

"Sorry."

"Try the place on fourth."

Nothing. Every lead dissolved before I could grab it.

By mid-afternoon I was exhausted and my shoulder was burning steadily. I had absolutely nothing to show for any of it. 

Then I turned a corner on the east side of town and saw her — same silver hair, same small frame, sitting in a cafe window. My heart leapt so fast it hurt.

I pushed the door open.

The woman turned around.

Wrong face. Wrong eyes. Just a stranger having coffee who looked at me with polite confusion when I stopped dead in the doorway.

"Sorry," I managed. "Wrong person."

I walked back out, stood on the pavement, pressed my fingers against my eyes and breathed.

“Fine, I told myself. Tomorrow. You'll find her tomorrow.”

I took the long way home because I needed the walking.

My mind did what it always did when I gave it too much space — drifted straight to Kai. 

To what killing him would realistically look like.

“Poison,” I thought, almost pleasantly. 

Something slow that he wouldn't immediately connect to me. Something that looked natural. Or the ice. Something at the rink, a loose bolt maybe, something that looked like an accident…

The scent hit me without warning.

Filtered through the broken wreckage of my senses since the rejection. But there. 

Unmistakable.

Silvercrest.

Every thought about Kai evaporated instantly.

Four of them. At the far end of the alley, moving with the unhurried patience of people who weren't in any rush because they never needed to be. 

My wolf. The silent broken thing that had barely stirred in months, gave one single faint pulse of warning deep in my chest.

Then went quiet again.

“Don't run,” I told myself. My voice in my own head sounded steadier than I felt. 

“Running is suspicious. You're just a girl walking home. Head slightly down. Pace normal. Arms loose. You don't know them and they don't know you.”

I walked.

Past the first one. Past the second.

“Keep going. Ten more steps. Eight. Six—”

I was almost at the end of the alley. Almost at the streetlight and the open road…

"Excuse me."

I stopped.

Everything in my body stopped.

I turned around slowly. Casually. A girl with nothing to hide and nowhere to be.

The biggest one had separated from the group. He walked toward me with a specific unhurried confidence. He stopped two feet away and looked at me like he was reading something.

"Do you live around here?" he said.

"Just passing through."

"Mm." A pause. "You come this way often?"

"Sometimes."

"Where are you headed?"

"Home." I held his gaze. Kept my voice flat and bored. "Is there something I can help you with?"

He tilted his head. Something moved behind his eyes that I didn't like.

Behind him the other three had stopped moving entirely.

"Raise your head, miss," he said softly.

I raised my head.

His eyes moved across my face carefully. The way you look at something you've been shown a photograph of and are checking against the real thing.

And then they stopped moving.

Something in them went very, very still.

"You look exactly like someone we've been searching for."