048— "HELP."

                    ~SLOANE~

I grabbed the lantern and walked.

He fell into step behind me without being asked which was annoying because I had been planning to walk fast enough that he'd have to ask and now that plan was ruined.

The forest swallowed us quickly. Two minutes from the building and the noise of the team was already muffled and then gone. It was just trees and darkness and the circle of amber light our lanterns threw ahead and the sound of leaves under our feet.

I walked faster.

He kept up without trying.

A red ribbon appeared tied around a tree at the edge of a path to our left. I looked at it.

"Why are there red ribbons," I said. "What do they mean?"

"You should have asked Coach Petrov," he said. "He explained everything at the start."

"I was being dragged across a courtyard during the start."

"You were walking."

"Under duress."

"You—"

"Just tell me what the ribbons mean."

"Boundaries," he said. "Don't cross them."

"Boundaries for what."

He said nothing.

I looked at him. He was looking at the trees like he had decided this line of questioning was finished.

"You are genuinely the most insufferable—"

"Watch the root."

I stepped over it. "—person I have ever encountered so that is not a small—"

He smiled.

Not the corner of the mouth. Not the ghost of one. An actual smile, sudden and real, which changed his whole face into something I had no idea what to do with.

"Stop that." I said.

"I didn't do anything."

"You smiled."

"People smile."

"You don't."

He looked at the trees again but the smile was still there at the edges and I looked forward and told my chest to behave itself.

                       …

The first token was nailed to a tree off the main path.

A small carved wood. Something etched into it in characters I didn't recognize and then immediately did.

I stopped walking and looked at it.

Vhen kaelor.

The words landed in my head with a meaning attached, fully formed, like something I'd always known and hadn't accessed until now.

‘The pack sees.’

"What does this mean?" I asked.

Kai looked at the token. "The pack sees."

"I know what it means." I turned to him. "I don't know how I know what it means. What language is that?"

He took the token off the tree and put it in his jacket pocket. "Old pack dialect."

"Why do I know it?"

He looked at me for a moment. "You're probably tired. We should keep moving."

"Kai—"

"The second token won't find itself."

I stared at the back of his head as he started walking.

Later. 

I would pull that thread later. I filed it under things that were important and kept walking.

                      …

"What's the prize?" I asked, ten minutes later.

He looked at me sideways. "You never listened."

"I was having a moment."

"You're always having a moment."

"What's the prize?"

"Unknown." He looked forward. "Said to be precious."

"What does that mean?"

"It means nobody knows."

"How is that a prize if nobody knows what—"

"Sloane."

"What."

"Stop talking for thirty seconds."

I stopped talking for about eight seconds. "We haven't found the second one."

"I know."

"We've been walking for twenty minutes."

"I know."

"If we don't find it soon—"

"I know."

I looked at him. He was watching the trees. His lantern held slightly higher than mine, throwing light further into the dark. He moved through the forest like he'd done it before, which he probably had, which meant he probably knew exactly where the tokens were and was just walking beside me at my pace for reasons he would never voluntarily explain.

My hand brushed his.

The spark was immediate and ridiculous and I hated it.

I looked at the trees and looked back.

He was already looking at me.

I looked away fast.

Why?

Why does he look like that? Stop looking like that. You called it nothing.

Stop. Stop thinking about any of it!

My hand brushed his again.

Before I could move it he took it and just closed his hand around mine.

The warmth of his hands sent shivers down my skin, and I opened my mouth.

"Your hands are cold," he said. "You could use some warmth."

I closed my mouth.

Heat went straight to my face.

We walked like that. His hand around mine and the lanterns throwing gold into the dark and the forest doing the thing forests did at night — going very quiet and still.

‘This was nothing. He held my hand in the hospital and on ice and in nightmares and…

It meant nothing. 

What could it ever mean?

"Why do you really hate Crew?" I asked.

Because I needed to say something and that was the thing I needed to know.

He didn't answer for a long time.

"Let's not ruin this with him," he said finally.

I looked up at him. 

This?

The word sat in my head.

What mood? 

What mood were we in that he doesn't want to ruin with—

He stopped and took my other hand too. Both of mine in both of his, the lantern hanging from my wrist, and he looked at me with those eyes in the dark of the forest and the light was doing something to his face that made it very difficult to remember the list I kept.

"Be my mate," he said.

My heart slammed. Hard.

"Kai—"

"Be my mate." Closer now. Close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him and my spine was doing something that had no tactical justification. 

His eyes were searching mine. 

"Why?" My voice came out husky.

He said nothing.

"Kai. Why."

Still nothing.

"WHY—"

"So you don't die," he said. "Just like that. So you don't just—"

He stopped.

Something happened in my chest.

Not the good kind.

I pulled my hands back.

"So that's what it is," I said. My voice came out very steady which surprised me. "That's the whole thing."

"Sloane—"

"NO." I stepped back. "Don't you dare—"

"Do you want to die aimlessly? Without avenging your family? Why are you being so foolish?"

"Don't… don't you call me foolish." I stepped toward him. "You confusing, insufferable — everything is pity with you. Everything. The terrace. The painting room. All of it. Was that pity too? Was that you feeling sorry for the dying girl…"

"I never said that—"

"Is it because of her?" My voice cracked slightly but I kept going. "The woman in the paintings. Is that why you keep…"

"That's my mother."

Everything stopped and I just stared at him.

His mother.

Not someone he loved and lost and was trying to replace. 

The relief that moved through me had no right to be there and arrived anyway.

He stepped closer. Both hands on my shoulders. His face coming down to my level, his eyes not leaving mine, his voice dropping to something that only the forest heard.

"We both know," he said, "that these — feelings… between us. They're nothing. Compared to what we have to do." His hands tightened slightly. "A mere distraction. We can overcome it. But we need to save your life first, and then—"

I pushed him.

Both palms. Hard.

He stepped back.

"A DISTRACTION!" I yelled.

My throat had closed around something sharp.

"Listen—"

"That's what it is." I nodded. Kept nodding like that would help. "Right. Okay. A distraction. Got it."

"That's not what I—"

"No, I understand." My voice was doing something I couldn't stop. "I understand completely. Thank you for clarifying."

I turned and walked.

"Sloane. Stop—"

I walked faster.

"There are ribbons—"

I walked faster.

His voice was still behind me and I wasn't hearing it because his voice in my head was saying ‘distraction.’

The terrace.

The painting room.

The hospital bed and his hands shaking and his tears on my face…

 Distraction distraction distraction!

His arms. His voice saying ‘please can we just be like this.’ 

A distraction.

The whole time.

I was crying before I realized. Quiet and furious and I wiped it with my sleeve and kept walking and the trees had gotten denser and the light was different—

I looked back.

Dark.

The amber of Kai's lantern was gone. The path was gone. The sound of his footsteps was gone and I was standing in a part of the forest I didn't recognize with the red ribbon of a boundary somewhere behind me that I had walked through without seeing.

I stopped.

Listened.

Strange sounds. From the left and then the right and then somewhere below—

I reached for my radio.

Gone. Must have fallen while I was running. I looked for it on the ground and the ground was dark and I couldn't see it and I couldn't see the path and the fog had rolled in from somewhere while I wasn't paying attention.

Alone in the middle of a forest at night without a radio and with a lantern that was the only thing between me and complete—

My foot caught something.

I went forward.

The ground disappeared.

My hands grabbed something, a root, a branch, my fingers closing around it with everything I had — and I swung and my body hit rock and I looked down and there was nothing. Just dark. 

The ravine dropped away beneath me into more dark and I was hanging from a root on the edge of it with my arms shaking and the lantern gone and—

"Help. Help… K-KAI!"